The prelims comprise: Introduction Internet Culture? Balance Utopianism Inherence Dystopianism Inherence Instrumentalism Conclusion Acknowledgments.

This paper addresses the questions of whether and, if so, how and to what extent the Internet brings about homogenisation of local cultures in the world. It examines a particular case, that of Thai culture, through an investigation and interpretation of a Usenet newsgroup, soc.culture.thai. Two threads of discussion in the newsgroup are selected. One deals with criticisms of the Thai government and political leaders, and the other focuses on whether the Thai language should be a medium, (...) or perhaps the only medium, of communication in the newsgroup. It is found that, instead of erasing local cultural boundaries, creating a worldwide monolithic culture, the Internet reduplicates the existing cultural boundaries. What the Internet does, on the contrary, is to create an umbrella cosmopolitan culture which is necessary for communication among people from disparate cultures. That culture, however, is devoid of ‘thick’ backgrounds, in Michael Walzer's sense. (shrink)

Since the internet's breakthrough as a mass medium, it has become a topic of discussion because of its implications for society. At one extreme, one finds those who only see great benefits and consider the Internet a tool for freedom, commerce, connectivity, and other societal benefits. At the other extreme, one finds those who lament the harms and disadvantages of the Internet, and who consider it a grave danger to existing social structures and institutions, to culture, (...) morality and human relations. In between one finds the majority, those who recognize both benefits and harms in the Internet as it currently exists and who recognize its usefulness while worrying about some of its negative impacts. (shrink)

Writing this article was motivated by the wave of protests in 2013 in Bulgaria. The long and massive protest in the summer of 2013 combined three important features: 1) young people and middle class as the main driver of the events, 2) political action for non-economic value and 3) denial of partisanship and political representation, and support for participatory democracy. These features of the protest relate well to the Inglehart’s framework and describe the profile of “postmaterialists”: people with self-expression values. (...) A question I ask is: how, in a “materialistic democracy” like Bulgaria, with only 2% of postmaterialists, was it possible to take place a large-scale protest for a non-economic value like “moral in politics”, which at the same time resembles other protests that have taken place around the world? The protests were closely connected with the usage of the Internet and social networks and in my article I discuss how the Internet can facilitate behavior consistent with higher-order, postmaterial values. (shrink)

This article examines whether the attention to cultural products on the internet is more democratically structured than in traditional print media, and how these types of media attention affect commercial success. For the U.S. fiction book releases in February 2009, I analyze consumer ratings at the web store Amazon.com and the social networking site Goodreads.com. The results show that on the internet far more books receive attention, and that this indeed comes to the advantage of female authors and (...) authors of popular fiction. Moreover, online publicity positively affects commercial success. These outcomes suggest that online attention to cultural products dampens the effects of institutionally embedded evaluations, while word-of-mouth mechanisms are becoming increasingly prominent in terms of how cultural products are discussed. (shrink)

From a historical point of view, the idea of moving forces behind imagery opens up a new perspective on the spreadability and effectiveness of digital imagery today, especially in the form of Internet memes. Aby M. Warburg’s theory of Art History as collective memory is not only connected to the early theories of Evolutionary Biology by Richard Semon, but can also be interpreted as a parallel line of thought to Carl Jung’s psychological concept of archetype. The question of how (...) cultural content was shared and received was deeply connected with Warburg’s theory of the ‘Pathosformel’ or ‘Wanderstraße der Bilder’. (shrink)

The EU Kids Online project aims to enhance knowledge of the experiences and practices of European children and their parents regarding online risks and safety. A crucial research effort by the EU Kids Online network has been a survey in 25 European countries which targeted approximately 1,000 children per country. This article applies a cross-cultural values filter to the data that were gathered on parental mediation and the Internet in this survey. Our intention is to test whether Geert Hofstede’s (...) cross-national research results about national cultural values also apply to the EU Kids Online data on parental mediation. This implies studying collectivism versus individualism, low versus high power distance, masculinity versus femininity and low versus high uncertainty avoidance. We test whether differences between nations on these four dimensions correlate with differences between countries in parental mediation of the Internet and we test which European countries form clusters. (shrink)

