Preface to the 1994 paperback edition A lot has happened in the year or so since I wrotethis book. More than usually happens in a year. Thanks to technologies like the computer,the modem, interactive media, and the Internet, we no longer depend on printed matter or word of mouth to explore the latest rages, innovations, or discoveries. By the time a storyhits the newstands, most insiders consider it "old news" and are already hard at work onthe next flurry of culture-bending inventions and activities. Cyberia is about a very specialmoment in our recent history -- a moment when anything seemed possible. When anentire subculture -- like a kid at a rave trying virtual reality for the first time -- saw the wildpotentials of marrying the latest computer technologies with the most intimately helddreams and the most ancient spiritual truths. It is a moment that predates America Online,twenty million Internet subscribers, Wired magazine, Bill Clinton, and the InformationSuperhighway. But it is a moment that foresaw a whole lot more. This book is not a surveyof everything and everyone "cyber" but rather a tour through some of the regions of thisnew, fledgling culture to which I was lucky enough to gain access. Looking back, it issurprising to see how many of these then-absurd notions have become accepted truths,and disheartening to see how many of the most optimistic appraisals of our future are stillvery far from being realized. Cyberia follows the lives and translates the experiences of the first few people who realized that our culture was about to take a leap into theunknown. Some of them have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations and are nowpractically household names. Others have met with catastrophe. Still others have simplyfaded from view, their own contributions to the cyberian renaissance already completed.The people in this book, and thousands of others like them around the world, understandthe implications of our technologies on our culture, thought systems, spiritual beliefs, andeven our biological evolution. They still stand as the most optimistic and forward-thinkingappraisers of our civilization's fate. As we draw ever nearer to the consensuallyhallucinatory reality for which these cyberians drew the blueprints, their impressions of lifeon the edge become even more relevant for the rest of us. And they make more sense.Douglas Rushkoff New York City, 1994
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