[this is one of a series of posts that I did while a student in Nicco Mele‘s class at Harvard in 2013]

Techno-Utopians exist because new technology almost always brings the promise of a new, hopefully better world. This is especially true of the disruptive technologies of the Internet, which seem to hold the opportunity to disrupt rapidly calcifying class structures throughout the world.

But why haven’t Internet technologies had more of a leveling effect? Are they really so different from everything that’s come before when it has become clear that the elites have co-opted largest share of technological gains to support their own position. Sure, there has been a shuffling of the elites with nerds-from-privileged-backgrounds rising and the standard bankers, dictators, and CEOs forced to make room. If all the Internet has done is allow the children of millionaires to become billionaires, there’s a lot more it can do to change society.

Part of the problem, the thing that turns our utopia into a potential distopia, is that traditional elites have been, by far, better positioned to take advantage of the new technologies than the people at the bottom of the social ladder – and these vested interests have used those technologies, not to level the playing field, but to shore up their own positions. The Internet held the promise of allowing people, regardless of class, to take control of their own destinies by forming new and strong networks to help them advance their own interests. It is fundamentally important to ask why that hasn’t happened yet (if it hasn’t), whether it can, and if so, how.