BREESE EEEEEEE SEEKS Y!

tellectual fantasy of some well-written critical forum, whereas the political necessities of struggle demand more material
forms of organisation - people need finally to meet, people need to sit together and argue, plan joint action and mobilise.
Maybe its not too late to still say the battle is also still out on the street? Not everything can be collapsed into the realm of
representation and transmission. Some ‘content’ cannot be expressed, some will always be misrepresented because of in-
equalities and interpretation. The new media may offer opportunities to disrupt and transform the established channels of
transmission, but if there is no civic or public discussion, the liberal romantic notion of a civil society in which polite ‘town
hall' discussion of pressing social concerns occurs, with all free speech amendments you like, can never replace an ac-
tivism that organizes against powerful forces in the recognition that it is necessary to fight to win. All this comes as no sur-
prise since the new media replicate already existing structures and there is nothing exceptional in the recognition that
many of the same problems, and possibilities, apply. Time and again we are returned to the question of utility. We make
decisions about net activism on the basis of its usefulness for getting the message out, for communicating with each other,
for generating analysis, and for refining critique. Its potential for sector to sector communication, for collaboration across
sectors, for co-operation across diversity and for interconnectivity cannot be ignored. Potential usefulness of the net -
well, it would be stupid if these were denied, but utilities do need to be evaluated, subject to critique, prioritised and main-
tained.

It may be too easy to critique both the form and characteristic of the internet as dualistic. It is good for information provi-
sion, but sometimes information flow is such that it cannot be readily translated into local relevance for users and digest-
ed. The factors of cost, class and analytical depth limit participation in the global net-festival. It becomes a practical or-
ganizational question answered differently in different areas: does internet enhance unity and solidarity? Since the form of
information transmission of the new media is on or off - you need to be an active searcher, you have a choice to listen or
not - is this the most useful communications format for a campaigning organization's investment? As through the internet
it is not possible to reach people who are not interested - its not invasive/aggressive enough as compared to the loud-
speaker - perhaps the evaluation must recognise the net as too passive a propaganda tool? Consider how our liberal
friends would feel the discomfort of that!

If these are the characteristics of the internet as media, some of the dangers flow directly from the ways the high skill level
required of new media reproduces the class privilege of those already authorized by written literacy etc - the ‘educated in-
ternationally aware people’ become more educated and internationally aware. This is the development of an information
technology mode of production based comprador class. At the same time as the wealth of information available on the
globally hyped net announces and celebrates the informational density of modernity, the need for analysis is obscured,
and the need for making the predicament of the global-political scene relevant to local conditions is forgotten. Here again
information becomes tributary to the agendas of the Californian Ideology. The danger of excessive costs is not only that the
purchase of computers and related skilling furthers the agenda of Mr Gates and CNN, but that resources most pressingly
needed for campaigns etc are siphoned off into a spiralling international media drainage - servicing the information needs
of well-meaning European forums and the careers of excellently sympathetic and all too comfortable ‘internationalists’.
The hardest task is to adequately name the conditions in which we find ourselves - the beast of capitalism takes such
forms that require more than documentation. The danger would be if the internet encourages only an information rich, but
analysis poor, edification. More education is more important than more information. Though of course the new media and
the need to organise come together - it would be absurd to suggest that the information resources of new media are not to
be embraced, but as with all technologies, the point is to utilize these to best effect. This discussion suggests only a
breathing space in which to interrupt the flow and density to think, organise, analyse, and make some suggestions about
how we might best do so.