From: CTHEORY EDITORS [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 6:23 PM
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Subject: Article 103- Let Them Eat IT
_____________________________________________________________________
CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 25, NOS 1-2
*** Visit CTHEORY Online: http://www.ctheory.net ***
Article 103 16/01/02 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
_____________________________________________________________________
Let Them Eat IT:
The Myth of the Global Village as an Interactive Utopia
=======================================================
~Songok Han Thornton~
Marshall McLuhan's vision of the "global village" had a Second Coming
with the internet surge of the 1990s. There is sharply divided
opinion, however, on the question of McLuhan's broader relevance to
the cultural morphology of our times.[1] It is easy enough to agree
with McLuhan that high tech vastly extends our senses.[2] But his
suggestion that this development liquidates spatial boundaries[3]--
and thus belongs to humanity, not just to the world's elites--is far
more controversial.[4] Some doubt that the New Economy edition of
McLuhan's medium-is-the-message technologism can survive the collapse
of America's economic bubble. Others wonder how long the global
village myth can be sustained in the face of a widening gap between
rich and poor nations, and between the rich and poor inside those
nations. Bruce Scott foresees more of a global gated community than a
global village.[5]
Oddly, most "new villagers" seem oblivious to the fact that their
virtual community is under siege. They admit it, if at all, only
obliquely. Witness the subtle retreat of Michael Lewis from the pure
celebratory hype of _The New New Thing_ (1999) to the rearguard
euphoria of _Next: The Future Just Happened_ (2001). In the latter,
as James Fallows notes, Lewis is forced to make a contrarian case for
why the internet still matters.[6]
Meanwhile McLuhanism continues to inspire a stream of glowing
manifestoes. Works such as John Seely Brown's _The Social Life of
Information_ (2000) keep the music playing. Orthodox icons of this
genre, such as Nicholas Negroponte's _Being Digital_ (1995) and
Lawrence Grossman's _The Electronic Republic_ (1995), are still in
vogue. Their born- again McLuhanism envisions an online community
where people can realize control over their government and social
world as well as their consumer choices.[7] This is the cultural
revolution that Esther Dyson et al. attribute to the information
revolution. It marks a shift from a culture of mass production and
mass mediation to one of customized knowledge and demassified
engagement, not to mention flexible production for a fast-changing
market.[8]
Dick Morris, in Vote.com, elaborates the politics of this putative
shift. Just as the Net empowers individuals by eliminating commercial
intermediaries such as travel agents and stock brokers, Morris
expects the individual citizen to profit politically.[9] During the
last presidential campaign, for example, John McCain established a
highly effective website address for donations. Small contributions
poured in, finally reaching about $3 million per week. Some see this
direct approach to campaign funding as the start of a whole new
politics. While the Dyson group looks on this digital revolution as a
new American frontier, Andrew Murphie stresses its global reach.[10]
Not to miss a good bandwagon, Al Gore speaks of a "Net effect" that
is already linking "the world's people" in a vast informational
exchange.[11]
That very linkage, however, puts the ethical and political status of
the global village in serious doubt. African intellectuals have been
quick to note that most of the world's six billion people do not even
have access to telephones, much less computers.[12] Whereas free
market liberals tend to see IT as force of global harmony, Robert
Manning foresees nations coalescing around regional economic and
currency zones--that of the dollar, the euro and the yen-RMB.
Regional and sub-regional trade agreements are taking shape in the
absence of global leadership, and sometimes as a reaction to
U.S.-dominated economic globalization. With rare exceptions,
informational globalization serves that same cause.
