Internet, Democracy: From ‘MySpace’ to your space

Written by Wiley Combs

Tuesday, 17 February 2009 19:19

In a representative democracy, the most devastating form of popular disconnect that can be imagined is low voter turnout. I’ve written before that I concur with the generally felt perception that the population is incredibly distanced from political process, by and large.

I, for one, am concerned about such a “prospect” (read: certainty). Venturing back to the multitudinous and often apocryphal founding of this most venerated nation-state, one can see that just as the rise of representative democracy signaled a new era in world politics, it mostly meant power was dissipated, in departure from the classic feudal structures, but the dispersal was only as wide as those who could afford to be informed and participate in governmental processes and economic affairs. The elective process entailed by the constitution ensured that Alexander Hamilton’s “great beast” (the people) would be excluded from involvement in matters of importance by income, heritage, gender and background.

If we wish to escape from the drudgery of non-participation in the creation of the future, we must take an active and critical stance toward the operations of the government. At this point, our foremost duty is to be informed about issues from many perspectives—especially those which are not represented in the mainstream media. The oligopolies which manipulate the forums of our modern information network form the most tenable threat to “freedom of information” since the Spanish Inquisition: the consolidation of opinion, the pervasive “manufacture of consent” as Walter Lippmann termed it. As such, one must dig to find a reasonable and independent political perspective; alternative viewpoints are critical to developing our self-awareness, lest we become easily-swayed ideologues and fanatics with no respect for reality.

The Internet poses one of the greatest threats to the established order, one which is rarely publicly mentioned or discussed. One reason is the variety of differing views which are represented. Another is that companies are still scrambling to determine just how, exactly, they should exploit the Internet for massive gain. A large percentage of the content remains free to the public, if they can find it. Moreover, the Internet provides, for the first time in history, public access to a worldwide communications network which allows a populous sampling of not only written thoughts but media content to be spread virulently throughout the world. It represents the true world forum, in its embryonic stages.

This makes it a paradoxical threat to “democracy,” in its current incarnation. Once it is admitted that anyone can vote from home, it is a steady logical progression to ask why people should not be allowed to casually vote on more items. By delegating the voting process on all items to the total body of the U.S. populace, we would be suddenly freed of the burden of listening to all of these pesky prevaricating politicians—we could think and act for ourselves.

The invariable argument against this sort of “direct democracy” is a general distrust of fellow citizens. “They [whoever they are] can’t be trusted to vote!” How hypocritical and revealing.

The people are, at worst, ignorant, and this can easily be remedied by the implementation of effective social networks designed to facilitate a true “universal education”; if the cost of learning and the burden of physical attendance were decreased, one might postulate a not-so-remarkable increase in knowledgeable popular political participation, as well as general education.

Ultimately, embracing the Internet as a center for commerce, education and political participation would save prodigious amounts of money for the American people, by reducing the demand for expensive corporate centers of mass distribution. The World Wide Web represents the cheapest effective means of communicating ideas, which are a premium product in a “service economy,” such as ours. Most importantly, the re-appraisal of Internet access as a public, not private, service would be a half-decent apology for giving away most of our public airwaves in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Since the Internet provides sound, video, literary and literary content, while enabling interaction by all users, we should not hesitate to make this a public institution, a “bastion of democracy.” Our objectives should include thus: fermentation of direct democracy by commitment to unlimited public access and voice, development of a framework which puts a premium on personal privacy, and provisions against the “monetizing” of the Internet.

The majority of the establishment is too computer-illiterate to understand the workings or benefits of such a proposal, so the burden falls directly upon people with sufficient computer expertise and creativity to fully conceptualize this re-working of the political process. Computer scientists will be the intelligentsia of the “information revolution,” and our hopes for an egalitarian future rest ultimately with them.

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