Patti Waldmeir reviews Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World in the Los Angeles Times today. It reminds me how humankind has managed to corrupt the original, ideal vision of the internet, to have borders and ill-functioning institutions reflected online. However, I remain an optimist: the internet is very much its own beast, and there are still more people outside of the controlling, censoring institutions than inside them. Provided we can come together with a vision of an internet that brings freedom to all, the broken institutions of old can be weakened and done away with. And we then need to subconsciously practise that ideal every day.
   Waldmeir writes:

It all started in the last decade of the last century, when the conventional wisdom was that globalization, fueled by the Internet, would bring democracy to peoples around the world and defeat all the tyrants. The theory was that like-minded people could come together in cyberspace to govern themselves without the help or hindrance of national governments. The existence of such communities would fatally undermine the power of traditional territorial authorities.

   It’s still a useful vision, and when one views participatory Web 2·0 sites such as blogs, I believe we are still changing the world. Media have already changed because of citizen power, and the less efficient, more dishonest institutions are next. The only thing preventing us is the lack of education and awareness as to what a righteously motivated human race is capable of.

Del.icio.us tags: internet future world globalization government institutions institutionalization media education Posted by Jack Yan, 14:13  permalink

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