examination of the role of interactive media in building social capital.

Several scholars viewed the computer network of the Internet as especially well suited to communication activities that lead to community building, virtual or otherwise (Jones, 1994; Rheingold, 2000; Wellman, 1997).

Stoll excoriates "cyberpunks," virtual vandals who abuse the openness of scientific computing environments. Their unsportsmanlike conduct spoils the information game, necessitating cumbersome restrictions on the free flow of data.

Orthodox McLuhanite doctrine holds that "every form, pushed to the limit of its potential, reverses its characteristics" (Laws of Media viii).

Who decides what information "belongs" to whom? Stoll's "popular elite" is restricted to academic scientists, a version of "the people" as nomenklatura, those whose need to know is defined by their professional affiliation.

The telos of the electronic society-of-text is anarchy in its true sense: local autonomy based on consensus, limited by a relentless disintegration of global authority. Since information is now virtually an equivalent of capital, and since textuality is our most powerful way of shaping information, it follows that Xanadu might indeed change the world.

Electronic information, as Stoll sees it, lies in strict analogy with material and private property.

  "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system" (Gibson 51).

The vision of Xanadu as cyberspatial New Jerusalem is conceivable and perhaps eligible, but by no stretch of the imagination is it inevitable.

But it seems equally possible that our engagement with interactive media will follow the path of reaction, not revolution