Manning calls this the Pogo problem: "we have met the enemy, and he
is us."[13] But there are other reasons for this refractory turn of
events--the biggest one being the instability that results from the
world's growing inequality. Neoliberals and free market globalists
fail to face the widening gap between the glittering wealth of
transnational corporations and the poverty suffered by a third of the
world's population. Presently three billion people--nearly half the
world's population--live on less than $2 a day, while another 1.2
billion live on less than $1. 15% of Chinese and 40% of South Asians
are among the poorest of the poor.[14]
The sad truth is that the would-be Global Village is in fact part of
this problem. The global distribution of IT is grossly uneven, making
for what has come to be called the digital divide. Recently the Group
of 8 addressed this growing disparity between the informational rich
and poor.[15] There has been much talk of turning this growing divide
into a "digital opportunity," and it must be noted that some private
nonprofit groups have taken steps in that direction. For instance,
American Assistance for Cambodia is trying to establish a permanent
Internet bridgehead through schools in northern central Cambodia, in
an attempt to reverse the communal destruction of urbanization.[16]
Africa Online, an East African company in Nairobi, works with eight
countries to provide Internet connections for people who currently
lack phones.[17] Meanwhile AT&T in Alaska is selling the Net to
Alaskan Native villages,[18] and 170 million Brazilians are currently
being "netted."[19]
Such efforts will not close the global divide, but at least it can be
said that they dwell (on however small a scale) in the realm of the
possible. Global Villagism, by contrast, enters the realm of science
fiction with Nicholas Negroponte's proposed "virtual" remedy for the
problem of inter-city homelessness: give each homeless person a
laptop computer![20] No one who even dimly comprehends the meaning of
hunger or homelessness could advocate such a "let them eat IT"
solution. Even Bill Gates is becoming skeptical of easy
techno-solutions to problems such as illiteracy, poverty, and a lack
of minimum health care.[21] Nor can the Internet be expected to "put
an end to war."[22] Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems,
believes that IT developments in genetics, nanotechnology, and
robotics (GNR) could make an already dangerous world even more
perilous.[23] What is certain, for better or worse, is that the Net
is profoundly changing our lives. Dana Blankerhorn notes a growing
tension between the winners and losers of the high-tech New
Economy,[24] which can no longer be viewed as an unambiguous
savior.[25]
Like the negative and positive effects of other forms of
globalization, computer-based technoculture has its progressive and
regressive sides, as highlighted by William Mitchell's _E-Topia_
and Douglas Rushkoff's _Coercion_, respectively. While IBM sells
computer literacy in its "solution for a small planet" campaign,[26]
others celebrate this Web "revolution from above" as a path to a
futuristic society with "more work, more economic growth, more
environmental protection and more democracy."[27] Rushkoff, by
contrast, argues that "cyberspace is turning into yet another venue
in which consumption takes precedence over communication."[28]
Contrary to his previous advocacy of the digital revolution,
Rushkoff now warns that the Web can better be described as a
marketing dream come true: a place where marketers can identify
users, but users cannot recognize each other.
In opposition to this "Big Brotherism,"[29] Rushkoff seeks the
"rehabilitation of all the human values undermined by scientific
salesmanship and obsessive consumerism."[30] He seeks, that is,
community as opposed to commodity, and social communion as opposed to
alienation. Amitai Etzioni--who likewise stresses the moral
prerequisites of a good society and decries consumer "me-ism"[31]--is
skeptical of communities built around Internet connections.[32] By
reminding us of what real community entails, Rushkoff and Etzioni
cast serious doubt on the possibility of an online "third place" or
"virtual community," as advocated by Ray Oldenburg, Richard Goodwin,
and Howard Rheingold.[33]
Similarly, Anthony Spina laments the decline of geographically based
live communities, which the Net can never adequately replace.[34] To
Spina, a community is "a group of people who are different yet
interdependent and are bound together by a common set of
responsibilities."[35] By contrast, a lifestyle enclave on the Net is
"a group of people who choose to be together because they share some
common dimension of importance, such as professional status or
preferred leisure activity. Whereas public, informal gathering places
bring together a wide variety of individuals to share a common space,
lifestyle enclaves are segmented and tend to encourage the narcissism
of similarity."[36]
In _Internet and Society_ (2000), Norman Nie and Lutz Erbring report
that increased Internet usage results in decreased community
activities.[37] This is understandable in view of Thomas Valovic's
charge in Digital Mythologies (2000) that the average American
devotes eight to eleven hours per day to TV and/or PC tube-time.[38]
The new "digitalitis," to coin a term, is creating the social
isolation that it is said to overcome. Cyberhoods and virtual
communities spell the death of real communities.
What, it may be asked, is their effect on the geography of economic
life? We know that IT has already reshaped much of the cultural and
economic landscape of major cities. By the early 1990s, IT-related
economic growth, in enclaves like the Silicon Valley, as well as the
San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys, were more suburban than
urban.[39] Many of these "midopolises" were custom-made for
"nerdistans" who embraced the ethos of IT entrepreneurialism[40] even
as they thought of themselves as progressive-minded.
It was only a matter of time before that balancing act collapsed. The
downturn of the New Economy put this IT avant-garde on a collision
course with the historic cultures of the regions they occupied. That
collision amounts to a fall from grace in terms of the reigning
ideology of the digital revolution. To understand this fall it is
necessary to grasp how the IT ideology was sold to the general
public. Not only was it packaged as the prime mover of the New
Economy, but also as a democratic distributor of the New Economy's
gains.
