Marx believed colonial railroads and newspapers would unify India, mirroring internet promises.
Evidence
Karl Marx himself believed the railroad and the newspaper would help to politically unify India. This list of effects and hopes seems to closely mirror those surrounding the internet. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 319
Categorization
- XREF: Ties to the reader’s attention/surveillance frame: Marx’s technological optimism about railroads parallels early internet utopianism — both critiqued as underestimating infrastructural power asymmetries. — connects to: Marx framed British colonial rule in India as a destructive yet redemptive mission
- CANDY: Marx as railroad booster — a fun, surprising historical tidbit about the supposed father of anti-colonial critique.