ABSTRACT
This chapter has argued that if people want to understand the relationship between activist cultures and digital capitalism they need to develop a theoretical standpoint that approaches the question of 'technological agency' by looking at the relationship between digital discourses and digital practices. The development of this theoretical standpoint requires that people take three main conceptual steps. In the first place, people need to consider the fact that often technological agency is bestowed upon the technology through discourse and through the process of fetishism, which constructs the technology as an autonomous and magical agent. This understanding enables us to appreciate the power of digital discourses and their impact on everyday practice. The relationship between techno-utopianism and technological fetishism has defined the historical development of the internet. Rheingold (1993) highlighted the fact that new technologies were facilitating the emergence of a new form of social life: the virtual community, which was self-governed and horizontal in essence.
