Re: <eyebeam><blast> Other/Cheap Desire

[Craig Brozefsky <craig@onshore.com>]

Brian Holmes <106271.223@compuserve.com> writes:
 
<cheap shot removed>

"Clifford, excuse me for getting straight to the point, but your March 1
post on poor rhetoric and Cheap Desire fits into the majority pattern
among the American elite. Basically you're saying, economic inequality
is no topic for this forum to debate - except if people who can't afford
technology like the internet somehow use it to speak up for themselves."

I thought Clifford was asking us a question.  What happens when we group
together a multitude of different people under the guise of lack?  In
this case, lack of access to another fabricated whole 'The Net'.  The
poor, or more generally 'the lacking' perform a special function here. 
What/Who does this homogenization of local and global tactics into a
simple dialogue of access/lack benefit?

> mediated debate. A transnational public sphere is surfacing in the wake
> of the corporations, and with it, the internet becomes an arena of
> democratic exchange. 

For whom?  What makes the power structure of that public sphere which
you think is surfacing in the wake of transnational corporations any
better from those local spheres within which people are already
embroiled?  The players become larger, the stakes higher, the control
moved away from your immediate situation?  Certainly I won't argue that
is is 'all bad' or 'all good' but let's all at least make a honest
attempt at assesing just what happens when you do something as basic as
globalize a concept of human, let alone citizen.

What makes you call the internet an arena of democratic exchange?  What
specifically about it is democratic?  Who is making the decisions behind
it's policies, who is setting the parameters for participation within
this arena?  I would argue that the parameters for participation are set
by those multinational telecommunications and media corporations which
control access to the internet and the technology as a whole.  Am I
mistaken in that assumption, and if so, how?


PS:
If one more person says 'The Net' without explaining what they mean,
I'll
teardrop them.


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