TNA-GOLD 1/TNA-GOLD - Volume 1.iso/24hours/internet.txt

Text File | 1996-03-11 | 19KB | 375 lines

                          [24 hours of democracy]



                I N T E R N E T   A N D   D E M O C R A C Y



                          [ Prev | Next | Index ]



           [ Philippe Palaz's contribution | express yourself ]





             Author: Michel Bauwens, [e-mail],
             22-Feb-1996..

             Produced with the assistance of io
             communications.



               The following mini-essay, written on occasion
               of the "24 hours for democracy" initiative is
               an attempt to define the potential benefits
               of the internet for democratic societies, and
               to look at potential dangers as well.



          T H E   P O S I T I V E



          In all societies, power is based on two main
          fundaments. The very first is the naked power of the
          gun. No social order can persist, at least in
          inegalitarian societies, without the monopoly of
          military might which is entrusted to the state. The
          second important factor is the consent of the governed.
          Both elements are needed to achieve a stable social
          order. No government can survive based on might alone
          and this is particularly so in democratic societies,
          where the consent of the governed has to be explicitly
          given every few years. The important question is: how
          can one achieve such consent. The answer is that a
          world view has to be shared by the majority that the
          current social order is the best, the only one
          possible, or at least, the lesser of evils. Such a
          world view depends to a great extent on information,
          which may or may not contradict the existing
          predominant world view. A small amount of dissonant
          information is not a problem as such dissonance can be
          explained away; a large amount of dissonance however,
          may invariably lead to a questioning of the status quo.
          As Lincoln said: you can fool somebody all of the time;
          you can fool all of the people some of the time; but
          you can"t fool everybody all of the time". Hence, the
          importance of information in the democratic process.
          Our current democratic societies are characterised by a
          plurality of competing power centers, and by a
          plurality of information sources. This balance is
          theoretically and practically guaranteed by the freedom
          of the press. A honest analysis will force us to
          conclude, with Noam Chomsky, that the freedom of the
          press is the freedom of those who own one, and that
          hence we do live, to a great extent, in a era of
          "manufactured consent".

          Indeed, in a mass society with mass media such as
          radio, television, newspapers and magazines, the entry
          price to be a publisher/broadcaster is quite high, and
          therefore, limited to corporations and organisations
          with a large financial backing.

          It is in that context that the internet changes the
          rules of the game. One of the innovative features of
          the internet is that it combines within the same
          medium, both the features of mass media (the ability to
          reach massive numbers of people), and the features of
          personal media. This combination makes it so that on
          the internet every recipient is indeed also a
          broadcaster. The entry price to become a publisher, a
          radio broadcaster, a television station, has become
          dramatically lower. It is now possible to potentially
          reach large numbers of people, for what is, compared to
          traditional mass media, a marginal investment. This
          fact raises the number of people able to broadcast a
          message. What the internet does on the costing side is
          to lower the transactional costs of doing business (and
          this includes political busy-ness), and of organising.
          It may be said that the internet is, and will become, a
          major tool for the self-organising of social groups.
          Combine both the hypothesis of cheaper information
          diffusion and self-organising and you get the effect of
          diffusing "information power" and hence "power" itself,
          to a much larger amount of actors. This will both
          rebalance power relationships in the public sphere, but
          may perhaps lead, over a certain, to a another kind of
          society: a move away from mass society, towards a more
          diffuse kind of networked society, based on the
          co-existence of varied subcultures. For a description
          of such a kind of society, read the "Diamond Age", a
          "near-future" science-fiction book by Neal Stephenson.
          I must admit I find his scenarios on the withering away
          of the central state, and its replacement by a network
          of networks, i.e. societies (cultures) co-existing
          within the same " spaces", a rather compelling view of
          the future. Even if that future won"t be so radical,
          the "fragmentation" effect of the internet cannot be
          denied. Such an evolution does pose the problem of how
          we will organise our collective physical spaces. Apart
          from that, I consider the internet to be a social
          laboratory for trying out new ways of developing
          self-government for the social groups using the
          internet. I would particularly mention trials like the
          autonomous "cyberspace countries" like Terra Libra,
          Oceania, Nexus, and the "social contract" experiments
          of the Extropians. Even though they are not yet
          compelling, from these varied experiments may proceed
          innovative practices. Cyberspace is a "living space"
          and these people are trying out social practices that
          may be common for the rest of us in a decade or so.

