Un-Utopian Technology

Despite the Utopian hypes, Fred Turner points out ( From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism , 2-3) that there is nothing inherently revolutionary or leveling about computer technology. Sure, we all have our own devices, but that doesn’t make the computer a “personal” technology:

“Onthe contrary, as Shoshanna Zuboff has pointed out, in the office, desktopcomputers and computer networks can become powerful tools for integratingthe individual ever more closely into the corporation. At home, thosesame machines not only allow schoolchildren to download citations fromthe public library; they also turn the living room into a digital shopping mall.For retailers, the computer in the home becomes an opportunity to harvestall sorts of information about potential customers. For all the utopian claimssurrounding the emergence of the Internet, there is nothing about a computeror a computer network that necessarily requires that it level organizationalstructures, render the individual more psychologically whole, ordrive the establishment of intimate, though geographically distributed,communities.”