The internet at the periphery: between potential and concrete use

Abstract

: The internet at the periphery: between potential and concrete use — This article makes a critique of advertising and academic discourse that see in the internet a tool for the generalized expansion of the human potential. Based on a cleavage between a merely technical approach and the concrete and socially determined use of the net, an attempt is made to demonstrate the existence of external conditioning factors that hinder the emancipatory meaningful use of computer-mediated communication. This demonstration is based on an empirical study of adolescent frequenters of lan houses in the periphery of São Paulo, where the internet emerges almost exclusively as a form of light entertainment and as a reinforcement of preexisting social bonds, in contrast to the utopian ideas of knowledge expansion and of the construction of a “collective intelligence” that permeate the exalted imagination about the current technology.