>> What a depressing piece... and rightly so...> I agree - but then I think that the state of our society is pretty depressing.
Yes. Hence 'rightly so'...
>> 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.
You're right, it's very important to defend against too much government/corporate control over the internet. (BTW, you do mean Huxleyan (Brave New World/Happy Happy Consumers) as opposed to Orwellian (1984/Big Brother Watching)?)
>> 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.
Wait... could you tell me what this was meant to say?
> 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.
I suspect it may actually turn out to be a much bigger part than you think.
> The internet is currently reserved for those who can afford it
This is a real problem. Access to the internet needs to be extended by having more public-access internet computers, and by selling more cheap computers and modems (my opinion). Lots of old computers which are not much good to corporations, universities etc. because they are outdated, but which could be used to provide internet access to people more or less free are essentially being discarded, as far as I can tell.
> ... 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.
Yes.
None.
