Overview
As computer technologies and the internet have had an impact on all
social institutions they have impacted upon forms of government. In
particular the technologies appear to enable democratic processes.
It is not that computer technologies are supportive of democracy without
exception. There is the threat to privacy and with that the threat
to the freedom of communication needed for free associations to form and
flourish and present critiques of government. Never the less there
is quite a bit about the technologies that may be termed "democratic" in
their implications and adaptations.
Democracy
The Information Revolution and Human Values
by Terrell
Ward Bynum
Abstract -
Full Paper
The
ETHICOMP Journal Vol. 1 No. 1, published: 2004-02-02
One of the core values in most contemporary societies
is democracy, and central to democracy is the idea of "fair elections".
If elections are unfair, then there is no real democracy. Americans have
a good idea of what a fair election is, but in 1980 something happened
in the US presidential election that caused one to rethink the very
concept of "a fair election" (Moor 1985). By 1980, information
technology in America had reached a point where one could rapidly
collect nationwide information from "exit polls", that is information
from voters who had just voted and were leaving the polling places. Such
voters were asked whether they voted for Ronald Reagan or for Jimmy
Carter and why. The results were put into a computer and processed by an
algorithm. By late afternoon on election day, it was already clear from
this process that Ronald Reagan would win and Jimmy Carter would lose.
Before many polling places had closed across America, national news
networks announced that Reagan had won the election. Consequently, a
number of people who had planned to vote decided not to do so. They said
to themselves, "Ronald Reagan has already won. Why should I vote?" But
while such people did not vote for president, they also did not vote for
Senator, they did not vote for congressman, they did not vote for
governor or mayor or the school board, they did not vote for anyone. As
a result a number of elections were changed because many people who
would have gone to the polls did not go. Was that a fair election? Most
people thought that it wasn't, and the national news media soon adopted
a new policy to avoid naming a winner until after all relevant voting
places were closed. The notion of a "fair election" came into question
because of the impact of information technology.
Another central concept in modern democracies is that
of "representative democracy" where voters elect representatives to vote
on their behalf, rather than having to vote on every issue themselves.
Legislators are elected to represent their constituents, and only the
legislators themselves vote on all issues from day to day. In England in
1996 there were experiments with information technology which called
into question the very idea of representative democracy. Certain members
of Parliament were "wired" to their constituents so that any time there
was a public issue voters could instantly send e-mail. The Parliament
member could simply go to his or her computer and find out what the
constituents thought. But in a representative democracy, one elects a
legislator for a certain amount of time, and one expects the legislator
to take responsibility and make reasoned judgments. At times the
legislator's judgment may go against what the people think. In such a
circumstance, it takes leadership and political courage to make an
unpopular decision. But because of information technology, it may now be
possible to have a "pure democracy" in the sense that anytime there is
an issue all the voters can tell the representative what to do. Is this
a good idea? Here again, the very idea of democracy must be rethought
because of information technology.
In the
The Virtual Community
by
Howard Rheingold READ Chapter
Ten: Disinformocracy the section titled
The Selling of Democracy: Commodification and the Public Sphere
There is an intimate connection between informal
conversations, the kind that take place in communities and virtual
communities, in the coffee shops and computer conferences, and the
ability of large social groups to govern themselves without monarchs or
dictators. This social-political connection shares a metaphor with the
idea of cyberspace, for it takes place in a kind of virtual space that
has come to be known by specialists as the public sphere.
Here is what the preeminent contemporary writer about
the public sphere, social critic and philosopher
Jurgen Habermas,
had to say about the meaning of this abstraction:
By "public sphere," we mean first of all a domain
of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be
formed. Access to the public sphere is open in principle to all
citizens. A portion of the public sphere is constituted in every
conversation in which private persons come together to form a public.
They are then acting neither as business or professional people
conducting their private affairs, nor as legal consociates subject to
the legal regulations of a state bureaucracy and obligated to
obedience. Citizens act as a public when they deal with matters of
general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the
guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and
publicize their opinions freely.
In this definition, Habermas formalized what people in
free societies mean when we say "The public wouldn't stand for that" or
"It depends on public opinion." And he drew attention to the intimate
connection between this web of free, informal, personal communications
and the foundations of democratic society. People can govern themselves
only if they communicate widely, freely, and in groups--publicly. The
First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights protects
citizens from government interference in their communications--the
rights of speech, press, and assembly are communication rights. Without
those rights, there is no public sphere. Ask any citizen of Prague,
Budapest, or Moscow.
Because the public sphere depends on free
communication and discussion of ideas, as soon as your political entity
grows larger than the number of citizens you can fit into a modest town
hall, this vital marketplace for political ideas can be powerfully
influenced by changes in communications technology. According to
Habermas,
When the public is large, this kind of
communication requires certain means of dissemination and influence;
today, newspapers and periodicals, radio and television are the media
of the public sphere. . . . The term "public opinion" refers to the
functions of criticism and control or organized state authority that
the public exercises informally, as well as formally during periodic
elections. Regulations concerning the publicness (or publicity [Publizitat]
in its original meaning) of state-related activities, as, for
instance, the public accessibility required of legal proceedings, are
also connected with this function of public opinion. To the public
sphere as a sphere mediating between state and society, a sphere in
which the public as the vehicle of publicness--the publicness that
once had to win out against the secret politics of monarchs and that
since then has permitted democratic control of state activity.
Ask anybody in China about the right to talk freely
among friends and neighbors, to own a printing press, to call a meeting
to protest government policy, or to run a BBS. But brute totalitarian
seizure of communications technology is not the only way that political
powers can neutralize the ability of citizens to talk freely. It is also
possible to alter the nature of discourse by inventing a kind of paid
fake discourse. If a few people have control of what goes into the daily
reporting of the news, and those people are in the business of selling
advertising, all kinds of things become possible for those who can
afford to pay.
Habermas had this to say about the corrupting
influence of ersatz public opinion:
Whereas at one time publicness was intended to
subject persons or things to the public use of reason and to make
political decisions subject to revision before the tribunal of public
opinion, today it has often enough already been enlisted in the aid of
the secret policies of interest groups; in the form of "publicity" it
now acquires public prestige for persons or things and renders them
capable of acclamation in a climate of nonpublic opinion. The term
"public relations" itself indicates how a public sphere that formerly
emerged from the structure of society must now be produced
circumstantially on a case-by-case basis.
The idea that public opinion can be manufactured and
the fact that electronic spectacles can capture the attention of a
majority of the citizenry damaged the foundations of democracy.
According to Habermas,
It is no accident that these concepts of the public
sphere and public opinion were not formed until the eighteenth
century. They derive their specific meaning from a concrete historical
situation. It was then that one learned to distinguish between opinion
and public opinion. . . . Public opinion, in terms of its very idea,
can be formed only if a public that engages in rational discussion
exists. Public discussions that are institutionally protected and that
take, with critical intent, the exercise of political authority as
their theme have not existed since time immemorial.
The public sphere and democracy were born at the same
time, from the same sources. Now that the public sphere, cut off from
its roots, seems to be dying, democracy is in danger, too.
The concept of the public sphere as discussed by
Habermas and others includes several requirements for authenticity that
people who live in democratic societies would recognize: open access,
voluntary participation, participation outside institutional roles, the
generation of public opinion through assemblies of citizens who engage
in rational argument, the freedom to express opinions, and the freedom
to discuss matters of the state and criticize the way state power is
organized. Acts of speech and publication that specifically discuss the
state are perhaps the most important kind protected by the First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and similar civil guarantees
elsewhere in the world. Former Soviets and Eastern Europeans who
regained it after decades of censorship offer testimony that the most
important freedom of speech is the freedom to speak about freedoms.
In eighteenth-century America, the Committees of
Correspondence were one of the most important loci of the public sphere
in the years of revolution and constitution-building. If you look
closely at the roots of the American Revolution, it becomes evident that
a text-based, horseback-transported version of networking was an old
American tradition. In their book Networking, Jessica Lipnack and
Jeffrey Stamps describe these committees as
a communications forum where homespun political and
economic thinkers hammered out their ideological differences,
sculpting the form of a separate and independent country in North
America. Writing to one another and sharing letters with neighbors,
this revolutionary generation nurtured its adolescent ideas into a
mature politics. Both men and women participated in the debate over
independence from England and the desirable shape of the American
future. . . .
