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Understanding Micropolis and Compunity 63

writing, but their thinking and knowledge as well. We have wit-
nessed these past few years (at least) the eruption of critical schol-
arship that, for instance, critiques New World narratives and seeks
to restore understanding of indigenous cultures and knowledge. May
we be self-critical as we undertake an enterprise similar to that of
New World explorers, who came, saw, and categorized?

Conclusion
It is by a very slow and gradual process that social change motivated
by new technology, and new media technology in particular, occurs.
We do not shift from one paradigm to another, from one process
(mental or physical) to the next, at all quickly, and, I would argue,
we often do not notice change when it does occur, because it does not
happen in the expected social arena. So, for instance, the widespread
use of the printing press and the spread of literacy lead to increased
education and awareness, which we expect, but they also lead to iso-
lation, which we expect less, even though we have greater aware-
ness, for as we attend to our reading material we attend less to those
around us at the time we are reading (which we often find useful
when we sit next to strangers on an airplane, for example). Conse-
quently, I am quite unsure about the potential to harness any tech-
nology for predictable social change. Our technologies are designed
in anticipation of their effects, but the effects themselves are not
ones that are informed by history, rather they are woven from our
hopes. We seem to be taking a step toward privatization and polar-
ization through use of new communication media like the Internet,
but is that symptomatic, causal, or . . . ?
Irrespective of the answer to that question, we ultimately need
to examine our assumptions about how new media technologies will
affect our society. We seem to hold some common beliefs (Thornburg
1992), that they will:

benefit education and learning;
break down barriers and hierarchies (social and other
kinds);

create new social formations, typically in opposition to dom-
inant ones;

make participatory democracy feasible and easy;