Geert Lovink posted a review of Nick Carr's new book to he nettime list the other day. The book sounds reasonably interesting and Lovink clearly thinks highly of the author, but the closing sentences of his review stick out for me:

"This is the risk of criticism as a genre when it disconnects from progressive movements and locks itself up in an elitist hide-out. However messy the situation, we have to promote the Internet as a tool for global mass education[...] Sinking prices for storage, traffic and data processing result in data centres and new monopolies, but these developments are only a result of much broader policies—and it is time a new generation of net critics to situate the medium into the techno-social context it now operates in."

I am a firm believer that when it comes to internet/new media criticism, engagement with media and the social/political contexts surrounding them is absolutely necessary. To distance oneself in this field is to condemn your participation to the sidelines and if anything academics and critics have an opportunity with these still-nascent media to effect change, the likes of which we have not seen for some time.