Roadgrading Community Culture: Why the Internet is so Dangerous to Real Democracy

Abstract

This article forwards an anarchist analysis of the internet as inherently degrading of local community and the possibility of real democracy emerging. The authors suggest that rampant virtuality, based on the eradication of time and space as functional communicative restraints, acts to separate individuals from their face-to-face relationships and localities. They forward that local community is the only forum in which genuine democracy and an ecological society can hope to thrive. The article argues that in asking the question Where do you want to go today?, the internet attempts to create a virtual everywhere, a universalising logic that is to communication what the WTO and globalisation are to economics. Further, the piece forwards a view of technology and society in dialectic relationship with one another, suggesting that democratic tools and a democratic society rely on one another for their emergence.