Introduction

The information superhighway, also known as the infobahn or cyberspace [1], heralds the promise of information, entertainment, and democracy on demand. In recent years the promised new media has been announced in many forms. HDTV (high-definition television), 500 channel cable television service, VOD (video on demand) and even interactive home shopping have at one time or another promised freedom from what ails us. Now the latest savior is the set-top box and cable modem that will bring the WWW (World Wide Web), in all of its interactive multimediated glory, to your den or living room. In January of 1983, the still-wet-behind-the-ears PC (Personal Computer) became Time Magazine's first “Machine of the Year” and in just over a decade, 1994 marked the first year in which PCs out-sold TVs. With 40 million people on-line and growth at eight percent a month [2], the Web is a new media force not to be taken lightly. In the November 20, 1995 New York Times article, If Medium Is the Message, the Message Is the Web, John Markoff reported that the Web is poised to become the next mass medium. Markoff quoted Paul Saffo, a computer industry consultant at the Institute for the Future, who described the Web as "television colliding with the telephone party line." The article also quoted Clay Felker, director of the magazine program for the University of California at Berkeley's graduate journalism school, who said, "We are poised on the edge of a new medium...It's going to change the nature of how we acquire information." The recently announced joint venture between NBC and Microsoft is just another example of how this new medium is merging the old and the new.

Arguably the Web is just the latest in the parade of "infotainment" technologies that promise a new age of opportunity. Immediate access to information, entertainment, consumer products, and participation in the democratic process are just a mouse-click away. On the Internet, new social relationships and identities are formed and the cyber community nurtures new-found islands of collectivism. Instead of a top-down, one-to-many model of communication, the new paradigm is bottom-up, many-to-many. Technologists argue that "we are now outgrowing the nation-state and a new form of world order is emerging, a global village, a universal brotherhood or world government on a shrunken planet" (Carey, 1992, p. 170).

Of course such a utopian view is held by only the most optimistic citizens of cyberspace. Anyone who has endeavored to participate in this information revolution knows that its reality is sometimes virtual, and too often "virtue-less." As Clifford Stoll's book title would remind us, there is Silicon Snake Oil for sale, and it is available at a price we can not afford to pay. However, the speed at which the Internet is growing prevents us from turning aside. One cannot deny the millions of people who do believe in the Internet-people who have faith in the technology.

This essay will look at the new digital media, specifically the World Wide Web, in light of a philosophical perspective known as technological or media determinism. The author will attempt to analyze this phenomena within a historical context of technological determinism and media effects. The neutrality of the medium will be considered along with the accompanying ethical issues. Finally, the author will consider the philosophers and philosophical positions which are taken by those who wrestle with the issues raised by this collision of technology, media and society. Only after understanding the philosophical assumptions made by the technology itself, and by those who are creating and using the technology, can we begin to truly understand the value-laden choices that are ours to make.

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