Techno-liberalism is good – Tech is inevitable and has liberatory potential—but elites will use it if we don’t. The alt throws away critical tools to develop techno-literacy and empower radical struggles.

Since media and digital technologies are in any case dramatically transforming every sphere of life, the key challenge is how to theorize this great transformation and how to devise strategies to make productive use of the emergent technologies. Obviously, radical critiques of dehumanizing, exploitative, and oppressive uses of diverse technologies in the workplace, schooling, public sphere, and everyday life are more necessary than ever, but so are strategies that use emergent technologies to rebuild our cities, schools, economy, and society. I want to focus, therefore, in the remainder of this section on how diverse technologies can be used for increasing democratization and empowering individuals. In previous articles (Kellner 1995, 1996, 1998a), I have argued that new technologies are creating a new public sphere, a new realm of cyberdemocracy, and are thus challenging public intellectuals to gain technoliteracy and to make use of the new technologies for promoting progressive causes and social transformation—themes that I develop in later chapters of this book.

Given the extent to which capital and its logic of commodification have colonized ever more areas of everyday life in recent years, it is somewhat astonishing that cyberspace is by and large decommodified for large numbers of people—at least in the overdeveloped countries like the United States. In the U.S., government and educational institutions, and some businesses, provide free Internet access and in some cases free computers, or at least workplace access. With flat-rate monthly phone bills (which I know do not exist in much of the world), or connections to a business, University, or organization that provides free computer use, one can thus have access to a cornucopia of information and entertainment on the Internet for free, one of the few decommodified spaces in the ultracommodified world of technocapitalism.

Obviously, large sections of the world do not even have telephone service, much less computers, and there are vast inequalities in terms of who has access to computers and who participates in the technological revolution and cyberdemocracy today. Critics of digital technologies and cyberspace repeat incessantly that it is by and large young, white, middle or upper class males who are the dominant players in the cyberspaces of the present, and while this was once true, statistics and surveys indicate that many more women, people of color, seniors, and other minority categories are becoming increasingly active.Footnote 18 Moreover, it appears that computers and a diversity of digital devices are becoming part of the standard household consumer package and are as common as television sets in the contemporary moment, and certainly more important for work, social life, and education than the TV set. In addition, there are plans afoot to wire the entire world with satellites that would make the Internet and communication revolution accessible to people who do not now even have telephones, televisions, or even electricity.

However widespread and common—or not—computers and digital technologies become, it is clear that they are of essential importance for labor, politics, education, and social life, and that people who want to participate in the public and cultural life of the future will need to have computer access and digital literacies. Moreover, although there is the threat and real danger that the computerization of society will increase the current inequalities and inequities in the configurations of class, race, and gender power, there is the possibility that a democratized and digitized public sphere might provide opportunities to overcome these inequities. I will accordingly address below and in following chapters some of the ways that oppressed and disempowered groups are using the digital technologies and social media to advance their interests and progressive political agendas. Yet first I want to dispose of another frequent criticism of the Internet and computer activism.

Critics of the Internet and cyberdemocracy frequently point to the corporate origins of the ‘net and its central role in the practices of dominant corporate and state powers. Yet it is amazing that the Internet for large numbers is decommodified and is becoming increasingly decentralized, becoming open to more voices and groups. Thus, cyberdemocracy and the Internet should be seen as a site of struggle, as a contested terrain, and progressives should look to its possibilities for resistance and circulation of struggle. Dominant corporate and state powers, as well as conservative and rightist groups, have been making serious use of media and digital technologies to advance their agendas and if progressives want to become players in the political battles of the future they must devise ways to use these technologies to advance a progressive agenda and the interests of the oppressed and forces of resistance and struggle.

There are by now copious examples of how the Internet, social media, and cyberdemocracy have been used in progressive political struggles. A large number of insurgent intellectuals are already making use of these technologies and public spheres in their political projects. The peasants and guerrilla armies struggling in Chiapas, Mexico from the beginning used computer data bases, guerrilla radio, and other forms of media to circulate their struggles and ideas. Every manifesto, text, and bulletin produced by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation who occupied land in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas in 1994 was immediately circulated through the world via computer networks. In January 1995, the Mexican government moved against the movement and computer networks were used to inform and mobilize individuals and groups throughout the world to support the Zapatistas struggles against repressive Mexican government action.Footnote 19 There were many demonstrations in support of the rebels throughout the world, prominent journalists, human rights observers, and delegations travelled to Chiapas in solidarity and to report on the uprising, and the Mexican and U.S. governments were bombarded with messages arguing for negotiations rather than repression; the Mexican government accordingly backed off their repression of the insurgents and as of this writing in January 2021, they have continued to negotiate with them.

Moreover, a series of struggles around gender, sex, and race are also mediated by digital communications technologies, including in the last years of the Trump administration the Dreamer, #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and Trump Resistance movements. Earlier, after the 1991 Clarence Thomas Hearings in the United States on his fitness to be Supreme Court Justice, Thomas's assault on claims of sexual harassment by Anita Hill and others, and the failure of the almost all male US Senate to disqualify the obviously unqualified Thomas (see Hill 1998), prompted women to use computer and other technologies to attack male privilege in the political system in the United States and to rally women to support women candidates. The result in the 1992 election was the election of more women candidates than in any previous election and a general rejection of conservative rule, and eventually several women Supreme Court Justices appointed to the court.

Many feminists have established websites, mailing lists, and other forms of cybercommunication to circulate their struggles.Footnote 20 Younger women, once deploying the concept of “riotgrrrls,” have created electronically-mediated ‘zines, web sites, and discussion groups to promote their ideas and to discuss their problems and struggles. African-American women, Latinas, and other groups of women have been developing web sites and discussion lists to advance their interests. And AIDS and other health activists have used digital technologies and social media to disseminate and discuss medical information and to activate their constituencies for courses of political action and struggle—an effort especially relevant during the 2020–2021 Global COVID-19 pandemic which has disproportionally hit communities of color.

