"How could the US authorities successfully communicate after a nuclear war?" (Sterling, 1993)
What a fundamental question! With a hopeful and innovative idea to answer it. The Internet!
Understanding a brief history of the Internet has shown me that it not just about connecting and re-connecting your DSL cables when google.com does not load, it's also about the major cables that connect us to the rest of the world. The cables that allow us to stay informed with world news and the packet data that is broken down then reassembled to reveal a message. I can only begin to imagine what it was like for people just learning about ARPANET in the 60's and 70's, and what it must of felt for them to finally keep in contact with people in other parts of the world.
What was interesting to learn in Sterling's article was that fan fiction started out this way and as we step into Web 2.0 we can see that fan sites and science fiction still finds its way through to the web. Just like Star Wars has found a home in many people's lives...
