How Global Is the Internet?

Abstract

The Internet is a technology on the basis of which a global culture may unfold and become established in evolutionary fashion – in a process that may extend over many decades, perhaps centuries. Theoretical thought on globalization and media can be deployed into three fields: (a) system connectivity; (b) system change; and (c) system interdependence. The Internet is not necessarily market-oriented. It is in principle beyond the reach of authority and has enormous potential to link societies – as opposed to merely politics, the economy. Despite the differing definitions of global info-elites and “cosmocrats,” the very lack of ties to the local sphere is a problem common to the new elites of globalization; this problem may be termed “virtual cosmopolitanism.” The Internet was important in the Arab rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt, and also in the Zapatista movement in Mexico.

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