It is argued that social inequalities and distinctions have remained untouched by massification of computer-based technologies and the Internet. There are many arguments to support this argument as well as counter arguments. There are many articles and discussions about this argument -the consequences of becoming an information society. This essay is written to explain the consequences of these processes analyzing the arguments and counterarguments emphasizing the changes in privacy, equality, exclusion, democracy, identity and sovereignty concepts.
First of all, the article "Disinformocracy" by Rheingold along with "Democracy and Cyberspace" by Moore draws a big picture of this subject matter. Rheingold began by giving a two-sided argument about cyberspace. The first one is that the cyberspace helps us to revise democracy on the other hand the second one is that the cyberspace can be persuading people attractively packaged substitute to democracy. The main question is what is the role of cyberspace in democracy? It is obvious that cyberspace-Internet has a democratic potential as it can be seen as a utopia of participatory democracy since everyone can say everything freely on the Internet. Nevertheless, what about equality? As it can be seen as an innovation, one has to keep in mind that many similar discussions made for steam, electricity and television. There are three different kinds of social criticisms of Internet as a means of enhancing democracy. First criticism is commodification of the public sphere by the commodification of Internet. To examine deeper, Rheingold argues that the cyberspace preempted public discussions because the Internet is used as a public sphere for people to create a public opinion and as it is commodified it is impossible to think about it as a public sphere. In addition, Moore argues that Internet is a marketplace where discourses (which are now publicities created by media or public relation cooperation) can be bougth and sold.
