I’ve been reading some various things by Ivan Illich from the 1970’s, and it always stimulates some thought. Here’s a line from Toward a History of Needs (1978):
From a social point of view, we ought to reserve the designation ‘technical progress’ to instances in which new tools expand the capacity and the effectiveness of a wider range of people, especially when new tools permit more autonomous production of use-values.
So the question is: in what ways is the internet such a socially beneficial tool?
P.S. I’ll be travelling quite a bit for the next few weeks, so postings may be light.
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