The Internet is like a new country, with a growing population of millions of well educated citizens. If it wants to keep track of its own cultural achievements in real time, it will have to provide itself with an infostructure like a virtual National Library system. This paper proposes that institutions all over the world should take full advantage of the new technologies available, and promote and coordinate such a global service. This is essential in order to make possible (...) a really efficient management of human knowledge on a global scale. (shrink)

This paper has two distinct but related goals: (1) to identify some of the potential consequences of the Internet for our cognitive abilities and (2) to suggest an approach to evaluate these consequences. I begin by outlining the Google effect, which (allegedly) shows that when we know information is available online, we put less effort into storing that information in the brain. Some argue that this strategy is adaptive because it frees up internal resources which can then be used (...) for other cognitive tasks, whereas others argue that this is maladaptive because it makes us less knowledgeable. I argue that the currently available empirical evidence in cognitive psychology does not support strong conclusions about the negative effects of the Internet on memory. Before we can make value-judgements about the cognitive effects of the Internet, we need more robust and ecologically-valid evidence. Having sketched a more nuanced picture of the Google effect, I then argue that the value of our cognitive abilities is in part intrinsic and in part instrumental, that is, they are both valuable in themselves and determined by the socio-cultural context in which these cognitive abilities are utilised. Focussing on instrumental value, I argue that, in an information society such as ours, having the skills to efficiently navigate, evaluate, compare, and synthesize online information are (under most circumstances) more valuable than having a lot of facts stored in biological memory. This is so, partly because using the Internet as an external memory system has overall benefits for education, navigation, journalism, and academic scholarship. (shrink)

A partir de visualizar Internet como una creación cultural que refleja los principios y valores de sus inventores, analiza cómo Internet y libertad se hicieron para mucha gente sinónimos en todo el mundo, frente a lo cual los estados y las iglesias reaccionaron tratando de restablecer el control administrativo de la expresión y la comunicación. Se plantea luego el dilema de si es controlable Internet, contraponiendo las tecnologías de control y vigilancia a las tecnologías de libertad. Se (...) ponen así en juego actores y principios: los Hackers y crackers, la libertad y la seguridad¸ la encriptación del mensaje. Ejemplifica el autor con la experiencia española de la regulación a Internet. (shrink)

This paper discusses the Internet’s role in promoting civic engagement in Asian countries. China and Singapore were selected because they have similar ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds. This paper concludes that the Internet has a limited role in promoting civic engagement due to Internet censorship and people’s political attitudes, which are deeply rooted for Confucian cultural reasons. Moreover the Internet censorship does not bother people in China and Singapore. The argument presented in this paper differs from (...) previous studies that focused only on the Internet censorship system and ignored the cultural and socio-historical dimensions. The paper argues that the cultural and socio-historical dimensions should be considered when studying censorship. (shrink)

The present paper deals with the problem of the digital-culture-public-philosophy as a possible response of those philosophers who see the need to face the challenges of the Internet and the visual culture that constitutes an important part of the Internet cultural space. It claims that this type of philosophy would have to, among many other things, modify and broaden philosophers’ traditional mode of communication. It would have to expand its textual, or mainly text-related, communication mode into (...) the aesthetic and visual communication mode. More precisely, philosophers would have to learn how to aestheticize and visualize their ethical narratives by using some digital tools – YouTube clips for example. (shrink)

Greeks of Pontian ancestry migrated, forcibly, from Pontus to Greece where they founded Pontian Greek communities, mainly in northern Greece. The rapid increase in usage of the Internet during the past years appears to be significantly affecting the activity of cultural associations in general. The Greek Pontian associations of Thrace have begun taking advantage of the Internet and social networks for their diversified activities, a “modernization” which has not been studied extensively thus far. In this paper, a corresponding (...) analysis is performed, concluding that the activity of the associations on the Internet reflects an upward trend, while an increasing number of them seek to maintain an active presence on the Internet through web sites and social networks. This activity includes primarily press conferences and informative announcements. (shrink)