Thomas Frank, in _One Market Under God_, tells how IT was powerfully
applied as a weapon in the making of market populism. This is the
belief that "market forces, if left scrupulously untouched by
regulators and unions, would automatically act out the people's
will."[41] Believers in market populism see the logic of the market
as "a functional equivalent of democracy."[42] People like George
Gilder and Kevin Kelly hold that computers and the Internet transfer
power to the common man,[43] so that we the people "choose" the
colors of everything. Kelly believes a "new spiritualism" will be
required to inaugurate "network economics." Here the word "spiritual"
connotes an ideological leap of faith.[44] The Internet becomes a
cosmic affirmation of the principles of market populism--a vision of
"laissez-faire incarnate"[45]--this at a time when only 20 percent of
American families have been reaping large increases in income and the
number of personal bankruptcies is eight times higher than in the
Great Depression.[46]
Likewise, Gilder's _Microcosm_ welds the computer inextricably to
free market ideology.[47] His law of the microcosm ordains that all
hierarchies will vanish: "'Rather than pushing decisions up through
the hierarchy, the power of microelectronics pulls them remorselessly
down to the individual.'"[48] In _Life After Television_ he turns his
populist revolt against the government and "all forms tyranny,"
including all cultural hierarchies.[49]
The market populism that began with Gilder reached a peak with Jon
Katz's distinction between "digital citizens" and "intellectual
elites." The former put their faith in business and technology while
embracing online trading as their "long-awaited market populist
messiah;"[50] whereas the elites, in Katz's view, operate like
Kremlin communists.[51] Conversely, Frank argues that the Web, far
from liberating its users from hierarchy, simply blurs "the line
between the People and corporate America."[52] Against the
egalitarian claims of Kevin Kelly's all-embracing Netism, in _New
Rules for the New Economy_ (1998), Frank contends that the Internet's
"connexity" (a reference to Geoff Mulgan's book _Connexity_) is a
place where "the leftist dreams of yore" have been co-opted as the
silent partner of New Economy ideology.[53] Like Michael Roberts, who
views IT as a new centralizing power,[54] Frank sees Netism as a wolf
in sheep's clothing.
Leo Marx cautions that despite its pivotal role in the global
economy, with its instantaneous financial transactions and its
powerful impact on global popular culture, IT is also contributing to
corporate "downsizing" throughout the world. Marx is doubtful that IT
can "fix" the afflictions of social and economic injustice.[55] On
the cultural front, Roger Rollin holds that the IT effect, far from
being liberating, is part of a general "Americanization" or
"McDonalization."[56] The resulting global village is none other than
an updated and vastly expanded version of the old "culture industry."
Popular culture theory has been too fast in dismissing Frankfurt
School concerns of the past. The myth of the global village is an
ideological subterfuge that camouflages the real social impact of the
IT culture industry.
While "global" perspectives are permitted on the side of IT
promotion, they are prohibited on the side of critical theory. Gianni
Vatimo notes that the rise of telematic communication, such as TV and
the Internet, has been instrumental in dissolving the centralized
perspectives that Lyotard calls "grand narrative."[57] Reality no
longer possesses depth. As seen in the case of the O. J. Simpson
trial, "'... everything becomes ... exposed in the raw and inexorable
light of information and communication.'"[58] Oppositional politics
has no place in this mediated world of commodities and
spectacles.[59]
Carl Boggs doubts that the IT infrastructure can empower ordinary
people. Does it counter "the demobilizing ethos of antipolitics?"[60]
Contrary to the high-tech optimism of Alvin and Heidi Toffler, who
put their faith in IT democratization, Boggs recognizes that the most
lucrative enterprises of the twenty-first century will be in the
hands of global communications megacorporations such as Disney/ABC,
Microsoft, IBM, Apple, AOL-Time Warner, Bell Atlantic and AT&T. By
the late 1990s, these entities controlled more than $5 trillion in
assets.[61] Boggs concludes that there is "no corporate democracy or
citizenship in any meaningful sense."[62] Multinationals amass their
economic and political power at the expense of local government and
democracy as such. The global village, in short, operates at the
expense of real communities.
Recent mega-mergers must be understood in this revised IT context.
James Fallows argues that the current Time Warner-AT&T alliance
reveals the monopolistic direction of Internet politics and culture.
