302 Mediated Publics
democracy as well as the development of an accessible and participatory
ethos. It is this combination that precipitates the conditions of possibility
for an egalitarian social body.^8 Citizens must have not only the right to
vote but also the right and the ability to participate in dialogues that cre-
ate an “informed” public. Cybercafés, though they are still small in num-
ber relative to other types of public places, offer a critical new pathway
for equal access to emergent modes of communication and open flows of
information.
Public opinion and moral judgment of technology in Morocco
The speaker of this chapter’s first epigraph is a man named Hajj ‘Abd el-
Khabir.^9 A respected landowner and patriarch, Hajj was born in Agadir,
south of Morocco, though he has lived in Casablanca for the past forty of
his sixty-seven years. Since he has made the hajj to Mecca (twice no less),
he is referred to by other men and appropriate family members as Hajj
or Hajji.^10 We met at a French-styled salon de thé that Hajj owns in the
Maarif quarter of the city just two weeks before the September 11 attacks
on the World Trade Center. In the year that followed, Hajj and I became
friends, and I was often invited to take tea or have dinner with him sur-
rounded by his wife, children and grandchildren in his home. Like many
of the Moroccans I spoke with during that first year of what Americans
now refer to as the “War on Terror,” Hajj was deeply concerned with how
Morocco would be positioned globally as an African-Arab Muslim nation
in a post-9/11 world. The issue of how to effectively compete in a global
economy impacted by an American- and British-led war on Arab terror-
ists in particular was paramount. But this issue was inevitably framed
by another pressing concern: how to maintain strong signs of a “Muslim
Moroccan” identity while inviting modernity and economic growth.
ajj’s perspective on technology is a succinct echo of a sentiment H
that I heard frequently from Moroccans. During the course of interviews
with underemployed college graduates, stay-at-home mothers, esteemed
professionals and uneducated members of the working poor, I was sur-
prised by their common perspective on technological tools as moralized
objects. In their view, technology is a transfer of knowledge from Allah to