From Utopia to Dystopia: the Twin Faces of the Internet
نویسندگان
چکیده
The literature contains many examples of utopian predictions stemming from the widespread adoption of Internet technology, including extended democracy, personal liberation, enhanced powers of organization and coordination, and renewal of community. These are briefly described in this paper. However, more recently, researchers have begun to provide more critical, dystopian predictions for this technology, and these accounts are also summarised in the paper. Interestingly, researchers have tended to consider the utopian and dystopian outcomes as mutually exclusive, i.e., there is a tendencey to present extreme accounts which are entirely utopian or dystopian. It is suggested that both the utopian and dystopian visions are fundamentally flawed, in so far as they are founded on a predominantly technologically-determistic view. The paper draws on a comprehensive field study of the phenomenon in practice to illustrate that the Internet has the propensity to result in both utopian and dystopian outcomes. Thus, a central argument presented is that both utopian and dystopian outcomes can occur simultaneously, albeit in relation to different factors. The paper proposes a framework which illustrates the factors which influence the manner in which utopian and dystopian outcomes result.
منابع مشابه
From Utopia to Dystopia: the Twin Faces of the Internet
The literature contains many examples of utopian predictions stemming from the widespread adoption of Internet technology, including extended democracy, personal liberation, enhanced powers of organization and coordination, and renewal of community. These are briefly described in this paper. However, more recently, researchers have begun to provide more critical, dystopian predictions for this ...
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