One critic of Murray's book complains that "her utopianism colors all her arguments in this volume, leading her to ignore or play down the more disturbing consequences of technology while unabashedly embracing its possibilities." Do you agree? Why or why not?
Murray’s vision for the future of cyberspace does indeed have a utopian bent. However, writing in 1997, she had a lot to be optimistic about. In the subsequent seven years several nefarious uses for the interactive application of the web have developed; from the relatively benign possibility of internet addictions to the more malicious exploitation of children. This isn’t to say that these phenomena did not exist in 1997, but there has been an explosion of dubious applications of this new interconnectivity with the proliferation of internet access.
The focus of Murray’s book is on the potential of the new digital medium to revolutionize narrative. The new and largely unexplored medium has vast potential to take the future of narrative in an infinite number of directions. Perhaps some will be good and others less good. The fact of the matter is Murray, who state’s she is openly optimistic about the future of narrative in cyberspace, does speculate as to what some of the drawbacks may be. For example, she discusses openly the possibility of computer enactment reinforcing antisocial or violent behavior (p. 172).
Much like Cronon’s demonstration of the differing views on the natural history of the Great Plains, another scholar, looking at the same phenomenon, could draw an entirely different conclusion than Murray about the future of narrative in cyberspace. Perhaps the critic, Ms. Kakutani, may have a different story to tell about the future of narrative in cyberspace. Her assessment would have to be read with the same understanding of subjectivity as one must read Murray’s.