The Political Economy of the Internet: Contesting Capitalism, the Spirit of Informationalism, and Virtual Learning Environments

In Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age the world is transformed by a series of events surrounding the creation of a virtual learning environment in the formof a book, The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. It is a story of power, liberation, social division, and transformation. It is a fable of information technology and virtual learning environments in which the dustpan world of Stephenson’s novel is overcome. The social structures that create the virtual learning environment are transformed by its creation, creating a population that are critically aware of their situation and what they can do to change it. Similarly, virtual learning environments are transforming learning and thus transforming the world and our understanding of it. Inherently these environments, like all technological environments, contain systemic, ideological biases, and assumptions. We need to be critically aware of these environments, their biases and assumptions and the world that creates, endorses, and in the end supports them, so that we have the ability to understand our responsibilities toward not merely their usage, but their creation, and what is built into them, the biases, values, and ideological positions.

For virtual learning, it is clear that human interests and social structures are politicized and embedded in the relationships of power found in the era of informational capitalism. The power is merely embedded not only in the social world, but also in our technics, our institutions, and our ecology. Informational capitalism has transformed the world and made it a more interesting and problematic place to live. In its moment, informational capitalism has transformed the landscape of education, brought about the advent of the virtual learning environments, a new contestation surfaces involving the manifold roles of information and knowledge, their centralization and distribution through society. In attempting to come to grips with these issues for virtual learning environments, I confront the spirit of informationalism as conceived by Manuel Castells. I question the explicit ideas for it in the context of online education as network enterprises.