cepted at an ‘industry standard’ which always seems on the move. Add to this the exponentially growing cost to the organ-
isation in time and person hours to respond to requests for information in the ever increasing ‘online world’ and webifica-
tion of the struggle seems a decreasingly appealing option. This applies to so many little areas of work - consider the fate
of web page set ups: too often when the funding runs out the home page is necessarily left as out of date refuse at the curb-
side of the superhighway. Resources that might better have been used generating other activity is drained.

It is of course the case that oftentimes information sent from a campaign group could provide the basis for application of
outside pressure - there is reason to appeal for solidarity, and the established heritage of international solidarity action
Should never be ignored. But what would it mean to recognise that there are often limited gains for activists from South
East Asia to continuously send information to (careerist?) ‘activists’ in the west? The media machine is not the only hungry
monster here - anecdotal but common reportage notes that after going to.a conference such as this the demand for ‘con-
tact’ escalates and it soon becomes impossible to respond to all the requests from other conference goers - practical de-
cisions must limit inter- and internet- communication, there are only a few things on which there can be time to co-oper-
ate, the rest must sadly be treated as waste of time.

A second order of problem has to do with discursive reach. Whatever the level of ‘crisis’ which may be recognised from
near and from afar, and whatever the solutions proclaimed or ordained by the lap-toppers and webucated elites, if the gen-
eral population have no access, no time, no resources or no habit of making sense of the discourses of ‘crisis', respons-
es, or mobilisation, then net activism feeds only itself. It is clear that there are many opportunities afforded by the new
media and communications, but we want to ask what does net activist talk about the economic crisis mean to those who
have no respite from the immediacy of struggle, who are in the midst of reaction and the ‘realities’, what does it mean for
those who are trying to get alternative information but who do not have ready resources and the luxury to stop, read and
evaluate, before they must react?

We believe this has to do with the kind of forum envisioned for electronic media. Taking another tack, the idea of individ-
ual lap-top activists rapidly exchanging information and ideas via unmediated cyberspace is well and good in theory. In
practice perhaps there are questions to be asked about the kind of civic space this is, the quality of the exchanges and the
direction in which this form may lead. Is the ease of communication always a good thing - by hitting return we can send
everyone the latest rapidly assembled data on, say, the resettlement of villagers threatened by a hydro electrical scheme,
‘or some grab of statistical information from a web site dedicated to econometric returns. However, what level of analysis,
interpretation and application do we provide, or accept, when we participate in this kind of exchange? Is our participation
in the flow of information across the channels of the information revolution adequate to contend with the agendas of its
corporate advocates and the economic hegemony of which it is the means? This is not a call to stop these exchanges, but
a plea to consider how much the tendency of rapid response mitigates analytical sophistication. Fulfilling the admonition
to act globally while thinking locally has not always been simple.

The danger of the big hype of the new media and internet is that it is wide open to a tendency to distract attention from the
immediacy of political and organizational practicality. The town hall cannot be replicated on the internet in any case, cer-
tainly not in forms that readily open themselves to participation by the general population. For some, net activism suggests
only a salon for the educated classes, whereas what is needed are mechanisms that prompt, provoke, agitate. Some say
there are not clear ways that the internet can achieve this without it being carefully secured, and emphasized as useful but
limited tool, only for wider organizational work. The co-option gambit of elite distraction is real, especially insofar as the
new media become more and more specialized modes of communication among the already organised.

Let us not romanticize however. There may or may not be all sorts of alternative news and counter hegemonic communi-
cations and reporting advocated by net activists and those who proclaim the need for a ‘free media’, but without a politi-
cal base for developing a context for these claims, this can be nothing but hype. Some might say that the problem is that
the emphasis of the internet is increasingly on the need to write, and the direction of that writing is outward bound - a
feeding function in support of the liberal sensibilities of the West. Without a mass political struggle and a mass organisa-
tion for which writers write ‘for’, there is no clear point. To fail to consider the question of adequacy valorizes only the in-

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