          Another important innovation of the internet is the
          collective discussion that it enables. Indeed, since
          the Greek Forum, it has not been possible to implement
          many-to-many dialogue on such a grand scale. True, most
          newsgroups are of a deplorable quality, but their
          existence is significant. With more experience, better
          software, these tools may be adjunct to democratic
          processes, for example in the information gathering
          phases. Used intelligently, computer conferencing
          software has positive potential. But even used
          spontaneously as it is now, it is not without effects
          on the political process. Again the reason is that such
          uncensored forums do create uncontrolled information
          flows which cannot be controlled by the mass media and
          the "powers that be".

          The transactional nature of the internet adds the
          dimension of enabling participation in the
          decision-making process itself, because it allows easy
          polling and voting. It has been noted that such may
          lead to push-button democracy and to a kind of online
          "mob" rule. I"m quite sensitive to that charge and do
          not think that the ability for impulse voting would be
          an advance. However, I do place my hope that clever
          conferencing software will lead to new democratic
          procedures involving larger numbers of citizens in the
          decision-making process. Most effective would probably
          be a combination of both electronic and physical
          semi-direct democracy. It still won"t be perfect
          democracy (if such can exist in "real life"), but it
          would be a broadening of the existing processes and a
          necessary corrective to the skewed rules of today.

          What about the famous egalitarian features of the
          internet?Lots has been written about the potential of
          the internet to do away with hierarchies. Indeed, on
          the internet "nobody knows if you"re a dog ... or a
          manager". Most users have experienced this directly,
          and research in corporations tends to prove that more
          people do indeed participate creatively to
          problem-solving when such conferencing software is
          implemented. Feminists scholars on the other hand, have
          conducted research which points in the other direction:
          that sexism does indeed persist. Attitudes from real
          life do not suddenly disappear in "virtual life".
          However, networked companies do change because
          management can no longer control all information flows.
          Hence power diffuses to lower echelons ("empowerment"),
          while centralisation is replaced by even greater
          coordination ("topsight"). I"m convinced that the same
          process of diffusion will take place in a broader
          social context as well. We can already witness today
          that the bureaucratic logic of old, where "what I know
          that you don"t know" is the basis of power, is replaced
          by the cyberocratic logic, where "the more I
          participate to the network, the more I promote the
          knowledge transfer and hence the competitiveness of my
          company". This is an altogether positive development.

          The last argument points to the main feature of
          cyberspace: that it is a collective mental environment,
          "a country of the mind" as John Perry Barlow calls it.
          The internet, and networks in general, are "brains
          connected in real-time". This simple fact will make it
          much more difficult for the powers that be to
          manipulate information flows. Mass media are ideals
          tool for propaganda, as they cannot be countered. The
          same is not true of the internet, where every idea can
          be countered. Corporations and governments will have a
          harder time in their public relations activities.
          Generally, I do believe that the existence of such a
          collective and global forum, will force organisations
          to act more ethically and truthfully, because the price
          for dishonesty will be so much higher in such an
          environment.

          Lest I be accused of undue optimism or utopianism: with
          the summing up of all arguments above, I"m not implying
          a "better society", but I do think that there will be a
          diffusion of information flows and hence of power, with
          more chances for minority viewpoints to be heard, or at
          least to globally self-organise themselves. As Kevin
          Kelly says in his book: information, and the knowledge
          it can produce, is now "out of control".



          T H E   N E G A T I V E S



          As historians pointed out, the invention of mass
          printing, did undermine the monopoly of information of
          the Church and the feudal order, and it eventually led
          to the formation of national states and democracy. But
          lest we forget, in a long intermediate period, it did
          lead to the first authoritarian nation-states, to the
          Inquisition, and to widespread civil war. So we should
          be very careful when predicting opportunities. We
          should carefully look at negatives.

          First, there are the problems associated with the
          measurability of everything digital: the potential for
          subtle and not so subtle control, for gross invasion of
          privacy, is very real. The very weapon against such
          control, i.e. encryption, creates as many problems as
          it solves, because it paradoxically allows certain
          forces to further elude the law (the notorious hyped-up
          trio of the mafia, terrorists and child abusers). In
          general, one could say that if destructive and
          authoritarian/totalitarian political forces would again
          gain the ascendancy, their toolbox would be
          dramatically enhanced, and so would be the
          possibilities of the opposition. Thus, while cyberspace
          does not directly lead to democracy, it offers lots of
          possibilities of conducting resistance, and it
          dramatically "raises the stakes" of the political game.

