Until recently the Internet was not a significant concern for social theory. Since then qualitative and quantitative changes have made it a research necessity for almost any study of contemporary sociology or anthropology. As the largest computer network in the world, the Internet has undergone extraordinary growth over recent years. In 1984, the year that William Gibson coined the term “cyberspace”, the number of Internet host systems exceeded 1,024. By 1987 that figure had increased to 28, 174. In the following year, the famous “Internet worm” shutdown an estimated 10% of the 56,000 Internet hosts. In 1989 the number of hosts was over 100,000 and in 1990, 313,000
[Internet Growth (1981-1991), RFC 1296, http://www.isc.org/ds/rfc1296.txt].
These substantive increases were dwarfed by events in the 1990s. In 1991 the World Wide Web came into use. In 1992 there was 1,136,000 Internet hosts. In 1993 Mosaic, the first graphics-based browser is introduced. In January 1994, when this thesis began, there were 2,217,000 hosts. By 1996 there was almost 16,729,000 hosts. This number has since consistently increased and shows no signs of letting up: In 1997, 26,053,00 hosts, in 1998 36,4739,000, in 1999 56, 218,000, in 2000 93,047,765, in 2001 125,888,197 and in 2002 162,128,493. To put simply, we are the in opening years of the Internet, a communications medium that seems destined to become dominant in the 21st century This medium seems destined that it will span the globe, that it will provide digital information and communication with relative ease, with minimal cost and use of resources – a global communication community, a global village. This is a social fact, and arguably the most important and confrontational of our times.
[Internet Software Consortium, Number of Hosts http://www.isc.org/ds/host-count-history.html]
Of course, such rapid growth in electronic communications has occurred before in different forms and has received similar commentary – althoug the interpretations differened greatly. Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno were perhaps among the earliest to comment in the negative sense of ubiquitous control of the mass media. In the essay “The Culture Industy: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” they passionately argue against the mass production of culture and it's endless attempt to lower standards to achieve greater popularity:
“Movies and radio need no longer pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish they deliberately produce. They call themselves industries; and when their directors' incomes are published, any doubt about the social utility of the finished products is removed.”
[http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/adorno.htm]
[Max Horkheimer, Theodore Adorno, Dialects of Enlightenment, FP 1944]
Marshall McLuhan, on the other hand, took a content neutral approach. Considering television to be a “cool” (information sparse), rather than a hot (information intense, such as print) medium, due of low resolution that demanded the participation of the viewer. Taking up the basis of technological phenomenology that technology is an extension of the senses, McLuhan argued that it was not such much the content of the television, or the radio or the telephone that was important – the determining factor was that it was being used. The medium is the message – and the electronic media have collapsed all space and time into a single point: “We now live in a global village ... a simultaneous happening.”
[McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: New American Library, 1964]
Whilst the mass electronic media of the television and film have been heavily commented upon – and the two examples given are just illustrative of the range available – perhaps the closest precursors are not these electronic information technologies with their centralized and capital-intensive requirements for production and transmission, but rather the decentralized, low-capital electronic communications technologies of the public band radio culture and of course, the telephone, both of which relatively scant sociological attention has been paid.
[Two significant exceptions with regards to the telephone:
Aronson, Sidney (1971), The sociology of the telephone, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 12, 153-167
Ithiel Pool de Sola, I (Ed). (1977) The social impact of the telephone, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.]
The significant difference between all these electronic media and the Internet of course, is that the Internet is digital and primarily functions in conjunction with the highly sophiticated logic machines, computers. The combination of these two particular features allows the Internet to combine the relative benefits of previous existing media. The Internet has the capacity for visual display equal to film and television. It has the capacity for depth of content equal to printed material. It has the capacity of communication equal to the telephone, it has the durability of the written letter, the distributivity of the printing press. In fact the only features in which other information and communications technology seem to maintain an edge – and for how long this is not certain – is the comfort associated with film, (especially compared to the eye strain caused by the CRT monitor) and the excellent portability of the mobile telephone.
The sudden change of relative social importance of the Internet can be based on three factors. Firstly, it has become possible due to a critical point being reached in the development of communications and computer technology hardware and supporting software. Previously computer use was an area with a modicum of expertise – it at least took someone with the skills of a interested young adult to navigate a command-line interface. The introduction of the Graphic User Interface had made Internet and computer usage as simple as other electronic media such as radio and television, if not simpler. The second significant factor has been enhancements in the telecommunications infrastructure. For many years, Internet communications has been limited by modulation and demodulation standards. The past decade has seen the introduction of Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), T-1 and T-3 leased lines, cable TV “modems”, and Digital Subscriber Lines. Thirdly, the institutional and systematic change to the Internet which saw a move from the network being primarily orientated towards academic or military use to a the general public in a commercial framework.