Likewise, African-American insurgent intellectuals have made use of broadcast and computer technologies to promote their struggles in movements from the 1980s through Black Lives Matter (Kellner and Satchel 2019). John Fiske (1994) has described some African-American radio projects in the “technostruggles” of the present age and the central role of the media in struggles around race and gender. African-American “knowledge warriors” have been using radio, computer networks, and other media to circulate their ideas and counter-knowledge on a variety of issues, contesting the mainstream and offering alternative views and politics. In addition, activists in communities of color—like Oakland, Harlem, and Los Angeles—have been setting up community computer and media centers to teach the skills necessary to survive the onslaught of the mediazation of culture and computerization of society to people in their communities.

Obviously, rightwing and reactionary groups can and have used the digital technologies to promote their political agendas as well. In a short time, one can easily access an exotic witch's brew of ultraright websites maintained by the Ku Klux Klan, myriad neo-Nazi groups including Aryan Nation and various Patriot militia groups, which have become all-too-visible during the Trump era in which miscreants such as the Proud Boys, QAnon conspiracy nuts, and other far-right groups of the Trump Storm Troopers who have gained media access, support, and a dark legitimacy through their embrace by Trump and his followers on the right. Internet discussion lists also promote these views and the far right is extremely active on many Internet forums, as well as having their radio programs and stations, public access television programs, video, and even rock music production. These groups are hardly harmless, having promoted terrorism of various sorts ranging from church burnings to the bombings of public buildings, and in 2021 included the invasion of Congress. Adopting quasi-Leninist discourse and tactics for ultraright causes, these extremist groups have been successful in recruiting working class members devastated by the developments of global capitalism which have resulted in widespread unemployment for traditional forms of industrial, agricultural, and unskilled labor.

In the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, social media played a major role in disseminating misinformation about Hillary Clinton and electing Donald Trump, while throughout Trump’s reign his shock troops were spurred to acts of violence by Trump’s daily incendiary Twitter feeds, a danger that continues as Trump is driven out of office after his defeat by Joe Biden, as he refuses to concede the election while claiming it was fraudulent, keeps his storm troopers riled up and ready for disruption, leading to a White Riot and occupation of the Capital on January 6, 2021, driving the Democrats to impeach Trump for the second time.Footnote 21

The Internet and technoculture is thus a contested terrain, used by Left, Right, and Center to promote their own agendas and interests. The political battles of the future may well be fought in the streets, factories, parliaments, and other sites of past struggle, but political struggle today is already mediated by media, computer, and information technologies and will increasingly be so in the future. Those interested in the politics and culture of the future should therefore be clear on the important role of the new public spheres and intervene accordingly.

Some Concluding Remarks

In the light of the projects of technocapitalism and rightwing politicians and regimes to dismantle the Welfare State, it is up to citizens to create new public spheres, new politics, and to use the digital technologies and social media to discuss what kinds of society we want and to oppose the society we don't want, to demand more education, health care, welfare, and benefits from the state, and to struggle to create a more democratic and egalitarian society. Yet one cannot expect that generous corporations and a beneficent state are going to make available to citizens the bounties and benefits of the evolving info-technological economy. Rather, it is up to individuals and groups to promote democratization and progressive social change.

Thus, to globalization from above of corporate capitalism, one could support a globalization from below, from individuals and groups in struggle using the digital technologies and social media to create a more egalitarian and democratic society (see Chap. 6). Individuals and groups all over the world are using digital technologies and social media to advance progressive goals and the new public spheres of cyberspace are more open to cultural and intellectual intervention than the media spaces controlled by the giant corporations. Social struggles ranging from native peoples in the Mexican state of Chiapas, to dockworkers in London, to oppressed peoples of North Africa, to anti-corporate campaigns worldwide against McDonald's and Nike, to recent struggles by Dreamers, #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter have used digital technologies against the dominant corporate powers. Moreover, groups like African-Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, and others excluded from the democratic dialogue are using digital technologies and social media to promote democratization and advance their interests.

Of course, the digital technologies might exacerbate existing inequalities in the current class, gender, race, and regional configurations of power and give major and statist and corporate forces powerful tools to advance their interests, as well as providing hostile states weapons to engage in asymmetrical warfare against the U.S. and other democratic countries. In this situation, it is up to the people, to us, to devise strategies to use digital technologies and social media to promote democratization and progressive social change. For as digital technologies become ever more central to every domain of everyday life, developing a progressive technopolitics in the digital public spheres will become more and more important.

Changes are certainly happening, we are undergoing a Great Transformation, but we are, I believe, too early in this adventure to determine its structure and the ways that it is transforming social relations, cultural forms, and effecting everyday life, and “creative destruction,” innovation, and dramatic changes of the technoculture have characterized it from the beginning and no doubt will continue to do so. It is clear, however, that a technological revolution has been going on, that it has already had massive effects, and that it is a great challenge to us concerning how we will theorize and actually use digital technologies—or whether they and the forces that control them will themselves use us in their projects and we will uncritically surrender to the technoculture and the objects it keeps providing us.

Thus, it is not only a challenge to social theorists to theorize the always expanding digital technologies and their effects, and to activists to devise strategies for using technology and social media to promote progressive political change, but it is a challenge to each individual to determine how they will live with digital technologies and cyberspaces, how they will themselves deploy them, and whether digital technologies in their lives will ultimately be empowering or disempowering, and democratizing or de-democratizing. For as long as human beings have vision, goals, and autonomy, we can design, shape, and restructure our technologies, as well as being shaped and constrained by them.