During the years in which the American Revolution was percolating,
letters, news-sheets, and pamphlets carried from one village to
another were the means by which ideas about democracy were refined.
Eventually, the correspondents agreed that the next step in their idea
exchange was to hold a face-to-face meeting. The ideas of independence
and government had been debated, discussed, discarded, and
reformulated literally hundreds of times by the time people in the
revolutionary network met in Philadelphia.
Thus, a network of correspondence and printed broadsides led to the
formation of an organization after the writers met in a series of
conferences and worked out a statement of purpose--which they called a
"Declaration of Independence." Little did our early networking
grandparents realize that the result of their youthful idealism, less
than two centuries later, would be a global superpower with an
unparalleled ability to influence the survival of life on the planet.
As the United States grew and technology changed, the
ways in which these public discussions of "matters of general interest,"
as Habermas called them--slavery and the rights of the states versus the
power of the federal government were two such matters that loomed
large--began to change as well. The text-based media that served as the
channel for discourse gained more and more power to reshape the nature
of that discourse. The communications media of the nineteenth century
were the newspapers, the penny press, the first generation of what has
come to be known as the mass media. At the same time, the birth of
advertising and the beginnings of the public-relations industry began to
undermine the public sphere by inventing a kind of buyable and sellable
phony discourse that displaced the genuine kind.
The simulation (and therefore destruction) of
authentic discourse, first in the United States, and then spreading to
the rest of the world, is what
Guy
Debord would call the first quantum leap into the "society of the
spectacle" and what
Jean Baudrillard would recognize as a milestone in the world's slide
into hyper-reality. Mass media's colonization of civil society turned
into a quasi-political campaign promoting technology itself when the
image-making technology of television came along. ("Progress is our most
important product," said General Electric
spokesman
Ronald Reagan, in the early years of television.) And in the
twentieth century, as the telephone, radio, and television became
vehicles for public discourse, the nature of political discussion has
mutated into something quite different from anything the framers of the
Constitution could have foreseen.
A politician is now a commodity, citizens are
consumers, and issues are decided via sound-bites and staged events. The
television camera is the only spectator that counts at a political
demonstration or convention. According to Habermas and others, the way
the new media have been commoditized through this evolutionary process
from hand-printed broadside to telegraph to penny press to mass media
has led to the radical deterioration of the public sphere. The consumer
society has become the accepted model both for individual behavior and
political decision making. Discourse degenerated into publicity, and
publicity used the increasing power of electronic media to alter
perceptions and shape beliefs.
The consumer society, the most powerful vehicle for
generating short-term wealth ever invented, ensures economic growth by
first promoting the idea that the way to be is to buy. The engines of
wealth depend on a fresh stream of tabloids sold at convenience markets
and television programs to tell us what we have to buy next in order to
justify our existence. What used to be a channel for authentic
communication has become a channel for the updating of commercial
desire.
Money plus politics plus network television equals an
effective system. It works. When the same packaging skills that were
honed on automobile tail fins and fast foods are applied to political
ideas, the highest bidder can influence public policy to great effect.
What dies in the process is the rational discourse at the base of civil
society. That death manifests itself in longings that aren't fulfilled
by the right kind of shoes in this month's color or the hot new
prime-time candidate everybody is talking about. Some media scholars are
claiming a direct causal connection between the success of commercial
television and the loss of citizen interest in the political process.
Another media critic,
Neal
Postman, in his book
Amusing Ourselves to Death, pointed out that Tom Paine's
Common Sense sold three hundred thousand copies in five months in
1776. The most successful democratic revolution in history was made
possible by a citizenry that read and debated widely among themselves.
Postman pointed out that the mass media, and television in particular,
had changed the mode of discourse itself, by substituting fast cuts,
special effects, and sound-bites for reasoned discussion or even genuine
argument.
