"Is using the World Wide Web subversive?"
Concerning the internet and what will become of it, my thesis is
that it has the potential to radically destabilize the current
information monopolies. However, this is by no means an inevitable
result, and there will be strong contention by the media bigs to
shape the as-yet-lumpy-and-inchoate thing called cyberspace into a
shopping mall. Search engines will
significantly affect what people know as the internet. Insofar as
people will not know about resources due to the
littering of pathways with commercial
messages, we will not go anywhere fast on this highway. I'm
optimistic about the potential uses of the technology, because
independents like myself can broadcast to unheard of numbers of
people--at least now. But I would not endorse the statement : "The
internet is a subversive form of communication." To pose the
question as printed above is a McLuhanist gesture that locates the
politics or meaning of the technology in the technology itself, and
I believe that while it is possible to be subversive with the WWW,
one is not inevitably subversive for having turned on a switch.
Michael Albert in Z - Magazine online concerning online
dissident publications and their competition with corporate
news.
Feb-28-1995