The changes in the computerized technical forces of production show no immediate sign of slowing down. In 1965, George Moore noted a structural function to the development of computer hardware – roughly every eighteen to twenty four months a new processor would be relased that would have roughly twice the capacity of the previous one. It has since been noted that the same equation, now known as Moore's Law, also applies to memory and disk storage and remained fairly consistent over time.
As the distribution map below shows, Internet hosts are however primarily distributed through the technologically advanced nations, both on an absolute level and a per capita basis. Even if over two hundred nations are now connected, any attempt to conduct realistic sociological or cultural studies of the Internet must remain sensitive to this particular bias, this particular reflection of the distribution of global wealth and technology. In January 1991, the United States and Canada make up 42.9% of total Internet hosts, the European Union nations contributed a further 28.7% and Japan 8.5%. Despite it’s relatively minuscule contribution to world population, Australia managed 2.2% of the total world hosts.
[D. Piazolo, Multilateral and European Responses to E-Commerce, European Integration online Papers, Vol 5, No 4, 2001 http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/eiop/texte/2001-004t.htm]
Fig 1. Host Map of the Internet, July 1999 [http://www.mids.org/mmq/603/big/intrworld.html]
For many years academic research on the Internet remained the near exclusive domain of computer and communications technology experts. Not surprisingly, as the Internet became more of a social fact than a technological artifact, the number of commentaries increased proportionally. In 1991 there was only 27 electronic journals. Between 1994 and 1995 this total grew to 305 and in 2001 to over 10,000. As a pseudo-geographic site, a "virtual reality", the Internet provides the most significant example of computer-mediated communication and information. Due to the range and complexity of services available, the Internet provides the data for detailed structural analysis. "Cyber-culture", heavily resourced by the Internet, has proven to be a topic of great interest to cultural anthropology.
[R. Henshaw, What Next for Internet Journals? Implications of the Trend Towards Paid Placement in Search Engines, First Monday, Volume 6, Number 9, 2001, University of Illionios, Chicago http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_9/henshaw/]
The emergence of the Internet as a topic to the general public has led to a plethora of related literature, of which the most significant and durable are reviewed in this study. Even at this stage it is clear that current and future significance is subject to contextual distortion, rash promises and the merging of fiction with fact. Particular care has been taken in this study to demarcate the real, the possible, the probable and the utopian and dystopian fantasies – which of course, each have particular relevance in their own right and a particular relevance to social theory. Because any theory of society in general, or a particular aspect of the social world, must take into account and carefully demarcate the material and institutional reality that social relationships are formed in, the particular norms, values, regulations and symbolic representations of the social world and, of course the expression of desires and fears by the participants. It is simply far too easy, and far too superficial, to write a text that is orientated towards populist expectations , erroneous conventional wisdom and technical mistakes. This is particularly the case with multi-disciplinary topics such as this.
In terms of the network's fictional memes, they have been admirably extrapolated via cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction, whose dramatic entry in was marked by William Gibson's 'Neuromancer' winning the Hugo, Phillip K. Dick, and Nebula awards, the three most prestigious prizes in that literature, something which no other novel had achieved. This dystopic, near-future science fiction presents a hypothetical network in the form of "cyberspace". "A consensual hallucination", where the beauty of a purely mathematical and euclidian environment with outerbody sensory experiences, stands in stark contrast to a bleak, polluted, and corrupt real world. Not only are metaphysical implications of such an alternative universe worthy of consideration, but also the proposed social and environmental trajectory.
Whilst origins and precursors of any social fact come with problems of interpretation, it is generally accepted that the impetus for the Internet came with designs originating in the space race and the cold-war tensions of the 1950s. Following the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union, the United States of America, fearful of falling behind in scientific and technological prowress, established the Advanced Projects Agency within the Department of Defense. In the early to mid-1960s several papers were written that were essential for the network's creation. In 1961, Kleinrock at M.I.T. wrote the first paper on packet-switching. Lickler and Clark, also at M.I.T. discussed the possibility of a “galatic communications network” in 1962. In 1964, Baran of RAND Corporation worte the influential “On Distributed Communications”, which suggested the use of a decentralized network for packet-switching networks.
