This is the second posting from the MOOC Edx course on globalisation from the University of Texas at Austin.

Early visions of the globalisation by the internet were full of the promise for doing good and a vehicle of mutual understanding across national and cultural borders. Now there is pessimism among many that regard the internet as an open sewer, an "electronic conduit of untreated, unfiltered information". I suppose it is not surprising that the entire human condition with racial hatreds and criminal ambitions would not be uploaded to cyberspace. In some ways, global satellite TV and internet access have actually made the world a less understanding, a less tolerant place. "What the media provide is superficial familiarity, images without context, indignation without remedy".

Furthermore the internet is now being used "to manipulate the system of values and mores of a society, in order to create and establish a ruling-class". The internet is now, in fact, a surveillance engine for the power elite. For more --- watch the talk by Professor John Hoberman.