Networked Publics : Publicity and Privacy on the Internet

It is undeniable that contemporary internetworking practices are drastically altering the social, political, moral, epistemological, and cultural landscapes in which we live. In a world in which an increasing amount of information is increasingly available everywhere and in which an increasing amount of everyday activity yields information about our innermost selves, we simply cannot stand still in the face of the political and epistemological changes being ushered in. The rapidity of these changes has provoked, over the past decade, an increasing sense of alarmism amongst pundits, experts, and laypersons concerning the effects of the new internetworked cultural landscape. Alarmism and its attendant modes of celebration and denigration are, however, hardly appropriate to moral and political environments undergoing rapid transformation. What is needed is to discern the contours of these transformations so that we may more intelligently direct them.