Sociologa al MIT, autrice di "Life on the Screen: Identity in the age of Internet", e' considerata la prima antropologa del cyberspazio.

Computers offer themselves as models of mind and as "objects to think with." They do this in several ways. There is, first of all, the world of computational theories. Some artificial intelligence researchers explicitly endeavor to build machines that model the human mind. Proponents of artificial life use computational processes capable of replication and evolution to redraw the boundaries of what counts as "alive." And second, there is the world of computational objects themselves: everything from toys and games to simulation software and Internet connections

La rivoluzione delle comunicazioni prodotta dall’esplodere delle reti telematiche di cui Internet, la Rete, è la materializzazione più visibile, ha effetti molteplici che coinvolgono potenzialmente tutte le sfere dell’attività e dell’organizzazione umana. E’ diffusa la sensazione che la posta in gioco delle trasformazioni in atto sia piuttosto alta, stiamo vivendo, molto probabilmente, un momento di passaggio epocale che sembra somigliare ad altri periodi cruciali della storia umana. Mark Poster la paragona all’emergere della cultura urbana e mercantile nel feudalesimo.

Myria Georgiou is currently researching the role of ethnic media consumption for the construction of ethnic identities. She has been examining the particular cases of the British Greek Cypriots in North London and is a doctoral student at the LSE. She has worked as a lecturer in Media and Communication and a journalist for 10 years, in Greece and Britain, for the BBC World Service. This essay is taken from her current research programme which is due for submission October 2000. Myria has completed her PhD.