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democracy and technology
``` Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 12:46:05 -0500 (EST) From: RESCLOVE@amherst.edu To: loka-l@amherst.edu Subject: Cybersobriety/new book: Democracy & Technology (Loka Alert 2-6)
Loka Alert 2-6 (August 29, 1995)
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Friends and Colleagues:
This is one in an occasional series of electronic postings on democratic politics of science and technology, issued by the Loka Institute. If you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Loka list, please send an e-mail message to that effect to: loka@amherst.edu
--Dick Sclove Executive Director, The Loka Institute, P.O. Box 355, Amherst, MA 01004-0355, USA Tel. 413 253-2828; Fax 413 253-4942 E-mail: resclove@amherst.edu World Wide Web: http://www.amherst.edu/~loka/
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CYBERSOBRIETY
The Loka Institute is pleased to announce the publication of Richard Sclove's new book, Democracy and Technology. The book develops a constructive agenda for democratizing all domains of technology--ranging from household to workplace, government, urban infrastructure, medicine, farming, etc. The excerpt that follows explores potential limitations of virtual communities.
Adapted from Richard E. Sclove, Democracy and Technology (New York: Guilford Press, 1995), pp. 79-81, 108--with cites omitted:
VIRTUAL COMMUNITY?
Contemporary technological reporting is rife with notions of electronic communities in which people interact across regions or entire continents. Could such "virtual communities" eventually replace geographically localized social relations? There are reasons to suspect that, as the foundation for a democratic society, virtual communities will remain seriously deficient.
For example, electronic communication filters out and alters much of the nuance, warmth, contextuality, and so on that seem important to fully human, morally engaged interaction. That is one reason many Japanese and European executives persist in considering face-to-face encounter essential to their business dealings and why many engineers, too, prefer face-to-face interaction and find it essential to their creativity.
Even hypothetical new media (e.g., advanced "virtual realities"), conveying a dimensionally richer sensory display, are unlikely to prove fully satisfactory substitutes for face-to- face interaction. Electronic media decompose holistic experience into analytically distinct sensory dimensions and then transmit the latter. At the receiving end, people can resynthesize the resulting parts into a coherent experience, but the new whole is invariably different and, in some fundamental sense less, than the original. (In terms of Michael Polanyi's philosophy, part of what is lost is that the original whole was partially constituted by a context that was essentially tacit, open-textured, and nonspecifiable. Hence, when one analytically or technically decomposes a whole into parts, invariably some of the context essential to the original whole is omitted.)
Second, there is evidence that screen-based technologies (such as TV and computer monitors) are prone to induce democratically unpromising psychopathologies, ranging from escapism to passivity, obsession, confusing watching with doing, withdrawal from other forms of social engagement, or distancing from moral consequences.
Third, a strength--but also a drawback--to a virtual community is that any member can exit instantly. Indeed, an entire virtual community can atrophy or perish in the wink of an eye. To the extent that membership in virtual communities proves less stable than that obtaining in other forms of democratic community, or that social relations prove less thick (i.e., less embedded in a context saturated in shared meaning and history), there could be adverse consequences for individual psychological and moral development. In the words of psychologist Robert Kegan:
"Long-term relationships and life in a community of considerable duration may be essential if we are not to lose ourselves, if we are to be able to recollect ourselves. They may be essential to the human coherence of our lives, a coherence which is not found from looking into the faces of those who relieve us because they know nothing of us when we were less than ourselves, but from looking into the faces of those who relieve us because they reflect our history in their faces, faces which we can look into finally without anger or shame, and which look back at us with love."
[From The Evolving Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 218).]
Fourth, no matter with whom we communicate nor how far our imaginations fly, our bodies--and hence many material interdependencies with other people--always remain locally situated. Thus it seems morally hazardous to commune with far- flung tele-mates, if that means growing indifferent to physical neighbors. It is not encouraging to observe just such indifference in California's Silicon Valley, one of the world's most "highly wired" regions.
Lastly, one function of democratic community is to provide a social foundation for self-governance and individual political empowerment. This suggests that community boundaries ought normally to remain roughly contiguous with the territorial boundaries defining formal political accountability and agency. Yet the criterion of local self-governance is breached if involvement in spatially dispersed social networks grows to subvert a collective capacity to govern the locales people physically inhabit. And the criterion of egalitarian empowerment is breached if coveys of technorich cronies are empowered to telelobby senators, while technopoor neighbors are excluded from the circuit.
