Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
alternatives to the mainstream media and a voice for independent views that
widened the domain of popular political participation. While hegemonic
powers utilize this medium to its full extent, it can also be used to challenge
established systems of domination and to legitimate and publicize the polit-
ical claims of the relatively powerless and marginalized (Warf and Grimes
1997). The Internet has given voice to countless groups with a multiplicity of
political interests and agendas, including civil and human rights advocates,
sustainable development activists, antiracist and antisexist organizations, gay
and lesbian rights groups, religious movements, those espousing ethnic iden-
tities and causes, youth organizations, peace and disarmament parties, non-
violent action and paci
sts, and animal rights groups. Cyberspace can be an
important tool for local activists in that it allows access to resources beyond
the local scale: local struggles can access the international media through the
Internet to clarify and disseminate their position, as well as mobilize global
public opinion to apply pressure to the opposing interests (Adams 1996). By
facilitating the expression of political positions that otherwise may be dif-
fi
fi
ficult or impossible, the Internet allows for a dramatic expansion in the range
of voices heard about many issues. In this sense, it permits the local to
become global.
There also exists what may be called the “dark side” of the Internet, in
which it is deployed for illegal or immoral purposes. Hackers, for example,
have often wreaked havoc with computer security systems. Such individuals
are typically young men playing pranks, although others may unleash dan-
gerous computer viruses and worms. Most hacks—by some estimates as
much as 95 percent—go unreported, but their presence has driven up the cost
of computer
firewalls. The dark side also includes unsavory activities such as
considerable quantities of pornography, counterfeit drivers' licenses and
passports, securities swindles, and adoption scams. The growth of Internet
fraud and identity theft raises serious concerns about privacy. Electronic sur-
veillance systems are used to monitor everyday life, including credit cards,
visas and passports, tax records, medical data, police reports, telephone calls,
utility records, automobile registration, crime statistics, and sales receipts.
Thus, telecommunications can be used against people as well as for them;
the unfortunate tendency in the popular media to engage in technocratic
utopianism largely obscures these power relations.
Although their potential impacts are often exaggerated, digital networks
clearly have substantial, if largely unanticipated, e
fi
ects upon the social fabric
over time (Kitchin 1998). Gregory (1994:98) maintains that “ever-extending
areas of social life are being wired into a vast postmodern hyperspace, an
electronic inscription of the cultural logic of late capitalism.” As virtual real-
ity and “real” reality have become tightly interwoven, the digital world has
exerted a rapidly increasing in
ff
uence over the social fabric, to the point where
distinguishing between these two domains no longer seems helpful. Software,
for example, through the mutually constitutive relationship it enjoys with
territory, enables space to unfold in multiple ways, such as when it is used to
fl
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