n allocating technologies almost
magical transformative powers, in implying the easy emergence of universal social and
spatial access to computer networks, and in radically overestimating the degree to which
such networks can simply substitute for, and transcend, place-based, face-to-face interaction,
Kevin Robins (1995: 139) has argued that they say more about their own (usually
masculine) `omnipotence fantasies' than about how complex combinations of placebased
and telemediated interactions co-evolve. As he suggests, such perspectives rest on a