8 Ebay founded – ‘Toy Story,’ the first feature-length computer-animated film, is released – O.J . Simpson acquitted – MP3 standard is introduced – Craig Newmark posts a page on the Well and starts a mailing list called “Craigslist.” – F/X nightclub closes; Agenda opens – Pearl Jam plays Spartan Stadium – Amazon.com launched – Mae West hub opens in downtown San Jose and becomes Internet\’s second busiest intersection in cyberspace
Media Matters
Against the sleekness and sheer speed of computers, books have no defense. And the victim may not just be books themselves, but all of American culture. In The Gutenberg Elegies, essayist Sven Birkerts argues that the change in the form of words from print to screen will inevitably change their content, and our relationship to them, for the worse. “When our technologies are all in place—when all databases have been refined and integrated—that will be the day when we stop living in the old hard world and take up residence in some bright new hyperworld, a kind of Disneyland of information.” Doesn’t Birkerts seem a bit stodgy and anachronistic? These words were generated on a computer, transmitted over the Internet to my editor’s office, and are now being read in printed form on a page of newspaper. The evolution of this very essay itself seems to prove Birkerts’ contentions wrong. J. Douglas Allen Taylor, Nov. 9, 1995
