Milli mála - 26.04.2009, Blaðsíða 264

more dangerous threat. On one hand the threat is inside the tradi-
tional democracy, as their political and financial authorities, by
controlling the most powerful media, hide or distort the informa-
tion itself, or create false public debates. On the other hand the
threat is outside the traditional democracy, as the power could eas-
ily concentrate and be at the mercy of the unchecked and hostile
ego and will of a single blogger.
But it is also worth emphasizing another aspect of the internet
which is more related to the psychological attitude of the inter-
net audience. The internet is not a disinterested place to go.
People do not go online without knowing what to do or what to
find (to write or read an e-mail, search for specific information,
find the news, buy something, meet someone, talk about politics,
and so on). People do not go online as they would enter a book-
store or a park, without knowing what they will find and what
they will encounter. That is the crucial point in Siegel’s state-
ments: People go online to look for something, like everyone else.
So the internet is not only “the most deliberate, purposeful envi-
ronment ever created”,31 but far from assuring a new era of
democracy, it creates, according to Siegel, a more potent form of
homogenization. In fact:
On the Internet, an impulse is only seconds away from its gratifi-
cation. Everyone you encounter online is an event in the force field
of your impulses. The criterion for judging the worth of someone
you engage with online is the degree of his or her availability to
your will. ‘There is little difference between thoughts and Inter -
net-enabled action … The Internet provides immediate gratifica-
tion that affects one’s ability to inhibit previously managed drives
and desires.’ In other words, the Internet creates the ideal con-
sumer.32
Moreover, computer information technology, instead of reducing
global and local differences, has increased the gap between com-
INTELLECTUALS BETWEEN DISSOCIATION AND DISSENTING
264
31 Ibid, p. 175.
32 Ibid, p. 175. Siegel is following here particularly Al Cooper, the American psychologist who
pioneered the study of sex and the internet.
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