Three attitudes toward the Internet

From Philippe Breton’s The Culture of the Internet and the Internet as Cult: Social Fears and Religious Fantasies, forthcoming from Litwin Books:

One may distinguish three positions grosso modo: first the “Internet-for-everything” militants, proselytes (sometimes unknowingly) of a new cult. Then there are the technophobes, hostile to all technology. Finally, there are those who think that a rational use of technology may under certain conditions be a factor of progress. Those who take the first attitude appear to be the majority, and their point of view tends to become the “dominant ideology” in this area, the only possible and legitimate manner of regarding the question, to the point that they often cannot even imagine that there could be any other. Those with the second attitude are more numerous than they appear. Through philosophy, ignorance or simply irritation, with a sort of passive resistance, underground but effective, they oppose the diffusion of the new information technologies. The third position, held by those who tend to take a measured view of technology, is still largely undeveloped. Such a position is often formed of multiple experiences that are difficult to unify. It rests on humanist values that are difficult to affirm, and of which some are today in crisis.