futureacademy

CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere

As referenced in Jacques Derrida, L’Université sans condition (p31. Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A Critical Reader. Tom Cohen, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.)
Notes:
State apparatus in place to enfore encryption by governments that seek to protect borders from terrorists actually threatens population more than from so-called terrorists. Discussion of politics of the internet frequently restricted to which company is able to make the most income from a particular configuration.
At time of writing there were 30 million users (how many now?) so still considered an elite forum. "One may characterize postmodern or postMarxist democracy in Laclau's terms as one that opens new positions of speech, empowering previously excluded groups and enabling new aspects of social life to become part of the political process."
Development of the internet
The internet is above all a decentralized communication system. Promoted decentralization (to survive nuclear attack). Designed by a group of people (Cold War Defense Department computer programming engineers) with freedom of speech and freedom of information at the core to their counterculture ideas. Compare this to Derrida's ideas of university without condition. The original premise for the internet and continuing support for its current form relate to freedoms without condition. "If the technological structure of the Internet institutes costless reproduction, instantaneous dissemination and radical decentralization, what might be its effects upon the society, the culture and the political institutions?" (and art?)
"what the Internet technology imposes is a dematerialization of communication and in many of its aspects a transformation of the subject position of the individual who engages within it." transform relationships between humans and matter. It is more like a social space than a thing. There are aspects and components where the internet is more of a 'thing' (searching databases, email purely in place of post etc) but otherwise it could be considered an arena of exchange: "the notion of a public sphere suggests an arena of exchange, like the ancient Greek agora or the colonial New England town hall." These places were spaces of somewhat organized political discussion, but citizens have now been isolated by the media (such as television), forcing the exchange of ideas to other spheres. Quote from Paul Virilio "Avenues and public venues from now on are eclipsed by the screen, by electronic displays, in a preview of the 'vision machines' just around the corner". Public sphere as face-to-face contact is now limited, must take into account "electronically mediated discourse." The traditional definition of public sphere as discourse by subjects in symetry is not applicable to the internet as political domain. 'Noise' and 'static' that media interjects into discourse is not a new phenomena - radio and television were both critized for interference in politics long before the internet.
"What remains of the notion of things 'public' when public images (in real time) are more important than public space?" (Paul Virilio again)
Identity & Gender
As people can change identity at will on the internet, any notion of democracy that relies on a fixed identity of a person is invalid. Race, class, age, gender are less important. "as a result the relation of cyberspace to material human geography is decidedly one of rupture and challenge."
Experts
The stability of the expert is challenged as the "formation of canons and authorities is seriously undermined by the electronic nature of texts. Texts become "hypertexts" which are reconstructed in the act of reading, rendering the reader an author and disrupting the stability of experts or "authorities"."
Conclusion

If scholarly authority is challenged and reformed by the location and dissemination of texts on the Internet, it is possible that political authorities will be subject to a similar fate. If the term democracy refers to the sovereignty of embodied individuals and the system of determining office-holders by them, a new term will be required to indicate a relation of leaders and followers that is mediated by cyberspace and constituted in relation to the mobile identities found therein.

posted by Chris @ 2:28 pm