Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview | Imagining the Internet

Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview

As president, Perot said, he would have the government do only what “the real folks out there” asked him to do nothing more. He said he would capitalize on new interactive communications technologies to develop a people’s consensus on major issues by conducting regularly scheduled electronic town meetings. He proposed that a national referendum should replace the Congress in voting on new federal taxes. And he even offered the resign as president if enough citizens ever phoned and faxed the White House to say he should quit.

Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview

To its critics, teledemocracy conjures the image of alienated, silent voters, sitting alone inside an electronic cocoon. Like television directors sitting in a sealed TV control room, these modern-day robotic voters absorb virtually all their information about the outside world electronically – through CNN-style live coverage, tabloid-news shows, and sensational newsmagazines; and, increasingly, at programmed computer terminals. The wired public then feeds back its ill-formed, unsophisticated, unmediated opinion instantaneously, without deliberation, following simple on-screen instructions to press Y for yes, or N for no … But is that actually the way electronic democracy will operate, or needs to operate the in future?

Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview

If the new telecommunications age brings unmediated democracy, what will happen to our carefully contrived constitutional system of checks and balances? Who will protect minorities against the passions and tyranny of the popular majority? Who will protect the majority from manipulation by public opinion experts, political spin doctors, and unscrupulous pollsters? Who will protect the poor from the permanent majority of the ‘haves?’ Who can offset the persuasive power of big money, the often lying and misleading political commercials, the corruption of politics … For most issues, it is unlikely they will take the time to learn all they need to know or deepen their understanding, no matter how inexpensive, accessible, or convenient additional information might be.

Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview

Until very recently, George Orwell’s nightmare tale of Big Brother who utilized electronic surveillance technologies to monitor every citizen, hear every word being said, and see everything being done (‘”Big Brother Is Watching You!”) was the prevailing metaphor for the century to come. The frightening vision of Orwell’s 1984 evaporated with the disintegration of the monolithic Nazi and Communist regimes. By contrast, the 21st century’s defining image is more likely to have ordinary citizens using their personal telecommunications devices to keep Big Brother under continuing surveillance … In the “smart” media world, information no longer flows only from one to many. Instead, it flows simultaneously and instantaneously in many directions, from the bottom up as well as from the top down.

Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview

It will not be long before many Americans sitting at home or at work will be able to use telecomputer terminals, microprocessors, and computer-driven keypads to push the buttons that will tell their government what would be done about any important matter of state.

Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview

Cyber-warfare [could] use the ultimate 3-D techniques of virtual reality, electronic simulation, and interactive video. Televised war would look, sound, and eventually perhaps even feel and smell so much like the real thing that real war would no longer be necessary.

Introduction

We need to recognize the remarkable change that the interactive telecommunications age is producing in our political system. We need to understand the consequences of the march toward democratization. We need to deal with the promise and perils of the electronic republic. It can make government intensely responsive to the people. It can also carry responsiveness to an extreme, opening the way for manipulation, demagoguery or tyranny of the majority … In the coming era, the qualities of citizenship will be at least as important as those of political leadership. In an electronic republic, it will be essential to look at politics from the bottom up as well as from the top down.

Introduction

Interactive telecommunications now make it possible for tens of millions of widely dispersed citizens to receive the information they need to carry out the business of government themselves, gain admission to the political realm, and retrieve at least some of the power over their own lives and goods that many believe their elected leaders are squandering … The emergence of the electronic republic gives rise to the need for new thinking, new procedures, new policies, and even new political institutions to ensure that in the century ahead majoritarian impulses will not come at the expense of the rights and individuals and unpopular minorities.

Introduction

The rise of the electronic republic, with its perhaps inevitable tendency to respond quickly to every ripple of public opinion, will undercut – if not fundamentally alter – some of our most cherish Constitutional protections against the the potential excesses of majority impulses. These protections were put in place by the Founders, who were as wary of pure democracy as they were fearful of governmental authority … As the executive and legislative branches of government become more entwined with public opinion and popular demand, only the courts may be left to stand as an effective bastion against the tyranny of the majority. The judiciary, the branch of government that was designed to be the least responsive to popular passion, will bear an increasingly difficult and heavy burden to protect individual rights against the popular assault.

Introduction

Through the use of increasingly sophisticated two-way digital broadband communications networks, members of the public are gaining a seat of their own at a table of political power. Even as the public’s impatience with government rises, the inexorable progress of democratization, together with remarkable advances in interactive telecommunications, are turning people themselves into the new fourth branch of government. In the electronic republic, it will no longer be the press but the public that functions as the nation’s powerful “fourth estate,” along side the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary.