Abstract

This project is concerned with comprehending the effect of the Internet--a cosmopolitan technology--on marginalized and 'Third World' groups, in light of both the cultural politics it sets in motion such as those of cultural destruction, hybridization and homogenization, political economy and resistance, as well as in the ways it bears upon discourses, and models, of development. Arguing that critical theorizing around the Internet must move beyond the Utopian versus Dystopian debates that largely prevail, I propose it be viewed as technology evolving as a mutation of a certain globally inflected logic that is equally, and simultaneously, economic and cultural. It is economic for it establishes a new global economy impacting every individual, everywhere, irrespective of the degree of access she/he has to it. It is cultural for it evolves from, and transmits, a 'future-envisioning' cocktail of discourses of democracy, freedom, modernity, and of material human progress, among others. The processes/institutions of modern advertising, I further argue, are crucial to both of these formations. I begin by establishing that the commercial Internet of today is a historical product of deeply interwoven ideological strands, which continue to shape its ongoing evolution--its global architecture, economics, and structures of governance. Subsequently, I examine how advertising bears upon all points of the commercial Internet. Finally, I argue that the inequities characterizing the Internet, whether of access, content, its socio-cultural impact, or within the global economy it enables, necessitate a reformulation of the ways in which its imperializing influence may be resisted.