We are as gods and might as well get good at it...a realm of intimate personal power is developing - the power of individuals to conduct their own education, find their own inspiration, shape their own environment, and share the adventure with whoever is interested.
- Stewart Brand, opening remark in the statement of purpose for the Whole Earth Catalog, and in SIGNAL: Communication Tools for the Information Age edited by Kevin Kelly, 1988
The opening sentence of the prospectus for the first [CommuniTree] conference was "We are as gods and might as well get good at it."
- Allucquere Rosanne Stone in Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?: Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures, in Cyberspace: First Steps, edited by Michael Benedikt, 1991. (In 1978, CommuniTree became one of the first BBS's deliberately developed along the lines of "a virtual community, a community that promised radical transformation of existing society and the emergence of new social forms.")
The great irony of god games is that letting go is the only way to win.
- Kevin Kelley, Out Of Control , A William Patrick Book, 1994
We have come to believe that the most significant challenge for cyberspace developers is to come to grips with the problems of world creation and management. While we have only made the first inroads into these problems, a few things have become clear. The most important of these is that managing a cyberspace world is not like managing the world inside a single-user application or even a conventional online service. Instead, it is more like governing an actual nation. Cyberspace architects will benefit from study of the principles of sociology and economics as much as from the principles of computer science.
- The Lesson's of Lucasfilm's Habitat: Chris Morningstar, F. Randall Farmer in Cyberspace: First Steps, edited by Michael Benedikt, 1994