[The respective three papers can found at:
http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/LK/Bib/REPORT/PhD/
http://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/SRC/research-reports/abstracts/src-rr-061.html
http://www.rand.org/publications/RM/baran.list.html]
[edit: Internet and the cold war paragraph]
The generally accepted birthday of the Internet was August 30 1969, when the first node for the APRANET became operational at UCLA. The first connection with another system was October 1 Stanford Research Institute, with the University of California Santa Barbara campus joining in on the 1st of November and the University of Utah in December. The first international connections occured in 1973 - with the University College of London (United Kingdom) via NOSAR (Norway). The first mailing list was established in 1975 - with the unofficial SF-lovers (for science fiction fans) proving to be most popular. In 1979, the Internet public mailing lists, usenet, was introduced as were Multi-User Domains and emoticolons.
In 1983, the network changed protocol from the previous Network Control Protocl NCP to the Transmissions Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), designed by Vince Cerf and Bob Kahn. Also in 1983 the military section of APRANET split off, to become MILNET. The 1980s would prove to be a decade for rapid network expansion in the academic world, with the establishment of the European Academic and Research Network (EARN), the “Because It's Time Network” (BITNET), JANET (Joint Academic Network) in the United Kingdom and most importantly, the establishment of the powerful National Science Foundational Network (NSFNET), which, through a backbone bandwidth of 56kbps and five major computer centres, lead to an explosion of Internet usage throughout academic institutions, particularly in the United States of America.
The 1990's proved to a peroid of commercialization of the Internet. In 1990 APRANET closed down, with it's role effectively taken over by NSFNET. The following year, Tim Berners-Lee released through CERN the World Wide Web and in the same year Paul Zimmerman developed PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). In 1994, the U.S.A. law firm Canter & Seigel “spammed” usenet and email advertising “greed card” lottery services and thus established a whole new world of junk-mail. 1994 was also the year that .com domains became the most prominent. In 1998 the U.S.A. government privitized it's management of the Domain Name System through an agreement reached with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers (ICANN).
Most populist and academic studies of the Internet from a social sciences or humanities background pay scant attention to the technological facts, the history or institutional status of the Internet. The preference seems to lie in future hypotheses or psychoanlaytic interpretations of the “hidden meanings” behind user-interfaces and useage or related fictional texts. In contrast, this inquiry will dedicate the chapters following in an attempt to provide serious understanding and grounding in the concepts and the reality that makes up the Internet in a manner that is socially and politically useful. As such following this preliminary chapter, an attempt is made to define 'Social Theory' in a manner that both differentiates it from other disciplinary approaches and notes points of relevant connection. In particular the neo-Kantian theoretical approach of Jūrgen Habermas' formal pragmatics and rationalization complexes is utilized along with practical reasoning and political interest in human emancipation that is encapsulated in the works of Hannah Arendt.
[Jurgen Habermas, On The Pragmatics of Communication, MIT Press, 1998
Hannah Arendt, On Totalitarianism, Harcourt Brace and Co, FP 1951]
To provide an initial explanation, Habermas engages in one of the most rigorous theoretical elaborations of social philosophy – and this is no exaggeration – to develop two complementary ideas. First, is the notion of formal pragmatics which suggests that in an ideal speech situation any speech-act may be rationally verified or validated according to it's orientation and it's world relations, which combined make up a “rationalization complex”. By orientation what is meant is whether the speech-act is to be evaluated according to constantives, regulatives, or expressives. In otherwords, the project includes harkens back to the ancient Hellenic triad of “truth, justice and beauty”. At the same time, Habermas notes the existence of multiple world relations, such as the physical world, the social world and the individual world. When combined with orientations, the arising complex elucidates it's own pragmatic and rational boundaries which are embedded in speech itself.
Whilst formal pragmatics represents Habermas' rationalist side, this is according to the new form of rationality derived from the “linguistic turn” in social philosophy which claims that meaning and understanding of symbolic values such as language, as due to a consensus between participants. However, Habermas is a sufficient political realist to recognise that not all of communication is based between the free participation of all parties engaged in a cooperative search for the truth, i.e., communicative action. It is claimed however that this is the foundation of social solidarity, a background consensus that exists in the lifeworld of everyday existence, but is constantly challenged by strategic incursions of the administrative and political system and deception within the lifeworld itself. Habermas' theory of communicative action takes great pains to elaborate how other means of communication and action, whilst providing sectional benefits to particular individuals, threaten the social and even mental integrity of members of the species (sociopathological and psychopathological behaviour).
