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should still be an expectation that constructive alternatives can be offered. Some
critics have made excellent points - Evgeny Morozov has shown that an online pres-
ence can make activists more liable to identifi cation and persecution, for instance
(Morozov
2011
), and has punctured the weirder parts of Silicon Valley 'solution-
ism' (Morozov
2013
). Jaron Lanier (
2010
) makes persuasive points against the
Facebook-style 'template identity' and certain ideas of collective creativity
(although Lanier perhaps does not belong in the 'pessimistic' camp anyway, as he
is only raising cautionary notes about the development of a creative online life,
which he potentially still believes in). Other critics have fewer ideas of their own
and are content to make fun of everyday people's genuine creative efforts (Miller
2009
; Curran et al.
2012
). These writers suggest that the shift where citizens become
media creators, rather than mere consumers, is a waste of time - which I fi nd rather
shocking (Gauntlett
2013
).
The present book - the topic you are reading now, of which this is a chapter - is
clearly on the optimistic side of the fence. The blurb sent to me by the editors says
things like: 'This [online] movement is providing a “voice” through which anyone
can express to everyone whatever their imagination can create, democratizing
innovation and creativity like never before'. The pessimists like to shoot down this
kind of statement as recklessly giddy - and indeed the terms 'anyone' and 'every-
one' here are ill-advised - but this optimistic stance is at least preferable to the
grim elitism of those who seem to wish we could go back to a world where profes-
sional people made professional media which professional researchers knew how
to deal with.
The 'critical' scholars implicitly sneer at those of us who try to be more construc-
tive and optimistic. Their working assumption is that they are the ones blessed with
the intelligence to see through the 'hype' about possible uses of the internet. (This
ignores the fact that they are often engaged in a different kind of 'hype', which is -
even less helpfully - in praise of themselves.) As a father of young children, I couldn't
live with myself if I merely stood around moaning about things. It's certainly true
that the dominant internet companies are not angelic and may have regrettable ways
of working, but to dismiss the potential of what people can do online because par-
ticular providers are problematic is like saying that people shouldn't have footwear
because some sneaker companies use sweatshops.
In spite of all this discord, I think that it is possible to make some strong positive
statements about qualities of the internet which it is diffi cult to disagree with. I pres-
ent six of them here. Several of them are pragmatic 'X is better than Y' statements
which I would hope are pretty irrefutable. Let's see.
2.2
The Statements
1. The internet is ancient (
in other words
: the internet has affordances which con-
nect with ancient, great aspects of humanity).
