The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading

The computer, writes Peter Lunenfeld, is the twenty-first century´s culture machine. It is a dream device, serving as the mode of production, the means of distribution, and the site of reception. We haven´t quite achieved the flying cars and robot butlers of futurist fantasies, but we do have a machine that can function as a typewriter and a printing press, a paintbrush and a gallery, a piano and a radio, the mail as well as the mail carier. But, warns Lunenfeld, we should temper our celebration with caution; we are engaged in a secret war between downloading and uploading — between passive consumption and active creation — and the outcome will shape our collective futures.