In contrast to the theoretical justifications for human emancipation that one can rationally ground through Habermas, the political commentaries of Hannah Arendt provide a different purpose. Arendt never provided a systematic political philosophy concentrating on the more phenemonological concerns of experience itself. Thus one finds interests in striking differences – totalitarianism, revolution, “the banality of evil”, work, action and labor, the fragility of civilization and so forth. Indeed, one is excused for thinking there is consistent thread at all, but this is not the case. Arendt, through her experiences, is an advocate of politcial involement and philosophical thougtht as a means of protecting the world from the possibility of totalitarianism, which is noted in both reactionary and revolutionary approaches to modernity. Arendt located totalitarian systems , which she considered a new form of government that arise from the twentieth century dislocations of the First World War, the Russian revolution and the Great Depression and, most importantly, to the structural transformation of the public sphere whereby exclusive class-stratification embodied in the bourgeoisie overwhelmed the democratic and egalitarian notions of the citoyen.
Whilst the political concerns of totalitarianism and freedom are dominant in Arendt's works, an examination of the political realm and the public sphere provides motivational justification for involvement in politics. Through an analysis of totalitarianism, huge sections of modern society seem to be eager to give up civic involvement and responsbilities – in other words, they've stopped thinking. Freedom from politics and social functionalism become the norm for example in the United States of America, whereas in Europe, politics is reduced to the administration of the necessities of life. In both cases, the public realm and public discourse is in serious trouble. The inclusion of Arendt in this study is timely – as theoretical justification is provided for utilization of the new communications technology in a public sphere that has become dominated by commercial and sectional interests.
[Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action (2 Volumes, Beacon Press, Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 1958]
Whilst Habermas' theory of communicative action and Arendt motivational involvement in the public sphere provide the most important social theoretical perspectives in the study they are by no means the sole source of consideration. The conventional wisdom of the “radical centre” of politics, neoliberalism, is also part of the discussion as is the careful, analytic approach of neofunctionalism and the nascent sociology and cultural anthropology of post-structuralism and post-modernism. Whilst the theoretical shortcomings of these social philosophers can be elucidated by the critical theories of Habermas and Arendt, their careful consideration in the contemporary context is necessary.
Following this review of social theory the study moves to an overview of the Internet as a technological artefact, a institutional body and a cultural history. Whilst the technological and systematic facts that make up the Internet are fascinating in their own right, they have been significantly truncuated for the purposes of this study which provides but a necessary and sufficient understanding on the basic concepts with notable elaborations that provide grounding for the critical issues that are examined in Section III. This is also the case for the studies on the institutional bodies that make up the Internet and the cultural history, the latter of which has been the subject of several complete studies already. [EDIT] The aim here is to not to replicate a technical, historical or institutional study of the Internet in these instances, but provide sufficient information to establish the Internet in a socially scientific manner. If one likes, this first Part of the thesis has a analytical and objectivating orientation.
The second Section of the thesis deals with a review of significant literature and developing appropriate methodologies for such a review. In doing so an analytic and conceptual differentiation is made between the Internet as a technological artefact, the Internet as a social environment, and the Internet as a fictional narrative. These are respectively entitled 'Virtual Reality', 'Virtual Community' and 'Cyberpunk Science Fiction'. These literature reviews are grounded in methodologies based on phenomenology, cultural anthropology and literary psychoanalysis. In particular the methodology used for the phenomenology of technology is the works of Martin Heidegger, Lewis Mumford and Don Ihde (the latter, as elaborated by Zoe Sofia). In terms of cultural anthrology, methodological resources are derived from Claude Levi-Strauss, Clifford Geertz, and Pierre Boudieu. Finally, in terms of literary psychoanalysis significant and contemporary material to understand the spirit of the age comes from Jacques Derrida, Frederic Jameson, and Judith Butler. These methodologies are not, of course, particular to social theory. Rather, they are interdisciplinary and at times may even seem quite tangential to the subject of the Internet itself. However, the purpose of this Part is not to engage in a systematic examination of the Internet, but rather to elucidate the contemporary experiences between the relationship of human beings, human society and the new technologies.
The choice of literature reviewed is, of course, subject to significant subjectivity. No doubt particular readers will object to the inclusion of some texts and the exclusion of others. The justification for the texts chosen comes down to the attempt to balance the competing requirements of popularity, significance, depth and influence. Numerous additional texts were of course reviewed without being included in this study for perceived failures and inadequacies or, more commonly, simply inappropriateness.