The various hypotheses about commodification and mode
of discourse focus on an area of apparent agreement among social
observers who have a long history of heated disagreements.
When people who have become fascinated by BBSs or
networks start spreading the idea that such networks are inherently
democratic in some magical way, without specifying the hard work that
must be done in real life to harvest the fruits of that democratizing
power, they run the danger of becoming unwitting agents of
commodification. First, it pays to understand how old the idea really
is. Next, it is important to realize that the hopes of technophiles have
often been used to sell technology for commercial gain. In this sense,
CMC enthusiasts run the risk of becoming unpaid, unwitting advertisers
for those who stand to gain financially from adoption of new technology.
The critics of the idea of electronic democracy have
unearthed examples from a long tradition of utopian rhetoric that
James
Carey has called "the
rhetoric of the `technological sublime.'" He put it this way:
Despite the manifest failure of technology to
resolve pressing social issues over the last century, contemporary
intellectuals continue to see revolutionary potential in the latest
technological gadgets that are pictured as a force outside history and
politics. . . . In modern futurism, it
is the machines that possess teleological insight. Despite the
shortcomings of town meetings, newspaper, telegraph, wireless, and
television to create the conditions of a new Athens, contemporary
advocates of technological liberation regularly describe a new
postmodern age of instantaneous daily plebiscitory democracy through a
computerized system of electronic voting and opinion polling.
Carey was prophetic in at least one regard--he wrote
this years before Ross Perot and William Clinton both started talking
about their versions of electronic democracy during the
1992 U.S. presidential campaign. If the United States is on the road
to a version of electronic democracy in which the president will have
electronic town hall meetings, including instant voting-by-telephone to
"go directly to the people" (and perhaps bypass Congress?) on key
issues, it is important for American citizens to understand the
potential pitfalls of decision making by plebiscite. Media-manipulated
plebiscites as political tools go back to Joseph Goebbels, who used
radio so effectively in the Third Reich. Previous experiments in instant
home polling and voting had been carried out by Warners, with their Qube
service, in the early 1980s. One critic, political scientist Jean
Betheke Elshtain, called the television-voting model an
interactive shell game [that] cons us into
believing that we are participating when we are really simply
performing as the responding "end" of a prefabricated system of
external stimuli. . . . In a plebiscitary system, the views of the
majority . . . swamp minority or unpopular views. Plebiscitism is
compatible with authoritarian politics carried out under the guise of,
or with the connivance of, majority views. That opinion can be
registered by easily manipulated, ritualistic plebiscites, so there is
no need for debate on substantive questions.
What does it mean that the same hopes, described in
the same words, for a decentralization of power, a deeper and more
widespread citizen involvement in matters of state, a great equalizer
for ordinary citizens to counter the forces of central control, have
been voiced in the popular press for two centuries in reference to
steam, electricity, and television? We've had enough time to live with
steam, electricity, and television to recognize that they did indeed
change the world, and to recognize that the utopia of technological
millenarians has not yet materialized.
An entire worldview and sales job are packed into the
word progress, which links the notion of improvement with the notion of
innovation, highlights the benefits of innovation while hiding the toxic
side-effects of extractive and lucrative technologies, and then sells
more of it to people via television as a cure for the stress of living
in a technology-dominated world. The hope that the next technology will
solve the problems created by the way the last technology was used is a
kind of millennial, even messianic, hope, apparently ever-latent in the
breasts of the citizenry. The myth of technological progress emerged out
of the same
Age of Reason that gave us the myth of representative democracy, a
new organizing vision that still works pretty well, despite the decline
in vigor of the old democratic institutions. It's hard to give up on one
Enlightenment ideal while clinging to another.
I believe it is too early to judge which set of claims
will prove to be accurate. I also believe that those who would prefer
the more democratic vision of the future have an opportunity to
influence the outcome, which is precisely why online activists should
delve into the criticisms that have been leveled against them. If
electronic democracy advocates can address these critiques successfully,
their claims might have a chance. If they cannot, perhaps it would be
better not to raise people's hopes. Those who are not aware of the
history of dead ends are doomed to replay them, hopes high, again and
again.
