Sven Birkerts Critical Essay | Critical Review by Cliff Stoll

SOURCE: "Wired Thing, You Make My Heart Sing," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 1, 1996, p. 4.

In the following review, Stall highlights the degree of ambiguity surrounding the relationship between society and technology, explaining the titular allusion of Tolstoy's Dictaphone.

Slowly, our blind infatuation with digital technology is giving way to some obvious questions: How do we treat computers? How do computers affect us? Might we be involved in an electronic Faustian bargain?

My online friends immediately respond: "Don't worry, the computer is just a tool." But in The Media Equation, Stanford University professors Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass show that we don't treat computers as tools. Rather, we relate to computers as if they were real people and places. Suddenly, this rationale explains plenty: the yearning for simple, user-friendly systems; the spread of Internet addiction; viewers' hypnotic attachment to multimedia games.

The authors work in mass...
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