LECTURE EIGHT

Stephen Stockwell returned today to lecture us on Cyber Democracy: the internet and the public sphere. Here's some things I learnt:

• Direct democracy is where people represent themselves - it's a traditional and historical way of government from Greece in around 600BC.
• They have a gathered assembly that made decisions on everything from how heavy a pound is to whether or not they should go to war.
• In this Greek system women, slaves and people not born in Greece weren't allowed to be part of the assembly - there was a lot of exclusion from citizenship.
• These assemblys would take place in 'public domain' or 'public sphere'. A common shared pool of culture and common area.
• Public sphere - the domain of social life in which public opinion forms (salons, coffee shops).
• Representative democracy is where you don't get a chance to go down to parliament and have your say down there. It's a democracy where certain people act as extensions of a social and political process - was used in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
• Freedom of speech is a crucial part of a democracy.
• Freedom of speech has a dual function - to generate the best ideas and let everyone have their say.
• Freedom of speech in a representative democracy gives us a whole lot of ways we can be involved in government processes even if its at an arms length e.g. letters to the editor, talk-back radio, protest.
• When the internet emerged in the early 90's there were a variety of opinions on its effects on democracy.
• Move to democracy on the web.
• Problems were: not everyone has access to the internet, decisions and polls could be rigged because hackers could change the results that were entered.
• Internet provides a lot of people the opportunity to have a voice.
• Arugument that the public sphere is diminishing. In the early days public debate took place often at coffee shops etc. but we are losing this interaction of political views. The concentration of media and the rise of effective Public Relations has limited peoples public debate.
• The practice of utilising the net actually teaches us a number of skills such as self-sufficency and self-empowerment.
• The battle we have with our computer is training us to operate computers and computer systems effectively to produce results.

QUESTIONS

• Do our computer skills turn us into a new form of citizen, capable of a new form of democracy?
• Is the internet a particularly effective way of creating democracy?

Which the internet and new media aren't going to change democracy they give us opportunities to inject ourselves and our opinions into government processes and decisions in our society.