I think that the potential for a more egalitarian, freer, more productive, happier society with the advent of the Internet and the gradual withering away of old ways of communicating is definitely possible. I’ve spoken about the Egyptian Facebook revolution in my other blog. I think that this example beautifully outlines that it is possible for the Internet to act as a medium for encouraging egalitarian nations. However, in this blog I would like to focus on internal issues within American society, as the readings this week did.
The Internet definitely opens doors to many things. We have access to a plethora of information. “The idea of a universal information port was considered uneconomical, and too futuristic to be real in our lifetimes. Yet at any hour of today, most readers of this paper have access to the full text of the Encyclopedia Britannica (or as I prefer, wikepedia), precise map directions to anywhere in the country, stock quotes in real time, local weather forecasts with radar pictures…etc.” (Kelly). This vast net of information can lead the citizen to participate more rationally in society and in a form that encourages democracy because she is more prepared to make educated decisions.
This idea seems too optimistic. It seems that there is an atmosphere of apathy within the population. We can see this with the lack of voting. This really irks me. Neither my boyfriend (22 yrs old), my best friend (22), nor my younger brother (20) are registered to vote. The fact that I can’t even convince them to vote reflects the apathy, which sucks because all the crazy old bible humpers get to dictate the laws. Moreover, as a result of apathy, we enable capitalism to create monomaniacs. The idea that “billionaires and multimillionaires can bundle together obscene sums of money and use it to buy our government and perpetuate their own wealth and power while our nation’s problems are ignored,” is especially unsettling (Trippi, 235). Therefore I am forced to say that the authors are potentially overly optimistic. It honestly relies on the public. Do we not support the ideology of having billionaires because it could potentially be us one day?
The problem is that I don’t like that corporation can basically buy laws that enable them to take advantage of our nations resources. I don’t want to enable a drug user, nor do I want to enable the monomaniac. Social media and new technologies deplore “traditional belief systems even as it creates a belief in a kind of heavenly paradise, a kind of Technopia” (Lurie). Within this Technopia we have access to knowledge that we can use as our weapons against the very hypocrisy that is demonstrated by the monomaniacs preaching for democracy, while they endorse the stupidest things. As Benjamin Franklin (supposedly) said to some woman who asked, “what type of government have you bequeathed us?” – “A republic, if you can keep it.” And I choose to keep it, to continue to educate myself, and to continue to vote, even if others don’t.
No comments:
Post a Comment