There's an important revolution going on in the world today. It's being driven by new developments in information technology and the far-reaching economic changes they have caused. Digitalized knowledge has now become the major component in the production of new wealth. The information society is supplanting industrial society as surely as industrial society replaced agrarian society.

The depth of these changes, however, has been largely ignored by much of the left community. At best, most consider them as "secondary aspect" to more traditional notions of class struggle and capitalist crisis, rather than as a new tidal wave sweeping through history. At worst, those who focus on the information revolution are dismissed as "technological determinists" or elitists of one variety or another.

We want to change this situation. We think the time has come to create a self-conscious current within the broader progressive movement that grasps the decisive importance of the information revolution. We want to help facilitate an ongoing investigation and debate into the impact of that revolution on the prospects for both capitalism and socialism. In addition, we want to put that discussion into the center of the debate on the left's agenda.

Our basic analysis stresses the revolutionary change in the means of production in which information technologies are the driving force behind the creation of new value in society. The changes here are having a dramatic impact on both the relations of production and the nature of work. There are new social divisions being created along with a realignment of classes and strata around many critical issues. The ground for organizing the class struggle is shifting; there are new dangers of prolonged joblessness, repression, chauvinism and war. But there are also new opportunities creating new possibilities for a democratic and ecologically sustainable socialism. These require new approaches to strategy, tactics and methods of work and organization.

We propose cy.Rev as one forum for this discussion and as a tool to help organize this current of thought. We would like to publish 4 or 6 times a year, primarily as an electronic 'zine, available for downloading or on disk, with a limited hard copy production primarily for bookstores. We will make one version of the 'zine in plain ASCII and another formatted for laser printing. Since what we will be able to do depends largely on your response, we are launching the journal without a hard schedule for future issues right away.

We want to expand our editorial board as soon as possible. We need quickly to grow far beyond our initiating group in Chicago, both across the U.S. and around the world. If you want to nominate yourself or recommend someone else, please contact us. Our criteria for board membership are two: general agreement with our political perspective and willingness to contribute time and energy to the project. This means finding, writing, reviewing and editing articles, as well as raising money and increasing circulation.

We are excited about cy.Rev's prospects and the challenge of building a new political trend. We hope you join us.

Initiators: Carl Davidson, Ivan Handler, Jerry Harris.
Managing Editor: Carl Davidson.