Once the 500 channels of 'bread and circus' are available, then other neighborhoods will be offered access to the infobahn. The larger body politic will be further sedated with new opportunities to shed money through various interactive home shopping schemes or perhaps asked to help decide the fate of a new cast of soap opera actors in a non-linear form of fiction.
If the "medium was the message" in the 1960s, perhaps the "network" is the medium for the 90s? As some have stated, on-ramps are only half the problem in developing the information web of the future, off-ramps are equally important. If the only off-ramps are offered by Hollywood and Madison Avenue, then indeed there will be a further expansion of the vast wasteland as television was described even before the onslaught of the cable industry. Fortunately, there are many community activists, health care non-profits, rural cooperatives, tribal associations, and even artists who are exploring the prospect of offering alternative tributaries to the prevailing commercialization of the Internet and its offspring. 10

Reality?                  Introduction              Revolution
Satellites                Spirit of Invention       Nation Building
Priesthood and Sisterhood TV Community              Old Art, New Look
New Art, New Ontology     10_holtzer_shaw.html      Interactive Installations
Interactive Publishing    Art and the Net           Truth?