Power and Technology

They aired this on Channel 7 last night, it is a documentary called Us Now which explores the idea/s of changing the way we manage government to use new technologies. They are looking at this idea that democracy could be truly transparent and truly run by everyone. But first the current administrations have to get over the paranoia of being transparent, and get over the need for copyright etc. I like what he says at the last bit of this video, that revolution happens not when people adopt a new technology but when they adopt a new behavior, a remark which itself gives people power over government instead of the other way around.

worth having a look at their site too which includes all of the content of the film in sections. “The potential for transforming democracy is huge. People are leaving the democratic realm in their droves because they have little purchase on it, it doesn't seem to respond to them, they don't have a voice in it, it is not talking about what they are talking about. In contrast the web allows people to have conversations with other people, to voice their views, to meet, to share and mobilise and so all through the world you see now new forms of political mobilisation, whether they are very, very local campaigns about traffic or noise, to global campaigns about the environment and poverty enabled and organised by the web. So the web is a really powerful tool for mobilising people around things they share and they care about and that should have and does seem have the effect of re-energising democracy and, of course, in the developing world, in authoritian regimes, the web is the only place where democratic debate takes place. So the big contests about democracy in China, in Vietnam, in Burma, the web is the place where democratic debate is taking place. It is the best hope for promoting democracy in any of these places.”

This optimistic view is what early internet advocates were hoping for when they suggested that the internet was going to be a free democratic tool. Is it too optimistic? I think perspectives like this one leave out the business side of the web. The ‘web’ doesn’t really exist as it used to, and it is problematic to consider the web as a place. Most users of the web are users of applications like email, facebook, google. These are businesses that want our activity. They get advertising revenue from it. They can also potentially influence the way we think and the way we communicate. These ‘places’ are not free of capitalist influence. Furthermore, the web in general is not free of its materiality. If we think of the web as a place, we can forget where we are when we use it. And the fact is that there are more people who don’t use the internet than those that do, especially in the countries that might profit most from democratic debate. (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm). Ultimately, people need computers, they need interfaces, and they need access. How can it be a democratic tool when most of the time, access is purchased?