overview

This profile ties together discussion throughout the site by considering some myths about cyberspace, in particular management of the global information infrastructure and the shape of the 'new economy'.

The following pages cut across individual resources on this site; particular issues are discussed in more detail in those pages, along with pointers to statistics and comments on information sources.

"I can't believe that!" said Alice. "Can't you?" the Queen said, in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath and shut your eyes." Alice laughed. "There's no use trying", she said; "one can't believe impossible things". "I dare say you haven't had much practice", said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll Through the Looking Glass

The pages are a 'work in progress', which we'll be amending and extending in coming months. Each page questions several 'memes', such the supposedly imminent death of the state, the end of the business cycle, online alienation, wired communities and the 'private life of information'.

     contents of this profile

The following pages cover -

• internet exceptionalism: the notion that the internet is fundamentally unique - representing a distinctive break from past - and that we'll be driven by the "spirit of the net" without the normalisation evident in adoption of other new technologies
• the digital commons: claims that information just wants to be free, that the death of copyright and 'big media' is imminent or that consumers face unprecedented media concentration and coercion by commercial interests
• dogs in space: conflicting claims that privacy is dead as we rush towards cultures of total surveillance and the 'panoptic sort', or that liberation is imminent (since in cyberspace no one can tell you're a dog and the net innately corrodes all repressive regimes)
• rich & hip: in the future we'll be all "wired, rich and hip" (or merely cyberselfish)? Will all online populations have the characteristics of US early adopters. Are digital divides a thing of the past - or merely of little concern to the digerati?
• the borderless world: will the net result in early demise of the state? be reflected in a dystopian New Information Order? erode barriers between communities and nations? require new global institutions (but without the warts and wrinkles of the UN)? enable free speech across the globe?
• e-cargo cults: some questions about proclamations about 'internet-enabled' businesses and government agencies, the end of the business cycle, the 'Internet Dividend', regional development ("just add bandwidth and stir"), and the death of distance
• the wired community: visions of the net as democratising, egalitarian, inclusive and productive of new relationships
• home alone and the sociopathy of cyberspace: is life online uniquely addictive and resulting in severe anomie or a realm where going online makes people happier, more articulate, better informed, politer and more altruistic?
• red lights: the net as an unregulatable "open sewer from hell" (a domain of thieves, paedophiles and terrorists) or a self-organising utopia innately resistant to trademark owners, tax offices and police officers
• it's all there: claims that everything you want to know is online, that you can easily find it and that you'll be able to do so in future.
• inattention economy: assertions, particularly from the academy, that students and others are now "switched off, not turned on" in a "soundbyte society" with "the attention span of a gnat"

   next page  (internet exceptionalism)