Digital Grab: Corporate Power Has Seized the Internet

Click here to access article by Norman Solomon from Global Research.

Huge corporations are now running roughshod over the Internet. At the illusion-shattering core of Digital Disconnect are a pair of chapters on what corporate power has already done to the Internet — the relentless commercialism that stalks every human online, gathering massive amounts of information to target people with ads; the decimation of privacy; the data mining and surveillance; the direct cooperation of Internet service providers, search engine companies, telecomm firms and other money-driven behemoths with the U.S. military and “national security” state; the ruthless insatiable drive, led by Apple, Google, Microsoft and other digital giants, to maximize profits.

People so often forget, or never understood, that a social system consists of many subsystems all of which must be mostly compatible with the major organizing system of a society. In our contemporary societies this organizing system is capitalism. It was established by a certain class of people who became known as capitalists for their benefit. Hence, it is not surprising that the world wide web has gradually developed into mainly a vehicle for the private accumulation of wealth. Still it provides a very useful vehicle for social change; and to the extent it does so, we will see increasing attacks made against the dissemination of information that even questions the major organizing system.