Cyberspace as American Culture CULTURE DIGESTS THE NET

Like many inventions before it, the Internet is disruptive. Individuals must learn how to use the Internet, of course, but in a deeper sense the culture as a whole must learn about it as well. Culture happens in the routine patterns of action and interaction by which people coordinate their activities and negotiate their lives together. As various social groups appropriate the technology and contest the various sorts of access it affords (Dutton, 1999; Kling 1996), the Internet participates in a thousand dynamics that unsettle these patterns and set the culture in search of new equilibria.