Chapter 1 – A Peasant’s Kingdom
The Internet is an information highway in which a person can access a vast amount of information by way of a computer, phone and tablet, to retrieve valuable data, evidence, facts, news, and socially interact with people around the world. It is a democratizing way for the world to connect with one another and be free to do so. In Astra Taylor’s The People’s Platform, Taking Back Power and Culture in a Digital Age, Chapter one’s “Peasant Kingdom” , Taylor gives us the beginning of the spot lighted take on how we are not as free as we thought in the new age of technology and information sharing. In fact, Taylor explains that the democratic audience of the information highway is nothing more than a repressive state of people who fall in the scheme of things by Capitalists endeavors, without any knowledge of it. A Peasant Kingdom starts to explain how we are pawns of Capitalists schemes, which use us as for capital gain. It was interesting to me how Taylor explains how “The online sphere inspires incessant talk of gift economies and public spiritedness and democracy, but commercialism and privatization and inequality lurk beneath the surface”. After reading this chapter, I’ve taken a closer look at the purpose of it all, and I start to question, just how free am I in this capitalist society? When I think further, I realize that this is a kingdom of Capitalism perpetuated by Dictators who look at us as peasants who will use us to help them to gain more power.
