Notes towards an anthropology of the internet

Abstract

What might an anthropology of the internet look like? It require a combination of introspection, personal judgment and world history to explore the universe of cyberspace. This world is not sufficient to itself, nor is it 'the world'. People bring their offline circumstances to behaviour online. The virtual and the real constitute a dialectic in which neither can be reduced to the other and 'virtual reality' is their temporary synthesis. Heidegger's metaphysics are drawn on to illuminate this dialectic. Before this, the internet is examines in the light of the history of communications, from speech and writing to books and the radio. The digital revolution of our time is marked by the convergence of telephones, television and computing. It is the third stage in a machine revolution lasting just 200 years. The paper analyses the political economy of the internet in terms of the original three classes controlling respectively increase in the environment (land), money (capital) and human creativity (labour). It ends with a consideration of Kant's great example for a future anthropology capable of placing human subjectivity in world history.

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