Most books about cyberculture are either rants or raves, her-alding the new utopia or dismissing it as utterly dysto-pian. What they have in common is that they focus on computer technology itself, assuming that it is unlike anything human beings have ever faced. But in Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century, Mark Dery takes a different approach. While he acknowledges that the technology is amazing and new, he shows that people's reactions to it actually have less to do with its amazing newness than with basic human drives that have been present for millennia.

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