Chapter Seven of Overselling the Web? notes the long tradition of linking technological advance to dramatic social change --stretching back to the Communist Manifesto which suggested that railways were catalysts to revolution. And it is hard to argue with the fact there have been significant social changes as a result of the Internet. But you only have to read Mike Daisey's description of working at Amazon.com to realize they aren't all good:
On weekends I loved Amazon and I would speak at great and windy length …’God, I love my company, I love working, it’s so great, we’re making history’… But when I came into work I flipped –while there I hated the place, hated the phone and the email and the endless tracking...
Similarly, there are arguments on both sides regarding the impact of the Internet on political advance. Perhaps the Internet will spawn a technological dystopia rather than universal liberalism.
Regardless, these arguments largely apply to rich countries, where intensive Internet use is ubiquitous. For good or ill, most people in poor countries are some distance from hours in front of the interactive telescreen. For poor countries it is likely that the most significant impact of the Internet will be economic. And we have seen that even this impact is likely to be comparatively muted. There are important roles for the Internet in developing countries, both in the private and public sector, and some applications will have considerable rates of return, but the enabling environment is not such as to make it a revolutionary technology in either a social or economic sense. The book concludes by quoting Bill Gates (wearing his philanthropy hat):
I am suggesting that if somebody is interested in equity that you wouldn't spend more than 20 percent of your time talking about access to computers, that you'd get back to literacy and health and things like that. So the balance that makes sense is that more money should be spent on malaria...