In this overview of the concentration of power via the internet, not just in the area of communications but also in the coming connectivity of your computer, refrigerator, TV, electricity meter, your car’s GPS, etc., Sally Burch covers the upcoming April 24-25 inter-governmental NetMundial meeting in Sao Paulo Brazil, which will discuss the future governance of the internet. As concentration of production and consumption decisions under the control of capital and its dynamic of unsustainable accumulation proceeds, the possibilities of a rational sustainable reduction/degrowth of our destructive global social and industrial metabolism becomes more and more distant. This is an important contribution to this debate.
Bob
Sally Burch, AlaiNet, Quito, 11 April 2014
Over a space of barely two decades, the Internet and digital technologies have found a place in the daily routine of a great part of humankind. And around these technologies an endless number of spheres of our societies are being reorganized. They are so convenient – and seductive – that to live without them is almost unthinkable; and this is only a beginning, with respect to the changes that are coming.
http://www.alainet.org/active/72917
This article is part of an ALAI special issue on the Internet and power
Latin America in Movement No 494, April 2014
Special issue on Internet, power and democracy
http://www.alainet.org/publica/494-en.phtml
http://www.alainet.org/publica/alai494w-en.pdf
(40 pages – English edition)
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