In the hands of giant media companies, "news" is becoming an
entertainment-based and dumbed-down commodity.[63] The Web is more
and more incorporated under brand names "that are linked to the major
players of the global media market."[64]
The interactive and culturally dialogic image of the Web has no place
here. In opposition to McLuhan's vision of the global village as a
"retribalization of culture," Eugene Goodheart argues that global
dialogue is at best a fantasy in this time of ethnic and national
conflict.[65] Likewise Bryan Turner, an increasingly disenchanted
"cosmopolitan," questions the optimism of early theories of
electronic democracy. Recent political thought, he notes, registers
the pressures of ethnic conflict and the inescapable particularity of
communal solidarity.[66] Where does that put the "America on Line"
version of mass democracy? Public opinion polling, its main
instrument, is in James Fishkin's view a fraudulent product. In the
absence of real, face-to-face debate, the public gives flippant,
off-the-cuff responses[67] to questions that once again are "pushed"
rather than "pulled," to use the argot of pro-Web magazines such as
_Wired_ and _Fast Company_.
If the Net fails to produce a virtual community at the national
level, it all the more fails on a world scale. The idea of a "global
village" is a geocultural misnomer. The Web is controlled and
populated by First World nations[68] that "push" information and
values onto an all too receptive periphery. As Herbert Schiller and
Cees Hamelink argue, this global imbalance is widening.[69] Indeed,
within the geocultural core there is another kind of "push" taking
place: that of blatant Americanization.
The French reaction against cultural centrism has drawn them into an
ad hoc coalition with First World anti-globalists and Third World
activists at demonstrations from Seattle to Genoa. And increasingly
they have mounted legal resistance as well. Recently a French court
ruled against Yahoo for selling pro-Nazi materials on the Web.
Essentially this ruling said "no" to the ACLU concept of anything
goes liberalism. Americans cannot seem to comprehend the good reasons
(such as memories of Nazi occupation) that might impel other
countries to think differently. Thus the Net is frozen in a single
liberal mode. But most egregiously it is driven by the "push" of
commercial interest as opposed to the "pull" of cultural
pluralism.
To be sure, a reaction is mounting against this digital hegemony. As
Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig points out, the
U.S. has tried for 50 years to export its values along with its
products, but ultimately "the rest of the world didn't buy it."[70]
There are many models of freedom, and not all of them consider
liberty best protected where Nazism is given unrestricted voice. Nor
do they think respect for individualism is best served by the kind of
freedom that fosters child pornography. There is growing awareness
that the values associated with America's New Economy--an "anything
goes" blend of neoliberalism and neolibertinism--have been grossly
oversold in the name of globalization.
This ideology trades on an ideological ruse: the myth of the global
village as an interactive utopia where content is pulled rather than
pushed. McLuhan's technologism well served this New Economic
subterfuge. Thus co-opted, he became not so much a global villager as
a globalist--not so much a puller as a pusher.
Notes:
------
[1] See, for example, the opposite assessments of Eugene Goodheart,
"Marshall McLuhan Revisited," _Partisan Review_ 67/1 (2000), online:
www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2000/1/goodheart.html; and
Alexander Stille, "Marshall McLuhan Is Back From the Dustbin of
History," _The New York Times_ (Oct. 14, 2000), online:
www.nytimes.com/2000/10/14/technology/14MCLU.html.
[2] See Gertrud Koch, "The New Disconnect: The Globalization of the
Mass Media," _Constellations_ 6/1, (March, 1999), pp. 26-34: p. 28;
and Benjamin Symes, "Marshall McLuhan's 'Global Village,'" (May 26,
1995), online: www.aber.ac.uk/education/Undgrad/ED10510/ben-mcl.html.
[3] Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, _The Medium is the Message:
An Inventory of Effects_, New York: Bantam Books, 1967, p. 16 and p.
63.
[4] See Arthur Kroker, "Digital Humanism: The Processed World of
Marshall McLuhan," _CTHEORY_ (July 5, 1995), online:
http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=70.
[5] Bruce R. Scott, "The Great Divide in the Global Village,"
_Foreign Affairs_ 80/1 (Jan./Feb. 2001), pp. 160-77: P. 160.
[6] See James Fallows, "Beyond the Tech Bubble," _The Atlantic
Online_ (August 29, 2001), online:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/fallows/jf2001-08-29/index.htm.
[7] See James Fallows, "Internet Illusions," _The New York Review of
Books_, (Nov. 16, 2000), 47/18, online:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13891.