The article is intended to, in Sections I and II, flesh out and put within a metaphilosophical framework the theoretical argument first made in 2002 in “Do Internet Stings Directed at Pedophiles Capture Offenders or Create Offenders? And Allied Questions” (Sexuality & Culture 6(4): 73–100), with some modifications (See note 14). Where there are differences, I stand by this version as the final version of the argument. Section III addresses three experimental or empirical studies which might be thought (...) to contradict or confirm the data of the 2002 study. Section IV compares what we have done with the one other jurisprudential argument made by Summer 2005. Section V discusses why, despite the evidence and the arguments, these sting operations are popular with prosecutors and the public alike. Section VI comments on why my empirical study dating to 2002 does not appear to have gained wide acceptance, and what, if anything, can be said about this. -/- Note: The unusual length (for me) of the article is justified by its being data-driven. (shrink)

It is sometimes suggested thatthere is no conception of privacy in Japan orthat, if there is, it is completely differentfrom Western conceptions of privacy. If thiswere so, finding common ground between Japanand the West on which to establish privacypolicies for the internet would be extremelydifficult if not impossible. In this paper wedelineate some of the distinctive differencesin privacy practices in Japan, but we maintainthat these differences do not prevent theestablishment of sound, shared, ethicalinformation privacy policies. We distinguishbetween a minimal (...) conception of privacy that webelieve is shared by Japan and other societiesand richer conceptions of privacy that oftenreflect patterns of behavior distinctive ofparticular cultures. Although Japan and othersocieties share at least a minimal sense ofprivacy, a base on which to build, robustprivacy protection will not exist on theinternet until an internationally accepted richsense of privacy is developed. (shrink)

School moral education in any country is carried out in a particular social and cultural context. The renewal of policy and practice in moral education in China has come about because of a rapidly changing Chinese society, as a result of the government's ‘reform and opening up’ policy since the end of the 1970s. The consequent changes in the Chinese economy, politics and culture are innovatory and challenging. It is these changes that have brought about, and will continue to (...) bring about, new ideas and practices in moral education. This paper describes how Chinese moral education has been influenced according to recent social changes and modernization in China, including the formation of the market economy, the impact of globalization, mass media and the Internet, cultural diversity and value pluralism, trends to democratization in politics, and structural changes in the family. It also considers the kind of social issues and challenges which are being dealt with and anticipated in policy, theory and practice in contemporary Chinese moral education. (shrink)

Resumo: Nas últimas décadas, a pesquisa interdisciplinar tornou-se uma tendência. A linguagem visual e o pensamento cultural são dois diferentes conceitos, cada um com seus próprios métodos de pesquisa e seus referenciais teóricos. Entretanto, pesquisadores vêm percebendo que combinar a linguagem visual com o pensamento cultural pode oferecer compreensões e análises mais amplas e profundas. O propósito deste trabalho é ampliar o entendimento das pessoas sobre a linguagem visual e o pensamento cultural. Através da exploração interdisciplinar, as conotações e os (...) significados culturais, por trás das imagens, podem ser profundamente examinados, a fim de revelar as diferenças e semelhanças entre as diferentes culturas, o que ajuda a aumentar a conscientização da diversidade cultural e a promover a troca e o entendimento entre as diferentes culturas. Esta pesquisa pode ser usada como um recurso para o desenvolvimento social e ter um impacto significativo no desenvolvimento da economia, resultando em um novo pensamento cultural. Ao mesmo tempo, ela também é um fator central de poder tecnológico. Como um elemento e símbolo de soft culture, a linguagem pode desempenhar um papel na diplomacia pública e participar do pensamento cultural e da competição. À medida que a sociedade humana entra na era da mídia da internet, a vida e o equipamento linguístico das pessoas fazem um progresso significativo. (shrink)

Buddhism, the Internet and Digital Media: The Pixel in the Lotus explores Buddhist practice and teachings in an increasingly networked and digital era. Contributors consider the ways Buddhism plays a role and is present in digital media through a variety of methods including concrete case studies, ethnographic research, and content analysis, as well as interviews with practitioners and cyber-communities. In addition to considering Buddhism in the context of technologies such as virtual worlds, social media, and mobile devices, authors ask (...) how the Internet affects identity, authority and community, and what effect this might have on the development, proliferation, and perception of Buddhism in an online environment. Together, these essays make the case that studying contemporary online Buddhist practice can provide valuable insights into the shifting role religion plays in our constantly changing, mediated, hurried, and uncertain culture. (shrink)

Hoy asistimos a un inédito desafío histórico y cultural: la imparable y acrítica expansión de las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (TIC), en tanto estas amplían nuestras capacidades mentales y comunicativas a límites aún insospechados. Ante la radicalidad de su impacto, el desafío es empezar a vivir las TIC de una forma responsable, creativa y crítica. Hasta ahora, en cambio, las hemos vivido deslumbrados ante sus luces y ciegos ante sus sombras. En el ensayo nos preguntamos tanto “¿qué (...) hace una nueva tecnología?” como “¿qué también deshace?”. Buscamos entonces mediante una aproximación preliminar contribuir al debate acerca de los impactos existenciales, cognitivos, comunicativos y sociales de las TIC. (shrink)

"Neben der Industrie hat die Digitalisierung auch die Natur ergriffen. Die Tatsache, dass Tausende von Tieren mit GPS-Sendern aus- gerüstet und überwacht werden, erlaubt, analog zur Industrie 4.0 auch von einer Natur 4.0 zu sprechen. Dieses Internet der Tiere verändert den Begriff, den der Mensch von der Natur hat. Er transformiert die Wahrnehmung vor allem der Natur als etwas fundamental An- deren. Neben den vielen kulturellen Problematisierungen, die das Internet der Tiere mit sich bringt, lassen sich aber auch (...) die Umrisse einer neuen, ganz und gar nicht esoterischen planetarisch-post-digitalen Kultur aufzeigen, die die conditio humana verändert. In addition to industry, digitalization has also taken hold of nature. The fact that thousands of animals are provided and monitored with GPS transmitters allows to speak of nature 4.0 by way of analogy to industry 4.0. This internet of animals changes our idea of nature. Most of all, it transforms the perception of nature as something fundamentally other. Beside the many cultural problems that the internet of animals implies, it can also outline a new, not at all esoteric planetary post-digital culture that is about to change the human condition. ". (shrink)

The article is an overview of the VI Scientific and Practical Conference «Internet beyond 2020» (April 22-24, 2021) organized by the online school of Internet research with the support of the Higher School of Economics. The conference program included workshop reports and round tables on the role of the global network, the evolution of art and education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference brought together representatives of social sciences and humanities (sociologists, cultural scientists, linguists), artists, designers, and specialists (...) in the field of Internet studies. The organizers and participants of the conference tried to answer various questions, including the following. Is a modern person witnessing the emergence of fundamentally new anthropological practices? Is it possible to obtain a comprehensive picture of digital realities from single events of Internet studies, as well as predict the emergence and development of yet unknown social and anthropological transformations? Is it possible for a post-pandemic narrative conceptualizing the heterogeneous eventuality of our time to emerge? (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 489-528.

The rapid development of modern science and technology, especially the widespread use of the Internet has, to a large extent, transformed the way culture comes into being and is disseminated. The Internet has greatly increased the coverage of information on political thought as well as cultural information; it has also provided advanced measures and a vast arena for political thought work. At the same time, it has created many new situations and problems for political thought work in (...) the new era. Only if we fully acknowledge these changes will we be capable of seizing these opportunities, meeting the challenges, and achieving good results in political thought work in this new era. (shrink)

My considerations are organised into four sections. The first section provides a survey of some significant developments that determine contemporary philosophical discussion on the subject of ‘time’. In the second section, I show how the question of time and the issue of media are linked with one another in the views of two influential contemporary philosophers: Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Finally, in the third section, the temporal implications of cultural practices which are developing in the new medium of the (...) Internet are analysed and, in the fourth section, related to the central theses of Derrida and Rorty. (shrink)

