ABSTRACT
Public conversations on the impact of the internet have assumed predictable contours. On the one hand the world Wide Web is seen to have enabled a profound social revolution by democratising access to knowledge. It is even considered the harbinger of an evolution in human consciousness, facilitating as it does new forms of expressive communication and collaborative practice. On the other hand, concern has been mounting about the negative effects of some of these very propensities of the internet to provide speedy access to vast amounts of visual, aural and textual material. One might imagine that as an interdisciplinary framework that takes the politics of culture as its object of study, cultural studies, would have been at the forefront of shaping a multifaceted public debate. The ‘technology-is-here-to-stay-so-get-with-it’ perspective is so normative that those who raise concerns in the public domain frequently do so gingerly, ambivalently, and with some degree of embarrassment.
