Fate only provokes the incident; it’s up to us to determine the quality of its effects – Montaigne – from my phrase collection in Portuguese.
We see the media Internet in different ways, depending on age, temperament, and interest. The more conservative insist on comparing the web with the radio and television. They say: “It’s another normal and traditional change of media.” On the other hand, the most daring assure us that we are dealing with something, let’s say, sui generis, something close to a Martian phenomenon.
Actually, the Internet, like the radio and television, introduced a new media – this is a fact.
However, it’s worth noting that both radio and TV, which had historical importance in shaping society’s course, were media that reinforced and expanded practically the same voices that expressed themselves in the large-circulation newspapers. They were media – and still are – that are tightly controlled because of their high cost and easy monitoring.
Thus, we can call them media which reinforce prevailing power structures.
However, the web doesn’t fit this model.
It enables society to have a multiplication of voices at low cost and in ways difficult to monitor. No, we are not dealing with something from Mars, as we had the same phenomenon (something similar) with the arrival of the printed book, in the face of the monopoly of manuscript book – one of the pillars of the Church and monarchical domination in the Middle Ages.
Thus, we can refer to the web as a social oxygenation media, which opens spaces for new voices. This fact – not the technology per se – marks (and will continue to mark) the changes we will witness and are already witnessing.
Social oxygenation medias open fertile ground for the exchange of ideas and, therefore, for broad changes.
The printed book, let’s recall, greatly facilitated abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage. Print media “introduced” a soul into Blacks and native peoples, and thereby brought about the possibility of bringing that oppression to an end. We are still witnessing this process in society. In addition, print communication introduced the concepts of democracy and of the economy of capitalism itself. It helped to create and to consolidate the prevailing ideology of its time.
The coming civilization that emerges with the possibility of exchanging ideas on the Internet will settle accounts with this past, deeply revising concepts already called into question but still in force. This revision will include, for example, the ecology, companies’ profits, and social differences.
We are on the verge of a civilizational upgrade, which will establish a new elite on a new level of civilization. This elite will control the media until a new media comes along to oxygenate society, in a civilizational flux that comes in and out, from one media to the other.
That’s it.
Thank you.
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Translated by Jones de Freitas. Edited by Phil Stuart Cournoyer.
