Other sections of the thesis

Other students have also put their theses on the web. Among them are:

Truth and Politics - Mass Media in Independent Ukraine 1991 - 2001

Private TV in Palestine

The negative approach to this situation is set out by Baudrillard, who suggests that each person sees themselves as an isolate, with perfect sovereignty over a machine that is their world (Wells; 1997, 257). Other critics suggest that hypertext produces an entirely self-centred "reader" who can "initiate endlessly self-satisfying circuits in which subjective desire itself becomes both process and product" (Wells; 1997, 250). "She or he mistakes the immediate actualization of desire as liberation (251)." Yet what they are ignoring, or are unable to see is the fundamentally connected nature of the wired world.

Some authors, have, however, seen this. "If cyberspace teaches us anything, it is that the worlds we conceive (the spaces we inhabit) are communal projects requiring ongoing communal responsibility" (Wertheim; 1999, 302). Turkle suggests that the Internet fosters the relations of the many to the many (Kember; 2000, 104). Heim (2000, 41) says that the wired world as a place where the dialectic exists "as the art of permanent exchange". "Inside the little box are other people." (Stone; 2000b, 167) So discovered David Bennahum (1998, 217), who in his autobiography with the subtitle "Growing Up in Cyberspace", records how he concluded that his early years on very basic computers in school were cyberspace because of their collaborate element "all jacked in together". " The point was to play together. That was the key thing. Together."

Gumpert and Drucker (1998, 423) are among many who see that in the last century, the home was transformed from "sanctuary to communications hub". Yet along with many others, they fail to understand that "sanctuary" concept is specifically historically and cultural situated in that century, in some Western countries. The traditional Chinese shop-house, still thriving in many parts of Asia, sees what is by day a workspace translated into a living space at night (and frequently also a sleeping space, at least for the servants). Concepts of privacy and personal space are, even in the West, historically a recent development. Few have ever had the luxury of that "sanctuary".

So to the concept of the private body, which some also feel is invaded by some aspects of the technology of the wired world, particularly webcams. Commentators are often horrified at "voyeuristic" sites on which text creators (usually young women) put their entire lives (clothed and naked, eating and sleeping) on display for all to see (McVeigh; 2000, 12). Yet again, they are failing to recognise the historically situated nature of their shock. In Britain, before about 1660, research has found that the human body was perceived as a public spectacle (Stone; 2000, 516). Instead, it came to be constituted in texts (books), such as Samuel Pepys' diary. The wired world is still creating texts by which the body is displayed, it is just that the form is different.

The lack of authority figures, of "foundational, fundamental" truths in the wired world concern many, of all political and social persuasions (Dean; 1999, 1072). Yet spreading the power of authority, the power of believability, has, in other contexts been welcomed by many. As Dean notes, it is only recently, and not everywhere, that a women's testimony has been trusted as much as a man's (1999, 1074). In the wired world each commissioner is her own authority.

From the popular press, to serious commentators many also see the complexity of the data-rich wired world as a problem, even a critical one. "How will we cope with the information overload?" they lament (Brunn; 1998, 12). How will we make sense of the "mass of disconnected and unverified information that floods cyberspace" (Black; 1998, 11).Civin (1999, 488) sees this as "social saturation", with individuals exposed to so many others that they cannot know them, or even themselves. Again, a historicizing perspective offers another view. In the past, humans, as collectives and individuals, suffers from an information shortage. Information had not been collected or developed, and that which had was often available only to a very small number limited by time, space, education, and habitus. In the wired world, there is a plenitude of information. Organising, marshalling, arranging - commissioning - it in the most effective ways will be a challenge, but a challenge that arises from wealth and possibility.

The inclination of the technology of the wired world is towards connection and community. That does not, of course mean, that the society that develops in, and develops, the wired world WILL take that direction. Technology can be twisted against its natural inclination by economic, political or social forces. As Page (1998, 88) says "it is a far cry from the ability to link all information to the willingness to do so." The possibilities, at least, however, are there. Mitchell (1995, 24) says: "The network is the urban site before us, an invitation to design and construct the City of Bits (capital of the twenty-first century)". Stein (1999, 203) calls for us to think of ourselves as ethical ancestors for the wired world, saying "it is up to us to take the technological base of our society and to build on top of it the structures we want to build."

The wired world offers us the possibility of a connected, social habitus. It awaits our efforts to create it.