One might :find better reasons to disagree with .me when one focuses on the role of the Internet in mass mobilizations, in connecting activists from al over the world, and in providing an independent media source. The mobilzation on February 15, 2003, of ten million people worldwide to protest the Bush administration's push for war against Iraq is perhaps the most striking example, but one might also mention MoveOn's candlelight vigil on March $^ { 1 6 , }$ an action involving over a milion people in 130 countries. Such uses of the Internet are vitally important for po\_litical activists-especially given the increasingly all-pervasive reach of corporate-controlled media. But these examples fail to address the question of whether such instances of intense social meaning drive larger organizational eforts and contribute to the formation of political solidarities with more duration. At the end of the first decade of the new millennium, there is little evidence that they do. $\mathrm { O n }$ the contrary, left activists seem ever more drawn to spectacular events that raise awareness, momentarily, but do little in the way of building the institutions necessary to sustain a new political order. Networked communication technologies materialize democracy as a political form that formats political energies as communicative engagements. Valued as the key to political inclusion and democratic participation, new media technologies strengthen the hold of neoliberalism and the privilege of the top 1 percent of people on the planet. At the same time, globally networked communications remain the very tools and terrains of struggle, making political change more dificult -and more necessary-than ever before.
TECHNOLOGY
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