Telecommunications enthusiasts, such as contemporary boosters of a national information superhighway, sometimes respond that should a mismatch arise between bonds of social affiliation, which could increasingly become nonterritorial, versus current political jurisdictions, "political systems can change." However, that answer provides none of the necessary specifics. It also fails, for example, to grapple with the U.S. Constitution's requirement that amendments garner the support of a majority of elected federal or state legislators. How readily do legislators normally accede to voting away their own offices? In short, at a minimum one would confront a profound transition dilemma.
If the prospect of telecommunity replacing spatially localized community ought to evoke skepticism or opposition, one can nevertheless remain open to the possibility of democratically managing the evolution of telecommunications systems in ways that instead supplement more traditional forms of democratic community. Caution is in order. However, the benefits can potentially include combatting local parochialism; helping to establish individual memberships in a diverse range of communities, associations, and social movements; empowering isolated or marginalized groups; and facilitating transcommunity and intersocietal understanding, coordination, and accountability.
Systems designed to support such uses--especially without subverting local community--are unlikely to emerge without concerted democratic struggle. For instance, one transnational corporation first supported, then clandestinely monitored, and finally terminated a successful, productivity-enhancing internal computer conferencing system. Senior managers had discovered that subordinates, including women executives previously isolated from one another, were spending coffee-break time on the system discussing and criticizing company policy. Moreover, even seemingly benign systems require ongoing scrutiny for social effects that may only emerge gradually as a system evolves.... *
This excerpt is adapted from Richard E. Sclove, Democracy and Technology (New York: Guilford Press, 1995). Paperback ISBN 0-89862-861-X; hardcover ISBN 0-89862-860-1. Democracy and Technology can be ordered from your local bookseller, or it is available in paperback for U.S. $18.95 (plus shipping cost) from Guilford Press, 72 Spring St., New York, NY 10012, USA. Tel. +(212) 431-9800; Tel. toll free (800) 365-7006; Fax +(212) 966-6708. E-mail: info@guilford.com
Some comments on Democracy and Technology:
"A welcome addition to an essential debate....This book provides a provocative and thorough analysis of the challenges facing us on the threshold of the 21st Century." --U.S. Congressman George E. Brown, Jr., Ranking Democratic Member and Former Chairman, House Science Committee
"Democracy and technology, and the way these two institutions affect each other, is perhaps the most pressing problem of the coming decade. Neither Luddite nor Technophile...Sclove directs our attention to solutions that might actually work." --Howard Rheingold, author of Virtual Community
"Remarkably ambitious, superbly accessible, and urgently needed--a gold mine of fundamental insights and suggestive provocations....This is the most far-reaching work I have seen on the political nature of technological change." --David F. Noble, author of Forces of Production
"An important book, one for which the community of science and technology studies scholars has been waiting. In clear prose, using numerous salient examples, Richard Sclove provides a philosophic and practical foundation for participatory technology. I am looking forward to using this book in several of my courses." --Ruth Schwartz Cowan, author of More Work for Mother and Past President, Society for the History of Technology
"The seeds for a humane, alternative social order, as well as a plausible strategy for getting there. A much needed book!" --Robert L. Heilbroner, author of Visions of the Future
"This book will be an essential tool to strengthen democratic public problem-solving. Sclove gives us a compelling moral argument and a practical guide to shaping our future. Bravo!" --Frances Moore Lappe & Paul Martin Dubois, Co- Directors of the Center for Living Democracy
For information about the distribution of Democracy and Technology beyond the U.S., contact Guilford Press in New York (E-mail: info@guilford.com or see above for other Guilford contact information). Among the book's foreign distributors are: For Canada: Copp Clark Longman, Ltd., 2775 Matheson Blvd. E., Mississauga, ON, Canada, L4W 4P7. Tel. (905) 238-6074. Fax (905) 238-6075. For Europe: Guilford Press, 27 Palmiera Mansions, Church Road, Hove, E. Sussex, UK, BN3 2FA. Tel. +(01273) 207411. Fax +(01273) 205612. For Australia & New Zealand: Astam Books, 57-61 John Street, Leichhardt, NSW 2040, Australia. Tel. (02) 566 4400. Fax (02) 566 4411.
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