ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century, people were awed by the emancipatory power of the newspaper and periodical that it became the convention to refer to the press with an upper case ‘P’. When this awe gave way to familiarity, the press was demoted to a lower case ‘p’, and commentary about the press became more sensible. We are still in the awestruck stage as far as the internet is concerned.
Convention requires that the internet be designated with an upper case ‘I’, and the world wide web with upper case ‘Ws’ (though we have resisted this here). The wonderment this convention expresses goes some way towards explaining why so much current discussion of the net is so inadequate. There are two leading schools of thought. One sees the internet as a
technology of freedom that is empowering humankind, making accessible the world’s knowledge, building ‘emancipated subjectivities’, promoting a new, progressive global politics, and laying the foundation of the ‘new economy’.1 The other sees the internet as an over-hyped technology whose potential value has been undermined by ‘digital capitalism’ and social inequality.2