Section III of the thesis moves on to the systematic and institutional “critical issues” of the Internet. The term and the orientation is carefully considered. Rather than taking a thematic approach to the problems of modern communications technology, such as evident in Manuel Castells' three volume “The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture” (which is of course a wealth of information in it's own right), where issues such as “globalization”, “identity” and “the space of flows” are given priority, this study is orientated towards more exacting instances of political experience and institutional analysis; this is “A Social Theory of the Internet”, not “A Social Theory of the Information Age”. Specifically, this inquiry has particular concerns with issues relating to content censorship, data security and fraud, pedagogy and the formation of public opinion, technical standards and institutional status and issues related to universal accessibility.
[The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. I M. Castells (1996). Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell
The Power of Identity, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. II. M. Castells (1997). Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell
The End of the Millennium, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. III. M. Castells (1997). Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell]
It is the role of 'A Social Theory of the Internet' to review these issues, apply an appropriate methodology, and provide recommendations and commentaries for their solution. The validity of such claims is dependent on consistent research results across the disciplines relating to social inquiry. In other words the various 'opinions' relating to the Internet need to be evaluated in order to propose not necessarily the most popular or politically expedient position, but rather the ones which are most rational, most functional, most orientated towards human emancipation, the universal democratic interest, rather than the interest of sectional politics.
The phrase “critical” can be understood in three ways. Firstly, it represents an oppositional position, developed through thorough exposure of the conventional wisdom and norms that govern the Internet. Secondly, it is related to the term “crisis”, analogously represented in biology where, independent of the will of the subject or subjects, an individual lifesystem or ecosystem is confronted with the possibility of termination. Likewise in literature, the term represents a dramatic moment of the narrative, where the competing interests of characters comes to a head, where central themes gain their greatest exposure and motif is most prominent. Finally, “critical” also implies the use of “critique” that is, thorough examination with view to providing an alternative to noted problems. It is the inclusion of critique that allows critical theory to be more than axiomatically negative, but rather reconstructive whilst engaging in negation.
With regards to the Internet, the particular instances are considered “critical” to what is happening with the Internet. The resolution of these instances is perceived as fundamental to the operation of the Internet in a social sense. The choice of these particular issues, and the examples within each section , arises from a careful deliberation which has emphasised the need for the topic to be one that arises through the political and institutional system rather than structures of culture and identity – the functional orientation here is to change the system so that the lifeworld of culture and identity formation can develop it's own structures. Additionally, the topics must expose the stress limits of existing legal norms and a conflict between the possibilities offered by the technology and current framework of operations. Finally, the issues selected represent recurring problems there are identified as such by Internet community and it's reviewers.
Each of the critical issues of the Internet bridge the gap between what is entirely an online consideration and could be solved within the Internet communities themselves, and the systematic and institutional relations of societies in general. The introduction of any new technology of course, brings new tensions to the existing institutional system and laws, but the internationality, expansiveness and widespread useage of the Internet, along with the fact that it is a communications technology, provides very significant challenges to institutional and legal systems which are more used to dealing with less democratic and more manageable technologies and user behaviour. Despite widespread administrative power, legalislative bodies find themselves dealing with a technological medium that accepts individual autonomy and anarchy not just as an ideal, but is actually inbuilt to the technological protocols itself (as will be shown later in this section). Many undoubtably are profoundly uncomfortable with such a prospect, not to mention the political lobby groups opposed to such libertarian principles.
The first critical issue examined is content censorship. Apart from providing a brief definition and some historical examples of censorship, the key Internet case studies refer to censorship of the communications medium in religious societies, the application of sedition laws in developing countries (both capitalist and socialist), various anti-erotica legislation in developed nations and examples of racial vilification legislation in advanced developed nations. The conclusion of this section tries to take into account the difference in the mode of consciousness between religious and secular societies, the tension between system stability and mass loyalty, the question of the phenomenology of perception and media influence and finally, the tensions between freedom of speech and responsibility of speech. The question posed for social theory in this instance is what consitutes freedom of expression, and what tensions arise in society by it's implementation and curtailment.
The second critical issue comes under the seemingly unusual name of data security and fraud. Following the definition and historical examples, the Internet case studies refer to examples of Internet fraud in and by the corporate sector, attempts by governments to curtail the development and distribution of encryption software, and breaches of data security systems through hacking, cracking and phreaking. And in particular so-called software piracy. In an attempt to provide recommendations for these issues, this study considers the legal status and rights of “artificial persons” with regards to “natural persons”, commerical confidence versus an open society. The key question for social theory pose din this instance is the demarcation and tensions between individual privacy and democratic institutions and the economics of information.
