> 1999.
By which I assume you mean the time when the Internet began growing rapidly.
When I joined the Institute for Global Communication (whose initials are still in my email address) in the late '80s (if I remember the date correctly), I also thought that computer networks would be a great boon to left activists. Just think -- one could write a leaflet in one part of the world and it could be downloaded and printed instantly anywhere else in the world. News about activities and ideas for action could be exchanged among many more people than ever before. And the Internet has certainly expanded these capabilities much more than I could have imagined then.
The problem, I think, is that all of these advantages are equally available to the center and the right, producing a standoff. In fact, given that the system has a constant tendency to push the average ideological state of mind in a population in the conservative direction, just by its very existence and power, advances in technology such as television and computer networks (and radio -- think of how much more powerful its effect in the hands of a Hitler or a Roosevelt was than in the hands of their left opponents) tend to favor the center and right. Oppositional trends, almost by definition, are always swimming upstream.
The same thing is true, BTW, about the various proposed schemes for changing the electoral system to one that would favor third parties more than the present one. Any change that favored left parties would favor right ones as much or more.
Somehow, there needs to be a massive shift of the whole ideological climate to the red end of the spectrum (or is it the "blue" end now? I'm getting confused by the color symbolism), but I don't see how it's going to come about. I don't think the Internet by itself will do it.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax