Chapter 2 – Internet Politics

• The Political Nature of Technologies
  • Technological Determinism
    • Certain technologies “embody specific norms”
    • The idea that technological forms have their own inherent properties and that these are beyond the scope of human intervention.
    • Some Marxist aspects – “the material basis of society is the primary motor of social, economic, and ultimately political change”
  • Social Determinism
    • Technologically is initially politically neutral.  Technology is shaped by social and political processes.
    • Only necessary to examine the power struggles and the influential groups, classes, individuals, and institutions which initiated and subsequently shaped technological change.
  • Having it Both Ways
    • Exemplified by philosophy of Langdon Winner:
      • “The issues that divide or unite people in society are settled not only in the institutions and practices of politics proper, but also, and less obviously so, in tangible arrangements of steel and concrete, wires and semiconductors, nuts and bolts.”
  • Code as Law
    • Lessig, Shapiro, and Reidenberg are scholars who have studied how the Internet’s architecture regulates Internet activity.
    • “In cyberspace we must understand how code regulates-how software and the hardware that make cyberspace what it is regulate cyberspace as it is.” (Lessig 1999)
    • Implies technology is powerful but not uncontrollable by human design.  Code can be created and modified by humans, but once created, re-exerts influence over human behavior.
    • Term: means of architectural production
• Eight Key Themes
  • Decentralization
    • Emphasizes the Internet’s ability to remove traditional middle-men from social, political, and economic activity.
    • New middle-men, or gatekeepers, have also emerged to service new demands.
    • Fewer elite gatekeepers because of the Internet’s “low barriers of entry”
  • Participation
    • Internet is seen, according to writers such as Barber (Strong Democracy), Habermas, and Dahl, to have the potential to increase citizen engagement in democracy, mobilizing a highly inclusive form of deliberative democracy, as opposed to representative democracy.
    • Nevertheless, the high rate of participation on the Internet has been thought to contribute to produce deeply segmented political associations, “echo chamber” forums, and an overload of information.
    • Blogs particularly appear to have increased participation and lowered apathy.
  • Community
    • Following the premise “political apathy is a result of the withering away of community,” some believe the Internet can “reinvent community in cyberspace and greater levels of political participation will follow”
    • Internet also as the uncanny ability to create anonymity and detachment – a feature some users enjoy.
    • Faces the problem, “what is a desirable basis for community?”
      • Assumption 1: a healthy public sphere is a universal one in which opinions clash and conventional wisdom is challenged. (Sunstein)
      • Assumption 2: identity is the source of cohesion in any community and characterized by identity construction rituals, rule writing, and enforcement
    • Sustein, a critic, believes the fragmentation of the public sphere, due to narrowcasting, will erode the quality of the debate.
  • Globalization
    • While cyberspace is a space where boundaries and topography exist, they are much weaker constraints on behavior than those in the physical world.  This opens up new possibilities for forms of political action that subvert attempts by the powerful to control the spaces in which politics is conducted as well as refoncifugre the “geography of access”
  • Postindustrialization
  • Rationalization
  • Governance
  • Libertarianism