PowerPoint Presentation Slide 1

Impacts

• Changed the way we work
• Accellerated space time compression: globalization processes
• Convergence of computers and distribution allows greater efficiency of control and communication
• Much cheaper to sell via Internet than in person ( 1/100th cost per transaction for banks, airlines)
• Average person is now estimated to spend 187 hours a year on line ( source: Penguin Media and Information 2003)

Social Transformations of the Internet

• Utopic Visions
• Breaks oligopoly power
• Allows user control over media selected, compiled, used
• Provides new forms of social connection beyond space based
• New communities of interest may form ( beyond borders)
• Together with other technologies allow development of artificial intelligence/body/intelligence augmentation
• A Democratic Realization

• Dystopic Visions
• Reinforces and extends it ( US controls 65% share of world Internet server hosts)
• Keeps user in ‘invisible walled gardens’
• Has enabled social predation: largest use for pornography /weapons and illicit drug/and stalking on line
• New market intelligence aggregating in unprecedented scope: data shadows and on line surveillance
• Few use the Net for political news, mobilization: while alt.news and other organizations are growing: commercial search engines bury them so they are difficult to find…thus an authoritarian politics continued, not a democratic one