In an Interview with Esther Dyson, a very highly acclaimed cyberspecialist, she was asked what her favorite metaphor for the internet was.
She replied;
"Well, I definitely see it as an ocean, not a highway. It's something you float in rather than something that has well-defined paths. It's really an environment in which things happen. It's not a single place; it's a platform for lots of places. "
Gerstner, J. (June-July 1998). The civilization of cyberspace. Communication World, 15(6), 37. Retrieved (date), from the Academic Search Premier database.
What I found interesting about this quote from an interview with Esther Dyson, is how profound the statement really is. First off, it was written more than ten years ago, in 1998. At that time the internet was still, to an extent, in its infancy stages. In the early nineties, superhighway was a good description for the internet. People would go online with a specific destination in mind and basically drive to that destination. Nowadays there are millions of sites and we seamlessly float from one to another. For someone who is a true techie and cybergeek it is a very sureal description. For Esther Dyson to have made this statement over ten years ago in my opinion makes her a true cyber visionary.
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