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<br><div><div>On 17-Dec-09, at 2:23 AM, Michael Gurstein wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><p><font color="#0000FF" size="2" face="Arial">I'm not sure about all the details but an interesting brief global overview of the political economy of ICTs </font> </p><p><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/schiller12162009.html"><u></u><u><font color="#0000FF" size="2" face="Arial">http://www.counterpunch.org/schiller12162009.html</font></u></a> </p><p><font color="#0000FF" size="2" face="Arial">MBG</font> </p> <p><b><i><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Communications Revolution</font></i> </b> </p><p><b><font color="#990000" size="5" face="Times New Roman">It's a Wired World</font> </b> </p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By DAN SCHILLER</font> </p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: small; ">Profit-seeking investment flooded into ICTs and the idea that we were transitioning into a benign information society was the new common sense. ..... and, so far, the leading role has been taken not by popular social movements but by capital. Oppositional impulses have only occasionally become organized at a politically meaningful level.</span></p></blockquote></div><div>I think it's short-sighted to state that, "<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: small; ">Oppositional impulses have only occasionally become organized at a politically meaningful level." For example, consider this expression of another facet of the same gem:</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Because informational power has altered the materials, rules,institutions, ideas, and symbols that are the means by which other forms of power are exercised, a new type of system, the informational state, has emerged. Information policy is thus key both to understanding just how this change of state has come about and to analyzing how the informational state exercises power domestically and around the world. Information policy is the proprioceptive organ of the nation-state, the means by which it senses itself and, therefore, the medium through which all other decision-making, public or private, takes place. ...... The study of information policy as a coherent body of law and regulation introduces the meso-level and lets us answer the real question: What are we doing to ourselves? (Sandra Braman. Change of State: Information, Policy, and Power. MIT Press, February 2007. pp. 4-5. <<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262025973chap1.pdf">http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262025973chap1.pdf</a>> )</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Meaningful opposition at the political level has already occurred, just not among us "voters!"</div><div><br></div><div>GG</div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><br></div></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Verdana"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><br></span></font></div></body></html>