          An equally serious problem is the one of the haves and
          the have-nots. Here I am more optimistic than most. I
          believe that the political, social, and educational
          effort to help people use computers, is immeasurably
          easier than our historically successful effort to teach
          people to read (at least in the western world). In
          these same countries, universal access will be a
          realistic goal. But while the internet will naturally
          be a dominant medium for knowledge workers (soon to be
          half of the working population), it will require a
          public effort to "digitise" larger sectors of the
          population. I"m more concerned with the cognitive
          abilities, which are necessary to navigate such a
          complex information space. All these problems will be
          compounded in the under-privileged parts of the world.
          Again, it will be important to deal squarely with this
          challenge. Perhaps the internet will have the opposite
          effect, and will be considered a leapfrog technology by
          these countries, who will use the dramatic new
          knowledge transfers to develop new sectors and so
          de-localise even more industries. This at least is the
          point of view of George Gilder, who points out how
          Southeast Asian countries have dramatically benefited
          from information technology.

          Another concern is this: in a medium where it is hard
          to "sell" information (because there is an
          overabundance of free information), advertising becomes
          primordial, and this may skew the independence of the
          cyberspace press. Noam Chomsky has expressed concern
          that progressive magazines may find it more difficult
          to sell their paper versions, now that their readers
          are clamouring for free web sites.

          Referring to the points in the previous section on the
          "fragmentation effect" of the net: I consider this to
          be the most far-reaching and subversive effect of the
          net. Indeed, until now, all politics have been local,
          and their are simply no agreed upon processes in place,
          in order to deal with an atomisation of society.

          There will be other and more dramatic negatives, still
          unknown to us to this day, and I personally suspect
          most of them will be the result of us having to deal
          with a permanent overflow of information. Each
          historical epoch has a "problem to solve": feeding the
          people (the agricultural age), providing them with
          material well-being (the industrial age), and now we
          are living the information age (with as task the
          universal availabity of information in a collective
          "noosphere"). In each epoch we go from problems of
          scarcity (hunger, poverty, information poverty) to
          problems of over-abundance. Most of our problems today,
          in the western world at least, are problems related to
          an overabundance of food (most modern diseases), of
          material wealth (pollution), and today information
          (information anxiety and stress). How to deal with a
          permanent excess of information will be the key
          challenge of the near future.



          C O N C L U S I O N



          There are two main attitudes towards technology and the
          internet in particular. One is to embrace it and to
          look at the potentialities. The danger here is to think
          that a potentiality is an actuality and hence to become
          a "digital utopianist".

          The second attitude is to focus on the negatives and
          dangers, and to adopt either the cynical attitude of
          the permanently dissatisfied, or the active opposition
          towards technology which is so typical of the so-called
          "neo-Luddittes". Unlike the digital utopians, whose
          promised land lies in the future, the utopia of the
          techno-opposition lies in a golden age in the past.

          I"ll allow myself to opt for a third attitude: an
          attitude that embraces technology, both because it is
          unavoidable and has the weight and trust of history
          behind it, and because it does indeed enhance human
          abilities and freedom. It moves mankind from a realm of
          necessity, to a realm of increasing freedom. But it has
          to be an attitude that wants everybody to share its
          positive fruits. Such a movement would be a democratic
          technology movement.

          It would embrace the democratic potential of the
          internet, by actively working for their practical
          realisation. Opportunities must be taken, else they
          disappear and their vacuum is filled by negative
          alternatives. A democratic technology movement would
          actively develop democracy-enhancing tools. It would
          actively fight to broaden the benefits of technology to
          all potential have nots. It would actively fight to
          preserve our hard-won democratic freedoms, in this new
          dimension of life.

          The internet will produce the good, the bad and the
          ugly. Let"s enjoy the good, fight the bad, and beautify
          the ugly. Cynicism is the last thing we need in a world
          heading towards an unprecedented ecological
          catastrophe. Let"s use technology, and the internet, to
          undo the damage wrought by the industrial revolution.
          Let"s opt for a new covenant between nature, humanity
          and technology. Such a covenant is only possible in a
          democratic society, a real democratic society, without
          "manufactured consent" and enhanced by the worldwide
          networking tools such as the internet.

          So yes, I believe the internet has promise for
          democracy, if we do seize the historic opportunity it
          gives us.





                                [iocom logo]

                              io communication

    ⌐ 1996, Michel Bauwens & io communication. Last update: 22-Feb-1996;
                                  20:41:17
         (http://www.iocom.be/thepilot/internetanddemocracy.html)