Liberation Rhetoric
The rhetoric of the Web presents, perhaps, the strongest argument for the alienation exerted by the Web. Michael Skube, an editor for the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Sees the rhetoric of the Web as being akin to the rhetoric of religion or Marxism. Skube humorously refers to Bill Gates as "the supreme deity of the digital age".(Skube) Skube claims that for many people the Internet "isn't merely a means of communication but the institutional structure of their very world".(Skube) The Marxist and religious strain occurs in the eschatological strain of Internet ideology. According to much Web rhetoric everything in history has pointed toward the classless, godless, bossless utopia of the Internet. (Think for a moment of the latest television advertisement put out by MCI or Microsoft.) The gospel of the Internet speaks of breaking down barriers and building bridge, of bringing people together and abolishing hierarchy. The Internet is not a mere means of communication, it is a tool of liberation. Assuming such rhetoric is true, and I believe it is not, does a system which strips identity and physically isolate people really liberate? It does not seem that people which have evolved in a physical, natural world can be truly liberated . From the most progressive view of man's relationship to the Web, people's experiences are still limited by the capability of the technology. If we assume that physical experience is essential for the illusion of liberation and reality, then current technology falls far short of liberating people and breaking down barriers. It instead sets up technological ones. What technology a person has access to directly effects what extent of liberation he can experience. The Internet has the same problem of the haves versus the have nots that the physical world encounters. Criteria for deficiency change, but new ones are introduced. It is my belief that this is why the social empowered of US society make up the largest group of Internet users. Schiller makes a similar point in The New Information Enclosures. In his critique of Al Gore's National Information Infrastructure he asks "will the creation of privately financed and privately owned, high speed, multicapacity circuits carrying broad streams of messages and images reduce the gaps in living conditions across the globe?".(Schiller, p.24) Schiller's answer is no. He reasons that the focus of the major private companies will be revenue. Profits can only come from those people who already have the income to purchase the services that the companies are selling. Without major governmental intervention income gaps would widen both in the US and abroad. As quick access to information became more and more important for business, the people with the access would increase in income and those without it would experience diminished income. All of this is to say that the rhetoric of a divine, natural movement of society to a digital classless, sexless, raceless free society is flawed. There is nothing liberating about the Web as it currently stands. Technology becomes the judge of a person instead of other arbitrary measures. The person who can afford the necessary technology gains an economic advantage over those who cannot.
A text copy of the paper is also available as are references.