Net Tarot in New Delhi

This paper examines the future of the internet in the developing world by examining the discourse of advertising. Based on a visual record of New Delhi and textual analysis of advertisements in a mass circulated Indian newspaper and magazine, it suggests that there is a need to rethink the discourse of digital celebration and euphoria that has accompanied the internet in the developing world, especially India. It argues that the themes emergent in the advertising of internet firms provide for a vision of the future of the internet which reifies issues of linguistic hegemony, technological solutions, a consumerist (rather than a citizenry) culture, and reiteration of the traditional discourses of masculinity and class. It suggests that we think about the future of internet technology in the developing world as intimately connected with issues of global capitalism and cultural hegemony in place of a focus on objects of technological innovation or individual innovators of technology.