The idea that putting powerful computers in the hands
of citizens will shield the citizenry against totalitarian authorities
echoes similar, older beliefs about citizen-empowering technology. As
Langdon Winner (an author every computer revolutionary ought to read)
put it in his essay "Mythinformation,"
Of all the computer enthusiasts' political ideas,
there is none more poignant than the faith that the computer is
destined to become a potent equalizer in modern society. . . .
Presumably, ordinary citizens equipped with microcomputers will be
able to counter the influence of large, computer-based organizations.
Notions of this kind echo beliefs of
eighteenth-century revolutionaries that placing fire arms in the hands
of the people was crucial to overthrowing entrenched authority. In the
American Revolution, French Revolution, Paris Commune, and Russian
Revolution the role of "the people armed" was central to the
revolutionary program. As the military defeat of the Paris Commune
made clear, however, the fact that the popular forces have guns may
not be decisive. In a contest of force against force, the larger, more
sophisticated, more ruthless, better equipped competitor often has the
upper hand. Hence, the availability of low-cost computing power may
move the baseline that defines electronic dimensions of social
influence, but it does not necessarily alter the relative balance of
power. Using a personal computer makes one no more powerful vis-…-vis,
say, the National Security Agency than flying a hang glider
establishes a person as a match for the U.S. Air Force.
The great power of the idea of electronic democracy is
that technical trends in communications technologies can help citizens
break the monopoly on their attention that has been enjoyed by the
powers behind the broadcast paradigm--the owners of television networks,
newspaper syndicates, and publishing conglomerates. The great weakness
of the idea of electronic democracy is that it can be more easily
commodified than explained. The commercialization and commoditization of
public discourse is only one of the grave problems posed by the
increasing sophistication of communications media. The Net that is a
marvelous lateral network can also be used as a kind of invisible yet
inescapable cage. The idea of malevolent political leaders with their
hands on the controls of a Net raises fear of a more direct assault on
liberties.
Summary of Computer Ethics
Third Edition By Deborah G. Johnson
Chapter 8: Ethics and the
Internet II: Social Implications and Social Values by
Kimberly Beuther (CUNY 2006)
Deborah Johnson discusses the idea that the
Internet promotes democracy or democratic values. There are some that
believe that the Internet is inherently democratic, while others believe
that it helps to promote democracy. Democracy she says exists when a
government is controlled by its citizens; that the people have a say in
their government, and power rests not in a single person, but rather
with the citizens. It is also important in a democratic society for the
people to have a significant amount of freedom. Many believe that the
Internet assists in promoting democracy because of certain attributes of
the Internet. Deborah Johnson considers these different attributes of
the Internet and considers if they do indeed facilitate democracy.
First, she discusses the possibility
of the Internet to be democratic because it allows for “many to many
unmediated communication” (Johnson, 2001). Essentially, the idea behind
this is that anyone who has access to the Internet can communicate with
anyone else who has access. Unlike any other form of communication,
thousands of people can communicate with thousands of others,
communication in the past of this magnitude was limited to mass media,
such as radio and television. She further explains that what is
important is that the communication is direct; people can communicate
directly with one another, which is not controlled by established forms
of power. The Internet also allows for the propagation of
institutionalized information, though many believe that it is still
access to much more information than was previously available, one could
read news from many other countries. In addition, the communication
between the many allows for groups to form under common interests, even
without common geography. People who may find themselves in a minority
can effectively join together; these groups would not have been possible
before the Internet.
The second argument that Johnson
addresses, is that “information is power” (Johnson, 2001). If
information is power, and there is a large amount of information on the
Internet, then access gives many more power. There is, Johnson says,
power given to those who send and receive information though it is not
on the scale of mass media. Johnson comments that while there is a large
amount of information, there is also a lot of inaccurate information,
and in some cases, so much information that it becomes difficult to sort
through and find what is relevant. If the idea is that information on
the Internet gives power to the many, then it is dependant on whether
the information is useful, and correct.