[8] Ester Dyson, George Gilder, George Keyworth, and Alvin Toffler,
(Oct. 22, 1994), "Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta
for the Knowledge Age," online: www.pff.org/position_old.html.
[9] See Fallows, op. cit.
[10] Andrew Murphie, "The Dusk of the Digital is the Dawn of the
Virtual," _Enculturation_ 3/1 (Spring, 2000), online:
www.uta.edu/huma/enculturation/ 3_1/murphie.html.
[11] Quoted in Koch, op. cit., p. 28.
[12] Ibid., p. 29.
[13] See Robert Manning, "The New 'New World Disorder'?"
_Intellectual Capital.Com_ (August 3, 2000), online:
www.intellectualcapital.com/ issue397/item10249.asp.
[14] See Nayan Chanda, "The Digital Divide," _The Far Eastern
Economic Review_ (Oct. 19, 2000), online:
www.feer.com/_0010_19/p50binnov.html.
[15] John Markoff, "It Takes the Internet to Raise a Cambodian
Village," _The New York Times_, (August 7, 2000), online:
www.nytimes.com/library/tech/ 00/08/biztech/articles/07berm.html.
[16] Ibid.
[17] See "Tapping into Africa," _The Economist_ (Sept. 9-15, 2000),
online: www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/ir3776.html.
[18] Thomas L. Friedman, "Digital Divide or Dividend," _The New York
Times_ (March 16, 2000), online: www.nytimes.com/2001/03/16/opinion/
16FRIE.html.
[19] Jennifer L. Rich, "Compressed Data: Brazilians Think Basic to
Bridge the Digital Divide," _The New York Times_ (Feb. 12, 2001),
online: www.nytimes. com/2001/02/12/technology/12BRAZ.html.
[20] Nicholas Negroponte, _The New York Times_ (Dec. 16, 1994), Op-Ed
page essay.
[21] See Kumar Venkat, "Bill Gates, Skeptic," _The New York Times_
(Nov. 7, 2000), online:
www.nytimes.com/2000/11/07/opinion/L07GAT.html.
[22] See "What the Internet Cannot Do," _The Economist_ (August 18,
2000), online:
www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/Id0592.html.
[23] Jack Beatty, "Be Afraid," _The Atlantic_ (April 6, 2000),
online: http://theatlantic.com/unbound/polipro/pp2000-04-05beat.html.
[24] Dana Blankenhorn, "The Internet Meets the Real World,"
_Intellectual Capital_ (July 6, 2000), online:
www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue 389/item9946.asp.
[25] Damien Cave, "Is the Internet a Bad, Bad Boy?," _Salon.com
Technology_ (Nov. 6, 2000), online:
www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/11/06bad_internet/index.html.
[26] Kirsten Hall, "Are You Connected?," _Critical Mass_ 2/3 (Feb.
23, 2001), online: http://hoshi.cic.sfu.ca/~cm/issue6/kirsten.html.
[27] Reinald Dobel, "Power and Powerlessness in the Global Village:
Stepping into the 'Information Society' as a 'Revolution from
above'," _Electric Journal of Sociology_ 4/3 (1999), online:
www.icaap.org/iuicode?100.4.3.1.
[28] Harvey Blume, "Digital Culture: Alternate Realities," _The
Atlantic_ (Jan. 13, 2000), online:
www.theatlantic.com/unbound/digicult/de2000-01-13.htm.
[29] Symes, op. cit.
[30] Blume, op. cit.
[31] Michael D'Antonio, "I or We?" _Mother Jones_ (1994), online:
www. motherjones.com/mother-jones/MJ94/dantonio.html.
[32] Amitai Etzioni, "Book Review: Community as We Know It," a review
of _Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community_ by
Robert Putnam, New York: Simon & Schuster, _Intellectual Capital_
(July 20, 2000), online: www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/issue
393/item10/09.asp.
[33] Robin Hamman, "Introduction to Virtual Communities Research and
Cybersociology Magaizen Issue Two." _Cybersociology_, Issue 2 (Nov.
20, 1997), online: http://members.aol.com/Cybersoc/is2intro.html.
[34] Anthony Spina, "Virtually Alone," _American Outlook Magazine_
(Winter, 2001), online:
www.hudson.org/American_Outlook/articles_wn01/spina.htm.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Joel Kotkin and Fred Siegel, "Digital Geography," _American
Outlook Magazine_ (Winter, 2000), online:
www.hudson.org/american_outlook/articles_wn00/kotkinsiegel.htm.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Thomas Frank, _One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market
Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy_, New York: Doubleday,
2000. p. 57.
