The Internet and democracy

The Internet’s short and remarkable journey has brought with it some challenges that should temper our confidence in its promised positive impact on democracy and society.

For a start, gambling and pornography are major online activities and the rise of the Internet seems to have been a particular boon for pedophiles. Something a few god-botherers are using to scare parents and rationalise a new censorship.

This drift to censorship is also augmented by a fear of the unedited. In the Australian TV series, Brides of Christ, an old nun weeps when she is told that, following Vatican 2, she can now make her own decisions. Faced with the enormity of the Internet, and its avalanche of voices and information, many people are exhibiting the same sense of grief and loss.

In addition, the web pioneers promised a nirvana of online meeting places where many voices would be heard and the authoritarian, top-down, all-controlling approaches of everyone from the media, to politicians, academics and corporate spin doctors would come to a blissful end to be replaced by the “conversation”.

Although, “conversation” has some claim to being the 21st century’s first really annoying cliché, it is still more honoured in the breach.

We’ve got some convivial and collegiate conversation, but we’ve also got a lot of inane nonsense, a lot of ugly personal attacks and plenty of echo chambers where people go to have their prejudices confirmed. Too few genuine conversations and too much of people yelling at each other or into an electronic void, lots of people talking but too few listening.

And our politicians, corporates and non-government organisations seem to be some of the most reluctant to listen. Telstra just recently took down its social media site, and Obama gathered lots of campaign cash but he did not open up his policy processes to his many followers on social media platforms.

Back in Australia, despite a growing fascination with Twitter, the policy and pre-selection processes are still closed to all but the small groups of insiders who have always dominated and who show no sign of giving up even a tiny smidgeon of their precious political power.

There are baby steps, and the well-known, often-repeated, conference case studies of this or that politician or company doing something or other in the “web 2.0 space”. But these do not yet add up to the revolution in the way our society communicates that many of us long for.

I do not mean that significant change will not occur, but I do think that the idea, often conveyed by gurus peddling books, that a few web 2.0 trumpet blasts would see the walls of Jericho crumble was always naïve. It will take a lot more pushing than that.