The final argument is that power is
increased to the less powerful, and decreased to the most powerful. This
argument encompasses a little of each of the former arguments, in that
it indicates that those who were previously a minority could form a
group regardless of geography, thus empowering them. Combined with the
idea that information is power, these groups that are able to send and
receive information are empowered, able to further increase their
numbers, and get information about their cause out into the public.
Johnson looks at these arguments
and indicates that while the Internet can enable the types of activity
in these arguments, there is question as to whether these qualities that
are present in the Internet are necessarily democratic. First, she
indicates that while the prospect of many being able to communicate with
many others may seem democratic, without having order, can become
chaotic. Furthermore, she says that while the many can have access to
much more information, what may determine what information we are drawn
to may be the ability of the person sending the information to pay the
greatest amount of money for well designed web pages, listings in search
engines, and links to ISPs. While the less powerful are able to send
and receive information, the more powerful are also able to do so,
further increasing their power. In addition, she says that while the
Internet can have the capacity to promote democracy, it can also promote
undemocratic values. Two aspects of the Internet that may inhibit
democracy are that the Internet allows for an erosion of privacy, and
the Internet’s global reach. Businesses, for example have the ability to
keep track of people’s spending habits. Johnson believes that this
monitoring on the Internet may inhibit what a person may say or do,
effecting their freedom. Johnson says that the global reach of the
Internet may be undemocratic because it allows for information to cross
borders, and jeopardize the sovereignty of nation-states. Globalization
may force many to comply with other countries, to attempt to take part
in a global economy, whether they agree with their values or not.
Johnson says that what is most important to realize, is that the
Internet can promote democracy, and democratic values, but without
proper structure, it may not necessarily do so.
The digital divide, which is the gap
between those who have access and those who do not, exists not just
between rich and poor, but between races, sexes, and countries. The
digital divide applies not only to access to the Internet, but to
computers and their technologies, as well as the education in the use of
these tools. Johnson considers what harms can come from unequal access
to computers in reference to education, and job skills. Education,
Johnson says, should be equal, because without equal education, there is
little possibility for equal employment opportunities. Since computers
are considered a tool for education, then poor schools should have the
same access to computers that rich schools have, so that there is not an
ever widening gap in the quality of education. It is also believed that
computers can assist in giving schools access to better materials and
teachers from anywhere in the country, thus giving a more equal
education to more students. Johnson also states that in order to
effectively apply the benefits of computers to education, it is
important to figure out what is needed in education, and then attempt to
find out how computers can fill that need. Jobs will, in some form or
another, make use of computers and their technologies, so many believe
that unequal access to computers in education will lead to unequal
access to job opportunities. If computer skills are not part of a
student’s education, then they will be much less prepared for future
jobs that make use of computers.
Johnson also considers the problem
of unequal access in regards to individuals being able to form groups,
and their ability to send and receive information. If the Internet
allows for groups to form thus giving them greater power as a whole than
they would have as individuals, it also gives them greater political
influence. If the rich or most powerful have the greatest access to the
Internet, then they will be able to further increase their power.
Finally, Johnson discusses the
digital divide, and the inequalities that exist between races, sexes,
and the disabled. Johnson says that there is some evidence that while
there is a disparity in access between both race, and sex, it seems that
women and minorities tend to shun computers. This she says may be due to
different factors, but it is important that these disparities be
resolved. The disabled can invariably be helped by computers but there
is a belief that they may not be used to their greatest potential.
Americans value their freedom of
speech and expression, and consider it to be an important aspect of
democracy. The CDA, Communications Decency Act, threatened to limit
freedom of speech on the Internet, so that children would not be exposed
to explicit material. Johnson says that government censorship allows
them to manipulate information and keeps them from being accountable.
She says that it is difficult to restrict access to minors without
infringing on the rights of adults. There is also the problem of the
invasion of privacy on the Internet that relates to freedom of speech.
Johnson says that people are reluctant to speak freely when they are
concerned that they are being monitored.
Johnson considers what future
changes will occur concerning the Internet and she says that the three
things to pay attention to are jurisdiction, systems of trust, and
insularity. Jurisdiction refers to whose laws will be upheld on the
Internet. In the United States different states have different laws.