A practice, a technique, an expertise cannot be left unexplored by an account that can explain their basis and organization as well as their objectives. Whether the internet is understood as a practice, or seen as a journey through a space that knows no borders, or cursed as humanity overreaching itself yet again (hybris), nevertheless its reality raises questions about our experience of the world (experimentum mundi) and explores its nature, giving an exact measure, beyond assumptions, of the relationship (...) between humans and machines. With this in mind a multicultural, multidisciplinary study was set up in the USA through the publication of Academy and the Internet, jointly edited by Helen Nissenbaum and Monroe Price (2004). The book sets out to examine the relations between the internet and economic issues, the internet and social problems of equality, politics (the question of public space), the communicative relationship in a virtual world. Interculturally speaking, only the Chinese contribution gives the debate - which is almost tribal since it is American to the core - an off-centre tone. A debate makes statements and analyses, but it also omits and may skate over other perspectives. Africa, which is absent from this debate, almost forces its way in via this paper. What is the position with the relationship between the internet and present-day African experience? Hardly coping as it is with the consequences of the recent introduction of writing, how is Africa experiencing this internet adventure, in which the status of images, words and time seems to be called into question? This brief presentation will look first at the status of technoscience - under which heading the internet is subsumed in Africa - and then at the challenges the internet throws up in the region. Our method will be to examine internet capacities from the viewpoint of oral cultures that are dominated economically. (shrink)

The human subjects researchmodel is increasingly invoked in discussions ofethics for Internet research. Here we seek toquestion the widespread application of thismodel, critiquing it through the two themes ofspace and textual form. Drawing on ourexperience of a previous piece ofresearch, we highlightthe implications of re-considering thetextuality of the Internet in addition to thespatial metaphors that are more commonlydeployed to describe Internet activity. Weargue that the use of spatial metaphors indescriptions of the Internet has shaped theadoption of (...) the human subjects research model.Whilst this model is appropriate in some areasof Internet research such as emailcommunication, we feel that researchers, whennavigating the complex terrain of Internetresearch ethics, need also to consider theInternet as cultural production of texts. (shrink)

A practice, a technique, an expertise cannot be left unexplored by an account that can explain their basis and organization as well as their objectives. Whether the internet is understood as a practice, or seen as a journey through a space that knows no borders, or cursed as humanity overreaching itself yet again (hybris), nevertheless its reality raises questions about our experience of the world (experimentum mundi) and explores its nature, giving an exact measure, beyond assumptions, of the relationship (...) between humans and machines. With this in mind a multicultural, multidisciplinary study was set up in the USA through the publication of Academy and the Internet, jointly edited by Helen Nissenbaum and Monroe Price (2004). The book sets out to examine the relations between the internet and economic issues, the internet and social problems of equality, politics (the question of public space), the communicative relationship in a virtual world. Interculturally speaking, only the Chinese contribution gives the debate - which is almost tribal since it is American to the core - an off-centre tone. A debate makes statements and analyses, but it also omits and may skate over other perspectives. Africa, which is absent from this debate, almost forces its way in via this paper. What is the position with the relationship between the internet and present-day African experience? Hardly coping as it is with the consequences of the recent introduction of writing, how is Africa experiencing this internet adventure, in which the status of images, words and time seems to be called into question? This brief presentation will look first at the status of technoscience - under which heading the internet is subsumed in Africa - and then at the challenges the internet throws up in the region. Our method will be to examine internet capacities from the viewpoint of oral cultures that are dominated economically. (shrink)

