> What a depressing piece... and rightly so...I agree - but then I think that the state of our society is pretty depressing.
> However, have one quarrel with what you said; I think you ought to bear in
> mind that the Internet does still offer more or less free access to anyone,
> with very little regulation and without the ubiquitous reliance on corporate
> advertisers found in television and most of the rest of the media.
Again - I agree. The internet does provide much more freedom for debate and information (as witnessed by sites such as these). However - the corporate world are trying to find ways to manipulate it as much as possible and governments are trying to find ways to regulate and censor it as much as possible (especially in the US). We can all figure out the Huxleyan result if we allow these efforts to succeed and extend to a logical conclusion.
> when you look at the proportion, and distribution, of the world's population
> with access to the internet, you quickly realise that the "World Wide Web" is
> something of a bad joke
This is true - but...the big corporations want us to spend our money and condition us to thinking that this is good for us. Many of those with money have money. Access to the internet is being heavily promoted and 'sold' to us as a 'necessity' (again, at least in the US). See comment above. Those with money to spend have power over the corporations if they would only stop giving it to them. This mind-set needs to be broken.
The internet is only a very small part of the process that might achieve such an end. The internet is currently reserved for those who can afford it and still provides free exchange of ideas - so it is a good forum. But to succeed, we must educate ourselves at every stage of life and at every level of society. Otherwise we are doomed.
