If aliens were to land on Earth tomorrow, and tap into the Internet to try to determine the political values of this planet's denizens, they'd get a pretty distorted picture. But then again, if they monitored our television and radio broadcasts, they'd get a different but equally distorted picture. Here's why:

Broadcast media are a limited resource. To get on them, you need (a) money, and (b) the tolerance of those who own the infrastructure. Most broadcasters reject “advocacy ads” (at least from political groups outside a limited norm–and then usually only in the form of political campaign ads). So the set of voices that get on the air is very, very limited.

The Internet, on the other hand, is the land of open access to media. Someone with a modicum of technical expertise, access to an Internet-connected terminal, and enough free time can create a media outlet near or on par with those of the big media companies. The floor is open to whoever wants to shout. So every viewpoint (no matter how small the group) is represented equally–at least in theory.

In fact, it's a little different. The politics of the technically proficient deviate substantially from the “norm” (if there is a norm) of political thought, not that there's anything wrong with that. Most techies, in my experience, tend on average to be mostly libertarian, free-market, marketplace-of-ideas, information-wants-to-be-free, do-your-own-thing-in-the-privacy-of-your-own-home kind of people (if you can make any generalization about them, which is a dangerous pastime to begin with). But Internet politics–and blogs–tend to amplify the extremes of the spectrum.

I think that's a good thing–except in the most extreme cases, where the arguments spill into the physical world with violence and hate. Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis; the clash of ideas creates new ideas, as long as the guns and knives don't come out in the process. Dead and dying ideas (like fascism, racism, et al) tend to resurrect themselves mostly in places where information is controlled and limited; they don't do well in an open marketplace.

The problem is, despite the Internet's world reach, it still can't reach the majority of the people in the world without somehow capturing the attention of traditional media, which still own the “last mile” to the vast majority of the people on earth. The Internet is still guerilla media, and 'blogs effectively still have the same reach as the 'zines in alternative bookstores. So the dead ideas keep rising from the dead, to be defeated anew in the light of day but living on in the shade.

That's why an open Internet is so important. That's why corporate control of media is so insidious. That's why the Internet, despite its technical basis, is a political creature, and why the governments of countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba (and, yes, the United States) want to limit how much of the Internet reaches their citizens, and keeps a close tab on what passes over it.