Cyberspace: Beneath their plaster shells on the city streets, behind their potted plants and easy smiles, organizations are seen as the organisms they are-or as they would have us believe them be: money flowing in rivers and capillaries; obligations, contracts, accumulating (and the shadow of the IRS passes over). On the surface, small meetings are held in rooms, but they proceed in virtual rooms, larger, face to electronic face. On the surface, the building knows where you are. And who.Michael Benedikt,"Introduction" to Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991.
Here Benedikt emphasises the positive and negative views at the same time. Those favoring the virtual interactions of cyberspace would claim that being able to run large organizations without having to travel in order to meet or carry lots of paperwork is one of the greatest benefits cyberspace can offer.
Others might see the spectre of Big Brother with interconnected organizations controling the information available in the web. In his book Snow Crash, Stephenson describes how multinational corporations control both his computer metaverse and his technology dependent society. Like Gibson, he uses satire effectively to present this dystopian view of cyber-organizations.
