The Last HomecomingI have returned therewhere I had never been.Nothing has changed from how it was not.On the table (on the checkeredtablecloth) half-fullI found again the glassnever filled. Allhas remained just asI had never left it 5

The discoverers of the Internet borrowed key metaphors of philosophical and literary discourse—virtual reality comes from Bergson's theory of consciousness, hypertext, from narrative theories of intertextuality—which were then regarded as the exclusive property of the new media. The Internet also took over elements of pastoral imagery and "Western" genres (e.g., the global village, homepages and the frontier mentality). The new media redefined the architecture of space with a "superhighway," villages and chatrooms—all evidence that the Internet foregrounds pastoral suburbia and the romance of the highway and domestic morality tales over the ruins of the metropolis. E-mail, however, offered the possibility of instant intimacy; the more distant the correspondents, the more intensely they shared their innermost secrets in all late-night languages.