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Feature essay: IT Education and Democratic PracticeDrew Whitworth, University of LeedsPage 1 ¦ Page 2 ¦ Page 3 ¦ Page 4 ¦ Printer-friendly version Habermas's idea of the public sphere is regularly cited in discussions of "cyberdemocracy" (see Schneider's dissertation, for example). Particularly in the early- to mid-1990s, many commentators believed that IT and the Internet could help push back the colonisation of the public sphere (see previous page). Why was this the case? One element of colonisation is when access to information and decision-making is restricted. For example, information may be withheld for reasons of "national security" or "competitive advantage". Even when it is available, substantial fees may be levied on those who wish to access it; still more produce it. The broadcast and newspaper media are far from freely accessible, and unless a political issue is "media-friendly" (e.g. is sanctioned by the PR industry, leaked from 10 Downing Street, involves violence or is associated with certain celebrities) it will often be ignored. In contrast, the Internet was seen as a means by which some of these obstacles could be sidestepped. Information on the Net is "slippery" [13], and therefore harder to control for political or business reasons. In addition, systems such as Usenet, chat rooms and other "bulletin board" systems were considered as modern versions of free, undistorted public spheres in which people could debate with their peers. In Hafner and Lyon's history of ARPANET, the ancestor of today's Internet [14], there is a strong sense that the early Net was built through collaboration and mutual aid. Many important systems and standards were proposed, constructed and maintained from the bottom up; in other words, by their users. Most bandwidth at this time was being used for peer-to-peer communication and debate (usually about the Net itself, though not always), and commercial exploitation of the network was not permitted. From a perspective like this it is perhaps unsurprising that many subsequent assessments of the Net's impact on the democratic public sphere were positive. These tendencies should be noted, as they have had some impact upon political activity. But they are far from representing a widespread revitalisation of the public sphere. In the first place, Usenet is (despite the great amount of sociological literature devoted to it [15]) a minority pursuit: at best a distant third in popularity behind E-mail and the WWW amongst Internet systems. The "virtual communities" within it are fragile beasts, easily marginalised and often disrupted by "trolling" and "flame wars" and full of little more than trivia. (A critical analysis of Usenet and computer-mediated communication more generally will be the subject of a future issue of Tangentium.) Also, as Stephen Lax [16] writes: "...the problem with democracy is not, and never has been, a deficiency in the quality or quantity of information or debate." Governments have always published reams of information, much of which was unused even before the advent of the Net. Accounts such as Hafner and Lyon's, and Rheingold's [17] clearly suggest a countercultural aspect to the Internet's early days. Yet one can also take a different perspective. The information society, and the spread of the information technologies on which it depends, has not been provoked by some grass-roots push for "more democracy" or a revitalised public sphere, but by a capitalist system which sought new markets (and marketing methods) and ways of co-ordinating its production processes on a global scale [18]. Note that it does not seem to matter whether one views these developments with an approving or disapproving eye; few dispute that they have been the main motivation behind the rapid spread of IT. Like most if not all new technologies, IT was developed to preserve and enhance existing structures, not to change them. IT is popular amongst large, bureaucratic organisations because it makes many processes more efficient. In large organisations this is understandable. But (and this is a feature of modernity, not just of IT) these large organisations seek to impose these conditions of efficiency in areas where it is less appropriate: viz, the lifeworld and public sphere. This is the best and simplest summary of the process of colonisation. IT is not disseminated because of its usefulness for electronic debate or the autonomous production of information. "Cyberdemocracy" comes to mean not peer-to-peer collaboration via communications networks but merely the electronic vote, a technical fix for a perceived "defect" in current democratic practice, designed to bolster the existing system rather than change it. Electronic voting slims down and speeds up the process of taking decisions, rather than making it somehow more involved and therefore, more participatory and democratic. We have a situation, therefore, where IT could be used by individuals and small groups in autonomous, self-directed ways. But mostly it is not. Rather, IT systems, standards and policies are decided upon at the highest levels and then imposed on the general public. Return to the top of this page Footnotes13. Moor, James H. (2001): "Towards a Theory of Privacy for the Information Age", in R. A. Spinello and H. T. Tavani, eds., Readings in CyberEthics, London: Jones and Bartlett, pp. 349-359. [return] 14. Hafner, Katie and Matthew Lyon (1998): Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet, New York, Touchstone. [return] 15. Epitomised by Turkle, Sherry (1995): Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York, Simon and Schuster. [return] 16. Lax, Stephen (2000): "The Internet and Democracy", from D. Gauntlett, ed., web.studies: Rewiring media studies for the digital age. London: Arnold, p. 167. [return] 17. Rheingold, Howard (2000): The Virtual Community: Homesteading the Electronic Frontier, 2nd ed., Cambridge Mass., MIT Press. [return] 18. Webster, Frank (2002): Theories of the Information Society, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, passim. [return] | |