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T A B L E__T A L K

Can online discussion actually change people's minds -- or does it just dig us deeper into argumentative positions? Come debate in Table Talk's Digital Culture area.

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Technocracy in America
By Andrew Leonard
A review of "Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century" by G. Pascal Zachary
(12/08/97)

The 21st Challenge
By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau
Take the 21st Challenge: Rename software! Win prizes!
(12/05/97)

Let's get this straight
By Scott Rosenberg
Kiddie porn -- the enemy everyone can agree on
(12/04/97)

Interface this!
By Scott Rosenberg
A review of Steven Johnson's sharp critical manifesto, "Interface Culture"
(12/03/97)

Are we ready for the library of the future?
By Cate Corcoran
Librarians have become the public's last-resort help desk
(12/02/97)

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BROWSE THE
21ST ARCHIVES

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BY SCOTT ROSENBERG | Esther Dyson -- conference impresario, Net pundit and high-tech emissary to Russia -- arrives in a flurry at the Salon office for an early-morning interview. She needs to receive a fax from London -- what's our number? Her laptop needs recharging; is there an outlet nearby? Then she props herself up on a chair, crosses her legs beneath her and fixes an intent stare on her interviewer as she talks about the predictions and conclusions in her new book, "Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age."

A lot of people see humanism and faith in technology as opposites, but you've clearly tried to combine them in "Release 2.0." What's your response to the humanist critique of the Internet offered by books like "Data Smog" -- that the Net is corroding the quality of our daily lives?

I think second-hand smoke is a legitimate concept; second-hand data is not. You really don't need to look at other people's data if you don't want to. People have to grow up and make their own decisions about how much time they want to spend on the Net. The fact that I don't have a home phone is not a statement -- but it is an example.

A rare one!

Yes. People think it's really weird, but that's what suits me. People just have to do what suits them.

Did you get rid of your phone once e-mail became popular?

No, it was long ago, the late '70s. I don't have e-mail at home either. I had this big black rotary dial phone a year after Harvard. Sometimes it would stop working for a day or two. And then I started getting billed because someone was tapping my line to call Jamaica (the island, not Queens), and the phone company wouldn't reverse the charges. So finally I said, this is ridiculous -- I don't want this thing and I don't use it. I asked them to take it out. And I've never missed it.

But you were constantly on the phone at work, presumably.

Yes, and so I had no interest in doing that at home. I mean, also, I spend most of the weekend at the office -- it's not that I'm sitting at home with no phone for days on end!

This, I guess, is what you mean in "Release 2.0" when you talk about how the Net erodes the separation between work lives and personal lives.

It's not just a matter of time. You know, when you're in a steel mill, you make steel and you leave and that's it. But when you're online, if someone meets you downtown or someone e-mails you, let's face it, if you're a jerk, it affects Salon, in a way that it wouldn't if you were making steel. This is a big social issue; again, the problem here is people.

You can't be paternalistic and get upset if your employee goes drinking Saturday night, but at the same time, now, your company consists of the people. They're much more visible. And so what do you do if your employee not only goes drinking Saturday night but says your company sucks on his private e-mail account?

Even when you try to keep a healthy separation between work and personal time, the technology of the Net encourages people to expect that you're available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In addition to that, it's pretty sad if you're working for a company doing intellectual work and you don't identify with the company. Which is why I'm so cheerful about the notion of smaller companies. One way or another people are there by choice, and there's more personality.

A lot of companies keep getting bigger, though. "Release 2.0" argues that the Net is a great decentralizing force, yet today we're seeing more power concentrated in the hands of companies like Microsoft and WorldCom.

These big things are getting more and more stuff, and obviously hardware is different from content. So yes, with hardware or the infrastructure or Microsoft -- there are benefits there to size and economies of scale. But in content, in intellectual work, there are really disadvantages of scale. So you see these divergent trends. But I think the value is increasingly at the edges, even if the physical bulk is in the middle.

You mean, one reason the physical assets of the network get collected is that they're worth less?

To some extent. They are commodities. WorldCom will tell you, "Our customer service makes us unique." I'm just not sure about that.

So where do small companies fit in?

I don't know the statistics, but if you took all the insects on the earth and weighed them, they'd weigh a lot more than all the people.

You've taken a lot of flak for your predictions about intellectual property -- your argument that the value of content is declining, and that creative people are going to have to make their money doing consulting, personal appearances and so on.

Well, it's calmed down a lot, first of all. It used to be, you just couldn't even raise the topic without being accused of being a socialist by Bill Gates. Or, "We've already heard that, we don't need to talk about that anymore." But there's still a lot more to explore. I think people are beginning to realize it's happening. And books, God bless them, are going to be one of the laggards in all this.

Obviously in this case you're still selling books, and yet you're talking to me for free.

Right. It's the other way around. Again, I'm not doctrinaire -- if the old model works, use it. I could have written the book and put it on the Net, but it would not have been read by the people I wanted to have read it. And I don't think right now the Net is the ideal medium for books: First, it doesn't reach the broad masses; second, you really want someone to sit down and make a commitment to read it and not just glance at it on screen; third, in addition to the money they're paying me and the expense it takes to produce this nice physical object, they're spending another $50,000 to send me around the country talking to you for free.

And every time I get on some television show, hundreds of thousands of people see this not-very-scary-looking woman who doesn't have a pocket protector -- yeah, she may be weird and not have any kids, but she's not very scary-looking -- say nice things about the Net, that it gives them opportunities, it's not a haven for child molesters. So the book publishing process gets the message even further than the book itself does.

It's an interesting process of alienation, because in some ways I identify more with what I write on the Net and in other media. This is now a product, and so if someone wants to take silly pictures of me swimming, I say, OK, calm down, it's selling the book. Because I'm really not about swimming -- I swim every day the way I take a shower. It's of no interest.

But it's a photo op.

Yes, and it gets above the fold. And of course all the things you know abstractly about publicity, you get to experience. The commentary about you by people who don't know you, about fantasies of who you are -- which of course we've all seen happen to Bill Gates. Bill Gates is much more a figment of the viewer's imagination than he is a reality in most of what's said about him.