Lovink, Geert. (2002). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
List Price $27.95, 394 Pages
Review by Jennifer Guy-Cain
Jenngc0013@yahoo.com
Posted: February 10, 2003 Student Affairs Online, vol. 4 no. 1 - Winter 2003
Posted: February 10, 2003 Student Affairs Online, vol. 4 no. 1 (Spring 2003)
Dark Fiber:
Tracking Critical Internet Culture (2002) by Geert Lovink documents the
history of Internet culture and contains hypotheses about the future of
Internet culture. The author approaches many different topics in this book,
from language and the constraints that it has on the Internet, moderated chat
rooms, to how the Internet was used during the Kosovo war. In the introduction, the author states, “The
texts assembled here point to the economic and political bias and blind spots
of the still dominant cyber-libertarian ideology” (p. 1). Dark Fiber does, indeed, provide a very thorough investigation of
the economic and political bias on the Internet throughout the entire text.
Some
of the information found in this book is an interesting commentary on what
student affairs professionals and students may find in their daily use of the
Internet. For example, in the chapter “Sweet Erosions of Email,” Lovink
discusses how unwanted mail (junk mail) in email is beginning to slow down the
response time. He states that the full mailboxes many people encounter are
becoming a stressor rather than fulfilling the original intent of making them
more productive. His hypothesis is that there will be more filters for email to
try to eliminate unwanted email. Another example of a chapter that student
affairs professionals may find useful is “Meetspace.” In this chapter the
author discusses how the Internet can influence and affect the format of
meetings and conferences.
Dark Fiber, however, is
largely a commentary on the relationship between politics and the Internet.
Therefore, while some chapters can assist student affairs professionals in
understanding the Internet and the Internet culture, much of the content in the
book does not really focus on issues which student affairs administrators would
encounter.