Publisher's Synopsis
The number of travelers along the information superhighway is increasing at a rate of ten percent a month. How will this communications revolution affect our culture and society? Pierre Levy believes that rather than creating a society where machines rule man, the technology of cyberspace will have a humanizing influence on us, and foster the emergence of a "collective intelligence"a meeting of minds on the Internetthat will validate the contributions of the individual.With a depth of scholarship and imaginative insight rare among media critics, Levy demonstrates how the unfettered exchange of ideas in cyberspace has the potential to liberate us from the social and political hierarchies that have stood in the way of mankind's advancement. At once a profound historical analysis of the development of human culture and a blueprint for the future, Collective Intelligence is a visionary work that will make a substantial contribution to our views on society through to the next millennium.