[42] Ibid., p. 57.
[43] Ibid., p. 59.
[44] Ibid., p. 59.
[45] Ibid., p. 79.
[46] Mark Dery, "Digital Culture: With Liberty and Justice for Me,"
_The Atlantic_ (July 22, 1999), online:
http://theatlantic.com/unbound/digicult/dc990722.html.
[47] Frank, op. cit., p. 80.
[48] Quoted in Frank, p. 81.
[49] Ibid., p. 82.
[50] Ibid., p. 146.
[51] Ibid., p. 84.
[52] Ibid., p. 148.
[53] Ibid., p. 351 and p. 357.
[54] Michael Roberts, "The Dread of Technology," _Critical Mass_ 2/3
(1995), originally from The Ontarion 118/13 (Nov. 28 - Dec. 4, 1995),
online: http://hoshi.cic.sfu.ca/_cm/issue6/dread.html.
[55] Leo Marx, "Information Technology in Historical Perspective," in
Donald A. Schon, Bish Sanyal, and William J. Mitchell, eds., _High
Technology and Low-Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use
of Advanced Information Technology_, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT
Press, 1999. pp. 131-48: pp. 146-7.
[56] Roger Rollin, "Introduction: On Comparative Popular Culture,
American Style," in Roger Rollin, ed., _The Americanization of the
Global Village: Essays in Comparative Popular Culture_, Bowling
Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1989. p. 2.
[57] Gearoid O Tuathail, _Critical Geopolitics_, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996. p. 227.
[58] Quoted in O Tuathail, p. 227.
[59] Carl Boggs, _The End of Politics: Corporate Power and the
Decline of the Public Sphere_, New York: The Guilford Press, 2000.
p. 214.
[60] Ibid., p. 267.
[61] Ibid., p. 269.
[62] Ibid., p. 270.
[63] Fallows, op. cit.
[64] Aidan White, "New Media, New Headaches," _The UNESCO Courier_
(Feb. 2000), online: www.britannica.com/bcom/_/0,5744,348313,00.html?
query=information%20technolog.
[65] Goodheart, op. cit.
[66] Bryan S. Turner, "Risks, Rights and Regulation: An Overview,"
2001, unpublished paper provided by the author.
[67] James S. Fishkin, "Beyond Teledemocracy: 'America on the Line,'"
in Amitai Etzioni, ed., _The Essential Communitarian Reader_, New
York: Rawman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998. pp. 55-60: pp. 57-8.
[68] Seongcheol Kim, "Cultural Imperialism on the Internet," _The
Edge: The E-Journal of Intercultural Relations_ (Fall 1998), online:
http:// kumo.swcp.com/biz/theedge/Kim.htm.
[69] Herbert I. Schiller, Who Knows: Information in the Age of the
Fortune 500, Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1981; and Cees J. Hamelink,
_Information Imbalance: Core and Periphery in Questioning the Media:
A Critical Introduction_, London: Sage, 1990.
[70] Quoted in Jonathan D. Glater, "Hemming in the World Wide Web,"
_The New York Times_ (Jan 7, 2001), online: www.nytimes.com/2001/01/
07/weekin-review/07GLAT.html?printpage=yes.
_____________________________________________________________________
Songok Han Thornton is a doctoral candidate in the Institute of
Interdisciplinary Studies at National Sun Yat-Sen University,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her dissertation will address the global politics
of the Asian Crash of 1997-98.
_____________________________________________________________________
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* WWW Engineer Emeritus: Carl Steadman
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To view CTHEORY online please visit:
http://www.ctheory.net/
To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please visit:
http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/
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* CTHEORY includes:
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* 1. Electronic reviews of key books in contemporary theory.
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* 2. Electronic articles on theory, technology and culture.
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* 3. Event-scenes in politics, culture and the mediascape.
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* 4. Interviews with significant theorists, artists, and writers.
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* 5. Multimedia theme issues and projects.
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* Special thanks to Concordia University for CTHEORY office space.
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* No commercial use of CTHEORY articles without permission.
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* Mailing address: CTHEORY, Concordia University, 1455
* de Maisonneuve, O., Montreal, Canada, H3G 1M8.
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* Full text and microform versions are available from UMI,
* Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Canadian Periodical Index/Gale
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* Indexed in: International Political Science Abstracts/
* Documentation politique international; Sociological
* Abstract Inc.; Advance Bibliography of Contents: Political
* Science and Government; Canadian Periodical Index;
* Film and Literature Index.
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