"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 this technology, 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.
Part one
Part two
My response
