We will need new political mechanisms to manage participation and dissent. The immediate political effect of the internet has been to energize extremist views and expand the numbers of individuals who hold them. Extremist groups who reject these values are among the beneficiaries of the “democratization” of knowledge and communication. It is democratizing, if by this we mean greater participation in politics rather than an endorsement of democratic values. The political forces the internet creates mean that representative parliamentary democracy-the nineteenth-century solution to Gutenbergian disruption-is no longer adequate. They erode the legitimacy of existing authority by changing citizens’ expectations and creating competing narratives. Internet technologies are producing a similar result, but at a faster pace and with broader effect. This first “knowledge revolution” contributed to centuries of political turmoil. These new ideas eroded certainty in existing institutions and authority. Cheap printing changed how people thought about governance, as they could acquire knowledge at lower cost and from a much broader array of sources, giving them new (and often competing) concepts and narratives about society and religion. Let 100 Flowers BloomĪ precedent for this shift may come from Johannes Gutenberg and moveable type. These effects are reshaping politics and are the result of the nature of the online environment itself, where the combination of technology, information, and instinctive mental processes can unconsciously reshape how people think. The internet and the digital technologies that create cyberspace are transforming society, business, and politics as people respond to new opportunities online and change their behavior accordingly.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |