The only reasonable strategy of instigating a revolution in communication is metadesign - the creation of context rather than content. Telecommunication networks and computer programmes are examples of metadesign. Metadesign creates new social situations, provides access to alternative experience and has taken on the original positions of avant-garde - such as redefining art, developing autonomous reality-communities.
ABSTRACT
The concept "orbital age" evokes the myth of a communications revolution, a myth as old as television. According to this myth, new telecommunication technologies can and will invert the structure and function of mass media (a) from centralized output to decentralized input, (b) form hierarchy to heterarchy, (c) from mass audience to special audience, (d) from communication to conversation, (e) from commerce to community, (f) from nationstate to global village.
In other words, according to this myth the cultural imperialism of the mass media would be replaced by autonomous "reality-communities" - social groups of politically significant magnitude realized as communities through telecommunication networks and defined, therefore, not by geography but by consciousness, ideology and desire. Constituents of these electronic communities, empowered with tools for simulation and conversation, might both produce models of possible realities (art) and control the cultural context within which those models were published and perceived (politics) - the communications revolution is synonymous with cultural revolution.