Fancy machines to create, move, and store information were a main preoccupation of the whole 20th century, not just the computerized part of it. Movies, phonographs, color
photography and color printing, the electronic transmission of photos, the invention of radio and radio networks and international radio hookups, newsreels, television, transistorized electronics, long-distance phone networks, communication satellites, fax machines, photocopiers, audio and video tapes, compact disks, cell phones, cable TV - and then, with the emergence of PC's and the Internet, suddenly we are in an information age? The 20th century was one information-gusher after another; information pouring into people's lives through more and more stuck-open faucets.
The defeat of geography? In Cyberspace and the American Dream (1994), distributed electronically by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a distinguished group of authors argued that "we constitute the final generation of an old civilization and, at the very same time, the first generation of a new one." Their claim centered on the idea that, thanks to computer networks, geography had (in effect) been overcome; henceforth, shared interests and not physical proximity would shape community and society.