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FEATURE
NOVEMBER
2, 1999
The
New Interactivism: A Manifesto for the Information Age
VOXCAPHOST
by
Howard Rheingold
[Editor's
note: Please note that Mr. Rheingold's entire paper is divided up in this
club into several pages. Click on "Club Contents" in the left sidebar to
see them all listed. A link to the next page is provided at the end of
each page. You can also view the entire document at once by clicking on
the plain text or PDF links at the bottom of this page.]
All
communication media, not just the Internet-enabled kind, are inherently
political. Printing presses, radio, television, each altered the processes
of governance and power, for better and worse, by shifting control over
the power to inform and argue. Until the technology of the printing press
spread broadly the previously closely-held code for accessing knowledge
-- reading -- it wasn't possible for citizens to govern themselves. But
self-government did not come into being simply because printing technology,
with its radical democratization of publishing, made it possible.
The
advent of the Internet triggered a rapid collapse of traditional economic
barriers to worldwide publishing and many-to-many communication. This collapse
of barriers to publishing and public discourse makes a new literacy possible,
just as the printing press did. Now that every PC connected to the Net
can be a printing press, broadcasting station, and place of assembly, millions
of citizens possess powerful new tools to publish, persuade, inform, investigate,
organize, and debate. Will it matter? What can people do to ensure that
it does?
Communication
technologies are political tools because the power to persuade and convince
has grown to be even more effective than the power to coerce and kill as
a means of gaining, maintaining, or overthrowing political power. The trend
over the past five hundred years since the Gutenberg revolution has been
toward the democratization of information and communication technologies.
That which had been the exclusive private property of powerful elites became
the public social capital of populations.
While
most historians focus on the military battles, the constitutional conventions,
the founding documents of modern democratic nation-states, philosopher
J¸rgen Habermas focused on the media -- pamphlets, debates in coffee
houses and tea houses, committees of correspondence, that incubated democratic
revolutions in the eighteenth century. He looked closely at behaviors that
citizens of democracies take for granted -- the simple acts of communication
that turn people into citizens, the public sphere, where ordinary people
exchange information and opinions regarding local school bond elections
and national immigration policy.
Although
the wars and elections are the most visible manifestations of citizen engagement,
we live together for the most part because of webs of unspoken agreements,
relationships, and communications that take place voluntarily and unofficially.
Voluntary organizations knit together American civil society in particular
through a remarkable variety of different affinities, from social clubs
to charitable organizations to educational and political lobbying groups.
Internet
tools for citizens who wish to strengthen democracy, interact with one
another in the public sphere, and improve civil society more broadly, fall
into three categories.
-
Information
-- the tools and freedom to publish.
-
Discourse
-- the tools, freedom, and culture of discourse citizens need to conduct
effective discussion about the issues that concern them.
-
Civic
Engagement -- the freedom and will of citizens to organize civil institutions
that maintain the social capital necessary for a democratic society to
cohere.
In
regard to the first category, the freedom to publish, the now-obsolete
homily is "freedom of the press is for those who own a printing press."
A cheap PC, a cheap modem, and an ordinary telephone line now enable anyone
anywhere to broadcast a manifesto, photograph, or speech via the Web to
everywhere the Internet reaches. The high expense of production and distribution
formerly involved with distributing words, images, sounds, and software
has been cut to a fraction of what it cost in the age of printing presses
and central broadcasting stations. The Web is but a few years old. We have
only begun to witness the effects of this sudden availability of publishing
power: at this point in the evolution of the printing press, it was still
a device used mostly to print Bibles and religious tracts.
Some
of the most costly drawbacks of the age of mass media have been the reduction
of complex issues to soundbites, the packaging of candidates and issues
as high production-value television commercials, and the transformation
of an active, communicating citizenry into a passive audience. The global
corporations that have consolidated control of distribution of news and
entertainment will continue to command attention, reap profits, and exert
influence. But they are no longer the only game in town.
The
Internet makes it possible for citizens to publish, broadcast, and converse
online. No longer do citizens need to be uninformed because the mass news
media have merged into a handful of entertainment profit centers, nor do
we have to remain voiceless. Information sources and communication media
that were until recently only the province of the wealthy and powerful
are used daily by millions. Discourse among informed citizens can be improved,
revived, restored to some degree of influence -- but only if a sufficient
number of people learn how to use these tools properly, and apply them
to real-world political problem-solving. If there is one question that
lies at the foundation of the uncertainty about the Internet's future,
it is whether the technical democratization of publishing will prove to
be a credible challenge to existing publishing interests. For this reason,
inexpensive and easy to use access to e-mail and Web-publishing could prove
to be an important tool for citizens.
E-mail,
the application that has always driven the growth of the Internet, is a
new form of social communication and the building block of many-to-many
media. A simple e-mail list can be a potent medium for raising and debating
issues, organizing for action, problem-solving. The e-mail list stimulated
the evolution of many forms of many-to-many group communication, including
the BBS, newsgroup, and Web conference. As millions more people learn to
use the new media, the relationship of these new "virtual communities"
to the future of democracy will take a central position in discussions
of the Internet as a public political medium.
The
Internet and the Public Sphere, Pt.1
 25
comments, last comment on January 4, 2000
RELATED
LINKS
The
New Interactivism -- PDF
The
New Interactivism -- plain text file |
