The Problem With the Plan to Give Internet Access to the Whole World

[Commentary] Like so much of the public sphere on both the political left and right, Lev Grossman in his lengthy Time magazine story on Mark Zuckerberg's coalition to bring the Internet to the entire world, Internet.org, simply finds himself unable to resist the grand ambitions of Silicon Valley late capitalists. The larger problem is that we, as both American society and as global elites, seem unable to put up any substantial opposition against large corporations and gazillionaires fortifying their skyscrapers of inequality as long as they can make even the flimsiest case that they’re contributing to the public good. Secular, pluralistic, do-as-you-please individualism is exactly the problem. Internet.org is development without representation. Internet.org is just another bid in Silicon Valley's land grab for the world's virgin eyeballs.

[Toyama is the W.K. Kellogg Chair Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information.]