File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-31.182, message 16


From: Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept-AT-turk.net>
Subject: M-I: Why use the internet?
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 1997 01:19:48 +0200


I think Carrol asked why I was devoting time to this list. There are obvious
reasons, the working class should be able to use advances in information
technology, internationalism is essential, that communist thought needs a
world-wide "rennaissance" in order to regain the ground we've lost and to
fight back during an era of increased poverty and injustice... I am just
forwarding a post I had written to Scott some time ago, someone said that he
was thinking of dropping out. Of course, it was also curious to learn about
the state of the left in the first world. I don't think anyone really wants
to know too many details of my impression of the internet left, but
basically too many politicians and not enough revolutionaries.

Zeynep

>To: Scott McLemee <mclemee-AT-igc.apc.org>
>From: Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept-AT-turk.net>
>Subject: The state of the list
>
>Scott, Lou Proyect informed me that you were planning to drop out of
marxism-international. Believe me, it is very hard for me to ask anyone to
stay in this madhouse, but that's what I'm going to do.
>
>The reason is simple. Closed lists are fine, but very inaccesible. I'm not
really the one to believe that technology has any class character in and of
itself, but there is an oppurtunity in the way the internet is structured.
It has gone from a few thousand people to twenty thousand in the course of a
year in Turkey. In many other places like Turkey, the e-mail is becoming
accesible the way a phone might be. I believe that any unregulated medium is
now to the benefit of the working people in this age of misinformation and
Big Media. In order to fully use the opportunity, some people must do what
the academics did for the internet in the 70s and 80s. They set a structure
difficult to control, and leaning on the communal and sharing side. The
structure is not useful in itself, of course. It's like canals ready for us,
we must provide the water to run in it. That requires viable communities of
the left which have created a culture enabling them to discuss, and perhaps
in some issues and in some groups, act together.
>
>In the same manner, the fact that we are trying to do this *now* means that
we get many politically washed-up first worlders with a lot of time on their
hands, and less in their minds. There is a limited supply of this type, and
if the internet prevalance and demographics goes the way it is going now,
they will become much more a minority. What's important is to create places
where anyone can walk in, where the disturbers will be flushed out easily
and the culture is of tolerance if not compliance and respect goes to facts
and smart analysis, not flashy polemics.
>
>Now, if everyone with something to contribute leaves and those who only
want to congratulate each other on the last brilliant flame remain, the
incoming people will not have places to link with. It takes some time to
establish a certain culture, and marxism-international is, if anything, in
the beginning stages. 
>
>That's why I'm asking you to stay. Delete everything else, and join the
cyberseminar, for example. For every nut interested in hearing only his
voice, there are many who want to hear others.
>
>Zeynep
>



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