Representing the Israeli Internet: The Press, the Pioneers and the Practitioners

Abstract

This article investigates the values associated with the early Internet in Israel. Given that the Internet was imported from the United States, it asks whether the techno-utopian discursive style surrounding the Internet in that country was imported to Israel too. Representations of the Internet are analyzed among three groups of actors: the press saw it in utopian terms, Israel’s “Internet pioneers” described its importance in a combination of religious and nationalist terms, and the owners of Israel’s first ISPs attributed no values to it at all. It would appear that the closer we get to the actual provision of the Internet to people’s homes, the less likely we are to find techno-utopian representations of it.