Internet: Knowledge and Community

at The Evergreen State College

Positive vs. negative anarchy

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Gordom Graham explains that anarchy can be "good" in that it connotes freedom and liberation from previous confines. It can however, be "bad" in that it presents the possibility of lawlessness. By the end of Chapter 5, Graham concludes that the internet is in fact anarchy in the "bad" sense because it promotes moral fragmentation rather than moral community. "Such a fragmentation is anarchic in the bad sense, since it is a means for the release and conluence of untutored desires of any and every kind" (100). He does however, warn against such assertions as being overly alarmist for two reasons:It is falsely assumed that the internet is unregulated and unregulatable; and it is falsey assumed that the internet is a world unto itself operating independently. (101)