The Internet has become a field of dragon teeth for a person’s identity. It has made it possible for your identity to be mistaken by a credit agency, spied on by the government, foolishly exposed by yourself, pilloried by an enemy, pounded by a bully, or stolen by a criminal. These harms to one’s integrity could be inflicted in the past, but information technology has multiplied and aggravated such injuries. They have not gone unnoticed and are widely bemoaned and (...) discussed. The government and private watchdogs are working to protect the identity of citizens though at least in the United States both the government and individuals all too often side with prosperity when it conflicts with privacy. Still, these information-technological threats to identity have been recognized and can be reasonably met through legislation, regulation, and discretion. There is another kind of danger to our identity that is more difficult to define and to meet, for it has no familiar predecessors, has no criminal aspects, and exhibits no sharp moral or cultural contours. Still that threat to our identity haunts us constantly and surfaces occasionally in conversations and the media. It makes us feel displaced, distracted, and fragmented at the very times when to all appearances we seem to be connected, busy, and energetic. At the same time, the culture of technology, and of information technology particularly, has opened up fields of diversity and contingency that invite us to comprehend our identities in newly responsible, intricate, and open-minded ways. (shrink)

Research on new media has always highlighted the assumption that in authoritarian contexts, communication technologies provide political activists with ampler space than available in the heavily policed physical world. However, social and political changes taking place throughout Egypt and the Arab region reflect a shift. In a country like Egypt, where only around 30 % of the population have internet access, the vibrant digital media scene is relocating itself once more in public spaces. Digital initiatives, such as Askar Kadhibun (...) and Musirrin, are transforming online media material into older modes of traditional media, such as graffiti and traveling street performances. This constitutes a shift towards the ascendancy of popular cultural production, and a challenge to the reification and sacrilization of digital media in a context where poverty and illiteracy play a major role in both the dissemination of information and in political mobilization. (shrink)

The recent book from Marc Le Glatin Internet, un séisme dans la culture?, performs three intellectual acts. First, it resumes the main facts concerning the evolution of cultural practices on the Internet, particularly the multiplication of « free » downloading of works that are in principle protected by intellectual property. Second, it interrogates the notions of intellectual property and cultural diversity in relation to the new possibilities opened up by the Net. Third, it proposes some tentative solutions (...) for legal and economic problems, mainly the artists remuneration, related to current media transformations. Facts are correctly outlined and questions are worth asking. But the proposed solutions – inspired by a mix of centralizing jacobinism, socialism and post-modernism – sound deceptive because they are based on philosophical and political presuppositions that are quite contrary to the current stream of cultural mutation. I discuss the author’s thesis from the standpoint of a philosophy of collective intelligence and proposes some solutions oriented toward the best exploitation of the new technical possibilities in the service of human development and emancipation. (shrink)

This article highlights how Internet and new media are experienced by Romanian Seventh-Day Adventist pastors in their ministry. What is the acceptance of Web 2.0 services for neo-Protestant pastors of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, what uses of these technologies they make in their work, what is their mobilization for the appropriation of an innovative culture in the daily pastoral work, how these uses allow them to manage their religious activity, these are the main questions of a survey we (...) conducted in 2016 to shed light on uses of digital technologies by Romanian Seventh-Day Adventist pastors. (shrink)

Cet article vise à éclairer le rôle de la télévision et d’Internet dans la campagne de 2010 qui a abouti à l’élection de Dilma Rousseff à la présidence du Brésil. Ce faisant, il s’agit de considérer, d’une part, l’analyse d’un expert en communication politique sur l’influence des réseaux sociaux et des médias traditionnels dans les élections remportées par la candidate du Parti des Travailleurs ; d’autre part, de discuter les positions de Dominique Wolton sur le journalisme, Internet, l’information, (...) l’opinion et la communication, en correspondance avec différents points de vue intellectuels à propos d’un événement politique majeur.This article aims at shedding light on the role of television and Internet during de 2010 campaign, up to the election of Dilma Rousseff as President of Brazil. While taking into consideration a political communication expert’s analysis about the influence of social networks and traditional medias in the election of the Partido dos Trabalhadores candidate, it discusses the ideas of Dominique Wolton on journalism, Internet, information, opinion and communication, at the intersection with various intellectuals thoughts in regards to a major political event. (shrink)

This article argues that while modes of scholarship stressing structural insights into the digital divide and ethnographic insights into online communities each give us important information about current uses of the internet, for the sake of a unified social justice principle it is necessary to interpret these forms of knowledge in terms of what could be. Marx’s formula ‘the development of each as a condition for the development of all’ is put forward as the principle of a socially-just (...) class='Hi'>internet actualized from the ground up. It is argued that the most rapidly emerging and important form of constraint upon ‘the development of each’ is the for profit online social media industry in which moments of human communicative creativity become packaged as commodities for commercial purposes. Creative, cultural agency becomes an imposition rather than a liberation as represented in the industry ideology. It is argued therefore that groups that use the internet for serious play – the use of avatars in virtual worlds is discussed as an example – present us with a form of online subjectivity that is rising in importance as a form of cultural agency inasmuch as the play component is premised upon the rejection of pre-packaged forms of agency. Support for a socially-just internet would thus mean supporting the online communities formed in this process. Thus the argument is put forward that the importance of serious online play groups is not due to their potential for forming communities per se but is rather due to their potential for resisting the imposition of agency. Inasmuch as online communities in the midst of such groups can bolster that goal, they can represent the development of human capabilities in a way that expands the theme of social justice. (shrink)

The Morphogenetic Régulation approach (MR) contributes to the Morphogenetic Approach by explaining the material and ideational origins of change and stasis in agency, structure, and culture. In this paper, we focus on the expressive quality of ideas and systemic persistence in three research projects. The first demystifies inclusive governance and its adverse impacts. It shows how, contrary to institutions of governance, inclusiveness is not simply a norm but actually the explication of corporate agents’ ideas about rational choice institutionalism which (...) leads to adverse impacts on vulnerable groups and ecologies known as adverse inclusion. The second investigates the role of ideas as adequacy and self-explication in guiding Palestinian actors’ actions towards the deepening of neoliberalization in Palestine. The third explains the relevance of the systemic persistence problematique for understanding how three juxtaposed themes – Web2, Web3, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) – are shaping the political economy and infrastructure of the Internet. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to current discussions about methods in anthropological (especially ethnographic) research on the cultures of the internet. It does so by considering how technology has been presented in turn as an epistemological boon and bane in methodological discourse around virtual or online ethnography, and cyberanthropology. It maps these discussions with regards to intellectual traditions and ambitions of ethnographic research and social science, and considers how these views of technology relate to modernist discourse about the value (...) of technology for producing a particular kind of objective knowledge. For this article, I have examined a number of monographs and methodological texts in which the internet, as both a new setting and a new technology for doing ethnography, is shown to raise new issues for ethnographic work and for theorising anthropological approaches. In this material, questions of presence, field relations (including trust and confidentiality), and new possibilities for observation are especially prominently discussed. Anxieties about whether the internet can be a field at all are also expressed. In my analysis, I place these issues and dilemmas facing the researcher in the context of the intellectual tradition of ethnography as applied to technology. The main themes found to subtend these discussions of ethnography's 'way of knowing' are the notion of 'field', technology, intersubjectivity and capture. The paper ends with a reflection on the kind of knowledge about the internet that ethnography can be expected to produce, given these methodological prescriptions. (shrink)

The paper argues for the necessity of building up a philosophy of the Internet and proposes a version of it, an «Aristotelian» philosophy of the Internet. First, an overview of the recent trends in the Internet research is presented. This train of thoughts leads to a proposal of understanding the nature of the Internet in the spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy i. e., to conceive the Internet as the Internet, as a totality of its (...) all aspects, as a whole entity. For this purpose, the Internet is explained in four (easily distinguishable, but obviously connected) contexts: we regard it as a system of technology, as an element of communication, as a cultural medium and as an independent organism. Based on these investigations we conclude that the Internet is the medium of a new mode of human existence created by late modern man; a mode that is built on earlier (i. e., natural, and social) spheres of existence and yet it is markedly different from them. We call this newly formed existence web-life. Finally using two enlightening cultural-historical analogies (the reformation of knowledge and the formation of web-life) several fundamental characteristics of the web-life is presented. (shrink)