Cybersalons and Civil Society: Rethinking the Public Sphere in Transnational Technoculture

Recently, I checked out the discussion lists on Borders Books’s on-line magazine Salon. I had enjoyed Salon’s commentary on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, so I was optimistic about their discussion groups.1 There were hundreds of options. I could chat about the challenges of mothering, debate current events, or analyze television shows. I joined the group on current political and cultural events. Again, there were abundant possibilities: gay parents, gays in the military, gay schoolteachers—the very range of options on queer matters suggested the prevalence of contemporary cultural anxieties around perceived threats to straight sex, anxieties that easily exceeded the ostensible terms and terrain of debate. After noticing that most of these “discussions” were voyeuristic excuses to gay bash or painstakingly detail a variety of sexual practices and positions, I went to a group considering the pros and cons of establishing English as the official language of the United States. I found it difficult to follow—or find—the logic of the discussion. Few of the comments seemed relevant, and few offered reasons to justify a position or arguments to counter an opposing viewpoint. One