Eva,
You wrote,
>
> And conversing to you Martins within "earshot" of you all, I'm in the
> Network Way much closer to YOU, than to the neighbour on the next floor,
> whose footsteps I can hear right now through my ceiling (think s/he is
> vacuumcleaning).
>
and this is precisely the point.
You might have never known either of the Martins or numerous others that you
have met on xmca were it not for (1) the existence of the internet and (2)
your common interest in CHAT.
My point is that the internet affords a framework for the communication of
people sharing interests, a framework (tool) that was previously quite
restricted, much more cumbersome, and with respect to people who were not
already organized into associations based on those interests, often so
improbable as to be considered effectively impossible.
Following on the stats concerning the growth of the international working
class--what happens when the internet, together with the globalization of
capital and the consequent strengthening of internationalist tendencies of
all kinds, permits the working class organizations and all others who share
common antagonisms with the process of capitalist globalization, a framework
within which not only to articulate and discuss the issues of common
exploitation, but also to organize collective actions, such as the Seattle
demonstrations against the WTO (which, in the words of one organizer, was
made possible by cell phones and the internet). What happens when these
coordinated actions become as precisely targeted as say, the UPS strike in
the US several years ago. That power is awesome when you think about
it--and of course there are arguments as to why things won't move in this
direction, but as we've all probably been told, bumble bees shouldn't be
able to fly either.
I think an initial struggle will come to revolve around extending and
keeping true internet access open to the millions who will be brought online
as a result of the merger of TV and internet technologies, that is, a
struggle to ensure that the internet isn't canalized into closed circuits
whose content is controlled by the corporations, the state, etc., say the
way AOL was in the 80s before it was almost destroyed as a consequence of
the development of Mosaic and the WWW.
Paul H. Dillon
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Feb 01 2000 - 01:02:27 PST