Internationally, whose laws will apply to problems involving
intellectual property, or even criminal activities on the Internet? If
one person is in a country where something may be legal, but doing
business with someone in a different country, where the same activity is
illegal, whose country’s laws will apply? She says that there may be
future problems for nation states to try to maintain their borders when
the Internet will allow for crossing in and out of those borders.
Johnson talks about the future need for systems of trust as the Internet
becomes more pervasive in everyday life. She believes that many of the
systems of trust that we currently use in the physical world will be
needed on the Internet, such as the BBB, and licensing bureaus. Johnson
also considers the problem of insularity. As many more people have more
and more of the Internet tailored to exactly what they want and are
interested in, this may in effect narrow the amount of information that
one receives, like news. The Internet may also help people to talk with
only people with similar thoughts, ideas, and interests, which may keep
them from learning about different people.
-Resources- Johnson, Deborah
G. . “Ethics and the Internet II: Social Implications and Social Values”
pp 199-230 in Computer Ethics Third Edition. Upper Saddle River
NJ; Prentice Hall, 2001
See
David Bollier
Reinventing Democratic Culture in an Age of Electronic Networks
the transforming effect of the web.
Internet and Democracy
Does the
internet change community perceptions of the state and political
processes, in addition to providing new opportunities for communication?
There's considerable disagreement.
READ
David Bollier
Creating a Telecommunications Architecture That Supports Community,
Democracy and Culture
Yet there are reasons to be hopeful. Never before have
we had a communications medium of such vast democratic potential. Chaordic
systems, as suggested above, tend to challenge concentrations of power
that are unresponsive. Proponents of citizenship have never enjoyed such a
home court advantage! But will the democratic propensities of distributed
electronic networks be neutered in significant ways by commercial
interests? Conversely, will the nonprofit world be resourceful, farsighted
and clever enough to use the technologies and public policy to reinvent
democratic culture?
Internet and Democracy
READ: EPISTEMIC CHAOS and DEMOCRACY
The Coup We Are Not Talking About By Shoshana Zuboff, a professor
emeritus at Harvard Business School, is the author of “The Age of
Surveillance Capitalism.” NY TIMES Jan. 29, 2021
Control of Information and its use enlarges the
divide in wealth and influence.
"Unless democracy
revokes the license to steal and challenges the fundamental
economics and operations of commercial surveillance, the epistemic
coup will weaken and eventually transform democracy itself. We must
make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have surveillance
society, but we cannot have both. We have a democratic information
civilization to build, and there is no time to waste."
Utopias and Dystopias by Araba Sey and Manuel Castells
Threats to Democracy
Among the threats to democracy posed by the
computer technologies and the internet are those that threaten free forms
of association and communication as are made possible by the monitoring of
communications through the technologies and the appearance of a PANOPTICON.
On the possible impact of the internet on
democratic processes see the Student Study :
Impact of
Internet and Communication Networks and Technologies on Concepts of and
forms of Democratic Government and Rule
Democracy in Cyberspace: What Information
Technology Can and Cannot do- Ian Bremmer
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2010-10-21/democracy-cyberspace
Information Technology and Democracy (great
blog containing YouTube videos sharing alternate views on this topic)
https://impactofinformationsystemsonsociety.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/week-5-information-technology-and-democracy/
YouTube:
The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?- Evgeny
Morozov
Demoracy, Responsibility, and Information
Technology by Bernd Carsten Stahl
http://www.tech.dmu.ac.uk/~bstahl/publications/democracy_responsibility_and_it.pdf
Information
Technology and Grassroots Democracy by
Guobin Yang
http://upress.kent.edu/Nieman/Information_Technology.htm
Beware
of the “spinternet” by Paula Millar
https://theevolutionofrevolution.wordpress.com/page/2/
The National Democratic Institute
(NDI.org)
– the purpose of this website is to provide resources and information to
cultivate democracy and shrink the digital divide.
Keeping the Internet Free
Women, Technology and Exploring the Line between Empowerment and
Manipulation
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