Chapter 7: The Shape of the Electronic Republic: The Citizens, the Congress, the Presidency, and the Judiciary

The country may be moving in the direction of purer democracy than anything the ancient Greeks envisioned. It promises to be a fiasco. Opinion polls and focus groups are Stone Age implements in the brave new world of interactivity just down the communications superhighway. Imagine an ongoing electronic plebiscite in which millions of Americans will be able to express their views on any public issue at a press of a button. Surely nothing could be a purer expression of democracy. Yet nothing would have a more paralyzing impact on representational government … Now imagine the paralysis that would be induced if constituents could be polled instantly by an all-but-universal interactive system. No more guessing what the voters were thinking; Presidents and lawmakers would have access to a permanent electrocardiogram, hooked up to the body politic.

Chapter 7: The Shape of the Electronic Republic: The Citizens, the Congress, the Presidency, and the Judiciary

In kitchens, living rooms, dens, bedrooms, and workplaces throughout the nation, citizens have begun to apply … electronic devices to political purposes, giving those who use them a degree of empowerment they never had before. Digital computer networks provide the means for like-minded folks across America to unite, plan, share information, organize, and plot small political upheavals … Of course, not only individuals but also large, sophisticated, and well-financed interest groups and professional lobbying organizations also have learned how to use these sophisticated new tools of political influence.

Chapter 5: Television and Beyond

In an age of video dial tone and digital transmission, there may no longer be channels – only unlimited bits of information and data to be translated into any format one wants to call up. With digital transmission, signal compression, fiber optic transmissions, and expanded use of the electronic spectrum, information of all kinds in all forms will pour in and out, limited only by people’s ability to pay. It will travel via cable lines and telephone lines, through the air, and directly to and from satellites.

Chapter 3: The Rising Force of Public Opinion

In the not too distant future, the United States may well decide that it has no choice but to introduce an official, legally recognizable computerized system of electronic voting and public opinion polling to operate alongside the free market surveys. In the electronic republic, voting in federal plebiscites and on national initiatives and referenda may well become part of the legally sanctioned duties of citizenship.

Chapter 2: The Roots of the Electronic Republic: Democracy’s Third Transformation

Interactive information technology has the potential to become the 21st century’s electronic version of the meeting place on the hill near the Acropolis, where 2,500 years ago Athenian citizens assembled to govern themselves. The electronic republic cannot be as intimate or as deliberative as the face-to-face discussions and showing of hands in the ancient Athenians’ open-air assemblies. But it is likely to extend government decision making from the few the in the center of power to the many on the outside who may wish to participate.

Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview

New methods and new systems must be devised to enable ordinary citizens to reach responsible and informed judgments. Since information has become “society’s main transforming resource,” the public’s ability to receive, absorb, and understand information no longer can be left to happenstance … Without a conscious and deliberate effort to inform public judgment, to put the new interactive telecommunications technologies to work on behalf of democracy, they are more likely to undermine the democratic process than enhance it. With citizens an active branch of the government in the electronic republic, they need to know enough to participate in a responsible and intelligent manner. That will not happen without a great deal of work, systematic planning, and significant policy reform.

Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview

Modern communications technology, by itself, will be neither democracy’s savior nor its terminator. But unquestionably it will continue to have enormous influence, both for better and for worse, on the nature and character of our political system.

Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview

The public’s increasing demand for fundamental change in the political system is far from a temporary phenomenon prompted by an emotional reaction to a few highly charged issues like gays in the military or health care reform. It represents a permanent change, made possible, in least in part, by newly empowering interactive telecommunications technologies and by the speed of information that these technologies have spawned.