Following this, the next perceived critical issue relates to pedagogy and the formation of public opinion. In a sense, this section is partially pre-emptive. The crisis of relevance in the education section and particularly the teaching of contemporary communications technology is yet to become completely evident. Nevertheless, as this section will show, serious tensions exist between the structural inclinations of the new technology and the way that pedagogy and public opinion formation occurs. The specific examples given – once again, following a definitional and historical subsection – include conflicts between the “traditional” media and “new” media, corporatisation of education by information technology companies and an examination in experiements of electronic democracy. In evaluating these key issues concerns are raised about conflict between knowledge and power, the distinction between training and teaching and the practical implementation of democratic systems.
The fourth critical issue examined is the technical standards and institutional status of the Internet itself. In this instance the definition and historical examples note a particular connection between the two, which is tied to notions of public interest, economic efficiency, professional independennce and mor recently, international co-operation. The case studies examined however show that these orientations are a grave risk. Not only are international standards authorities that govern the Internet subject to new levels of commerical pressures, including those incurred by monopolitsic and proprietory software systems, the actual governance itself in indicative of political control and cultural domination by the United States of America. In the first instance, concerns are raised of the capacity of the commercial sector, motivated by profit orientation and lacking competition can provide standards in the public interest. In the second, and institutional sense, the contex of a post-cold war world with a single superpower and the new realignment of the international balance is evaluated. In this examination of the basic technical and administrative infrastructure of the Internet, the concerns of public versus sectional benefit and globalization versus internationalization becomes evident.
The final critical issue of the Internet examined in this study comes under the title of “Universal Access and the Disconnected”. Serving an a challenge to the more utopian claims of the Internet as a universal and global communications medium of equality, the definition and historical examples subsection looks at the implementation of systematic differentation and structural discrimination. Within the Internet case studies, empirical and interpretative evidence questions the universality of access along the dimensions of physical limitations, gendered distortions and the international socio-economic order. This subsection thus brings into question the substantive notion of democracy, rather than the formal notion and raises the issue of the distribution of communications technology as a precondition for a genuinely democracy society. As a contribution to social theory, the subsections brings the topic of the Internet back into the real world by elucidating the dysfunctional uneven development and distribution of the economic and technological requirements for a civilized life.
If the significance of the Internet is correctly understood, the resolution of these issues will also critically affect the trajectory of modern nation states - with of course, noted differences between advanced capitalist, state socialist, developing states and those para-traditional states that are uncomfortably situated with both modern technology and institutionally embodied religion. In other words, the introduction of the Internet as a technological device, as a force of production, has led to new tensions in the relations of production. These tensions appear in the mode of consciousness, the institutional means of social differentiation and in the means of production. The oft-quoted “Preface to Marx's 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” has new and particular relevance:
“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or -µ this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms - with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution.”
[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Marx, Karl “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” FP: 1859]
To be sure, the Internet is but one component of the general forces of production – it represents the means of the communication. But the significance of this qualitative change from print to electronic media is not to be underestimated. Likewise, it occurs alongside the computerization of other forces of production, such as robotics, itself and elaboration of industrialization. Further, some cultural theorists such as Shirley Turkle, have advocated that the Internet provides new means of identity formation, that correlates with the notion of “decentering” the dominant mode of consciousness, as elaborated by Frederic Jameson. Whilst the significance of this change of the mode of consciousness is yet to to be fully elaborated the initial evidence is compelling.
[Shirley Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, 1995]
[Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Verso, 1991]
Thus, the final and fourth Section of this study engages in elboration of the topic from a social theory of the Internet, to a general sketch of the role of communications technology and democratic systems in contributing large scale social transformation with particular note of the works of Harold Innis, who first proposed a theory of determination of social formations from the forces of communication. At first this discussion revolves around competing theories in the transition from traditional to modern society. Following this a reexamination of the terms 'modernity' vis-a-vis 'postmodernity' is provided with specific qualitative social structural content provided to social formations, including future prospects. Of course, providing qualitative structural content to a future social formation does, of course, require further elaboration and far beyond what the initial sketch here can provide. Nevertheless, with what is provided a political orientation, a strategic programmes that accounts for the new social forces and possibilities. This serves as concluding comments to the study in recognition that not just the Internet, but all of the political and institutional world is contested territory where the forces of competing sectional and totalitarian interests can only be resolved by the co-operative, universalistic and democratic.
[Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication, 1951]
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