In looking for ways to create a context in which humanity can find trajectories towards social change it is crucial to recognize the hyper-reality of today’s global audiovisual culture. The realm of the hyper-real (i.e., reality-based TV shows, Hollywood movies, Disneyland, TV commercials, free-market utopia and other excursions into ideal worlds) is more real than real, whereby the models, images, and codes of the hyper-real come to control thought and behavior. This is the pedagogy of hyper-reality. The Internet has become the portal to deliver this pedagogy around the clock in measured time and asynchronously in “real” time.
Many individuals, full of anxiety about their existence, flee from what Baudrillard called, “desert of the real” for the ecstasies of hyper-reality and the new realm of computer generated motion pictures, and technological experience. What is at stake is the loss of meaning and spirituality of humanity. Neoliberalism has contributed greatly to this condition and agents of social change must pay close attention to neoliberal thinking. Understanding the Internet, which can be used to combat hyper-reality, is absolutely crucial to intellectuals who are concerned about bringing social change to the planet. The techno-savvy planetary citizen can greatly benefit from “pedagogy” of the Internet for delivering the truth and connecting emancipatory movements. The role of the ethical intellectual in this realm becomes one of a learner of fast evolving technology (i.e., the Internet) and also a producer of theories that can in turn help others to better understand the complexities of the Internet and its relations to reality and hyper-reality. Such knowledge production helps the planetary citizen to usher in social transformation.