Internet causes divisions, warns French journalist

Christian Century, Jan 6, 1999

One of France's leading journalists has warned an international gathering of Lutheran theologians that new "global" technologies, such as the Internet, are creating new social divisions rather than bringing people together. Ignacio Ramonet, editorial director of the prestigious monthly publication Le Monde Diplomatique, contended that the Internet is creating a new inequality between the "info-rich" and the "info-poor"--"not only in the northern hemisphere, within developed countries, where only a minority possess a personal computer, but above all in the southern hemisphere, where the lack of even the most basic equipment marginalizes millions of people."

Ramonet made his comments in Wittenberg, Germany; to a conference organized by the Lutheran World Federation to look at the relevance of the insights of Martin Luther's theology of "justification" for today's world. According to a background paper produced by the LWF about the meeting, "the Reformation was successful only due to the invention of the printing press, which created a new public. Luther recognized the power of the mass media to influence the public-awareness process."

Similar access to the means of communication are not assured today, Ramonet suggested: "We're told that there are few telephone lines in the poor countries, and we know that it is impossible to access the Internet without a telephone connected to a computer, not to mention the absence of electrical supplies--more than 2,000 million people have no electricity--or the disastrous problem of illiteracy."

Ramonet also warned that the new communication technologies are leading to "massive concentrations between the giants of telephone, cable operators, information technology, advertising, video and the cinema." And: "Some people are dreaming of a perfect market of information and communication, completely integrated thanks to electronic networks and satellites, without borders and functioning permanently in real time." Such developments, Ramonet said, sound chillingly similar to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley's warnings of futures in which information technology plays a key role in totalitarian control.--ENI