the death of internet democracy

by John

Democracy is not a big word. It needs no capital letter. It remains in the local politic, where each person has a voice. It belongs in taverns and front porches and neighborhood parishes and potlucks and parks. Democracy is not simply a political process. It's social and cultural and human.

If a democracy expands too large, a republic is necessary. If the republic gets too large, factions become necessary. It's a matter of organization. One hundred senators each representing their local politic gets too confusing. We need parties, big parties and pinatas. Okay, not pinatas, but slogans and marketing and machinery. For the sake of effeciency, we need talking points and plans and platforms instead of pints and people and porches.

At some point the republic becomes an oligarchy and, if we're not careful, a plutocracy. We go from a few people ruling to a few people with economic interests ruling. The language is democratic, but the systems are economic.

***

I'm not an anarchist, I swear. Yet, I think people are confused by the Tea Party enthusiasts. They are not simply a wacky side of the GOP. Don't be fooled by Sarah Palin. Just talk to a few people who have attended. Some very well might be crazy, but no crazier than watching Fox News or CNN. What they want is a voice. What they want is a democracy. The organizers of information have only two spin options with the Tea Party People - either laugh in mockery or talk about how scary they are.

People feel angry about bail-outs and huge transnational corporations that run their lives and laws mandating that it is illegal to refuse health care, but okay to destroy a fetus. In other words, a woman has ownership of life growing in her body, but no ownership of her own body. These aren't left/right, blue/red issues, but we are conditioned to think in binary terms, because it's more efficient. We have ads in a few minutes and ticker tape running ever-changing stock prices and Hollywood news to get to.  Complexity requires porches and pints. 

***

I'm turning off Google Buzz. I liked it at first, but now I'm ignoring it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to become the Unibomber or anything. But I cringe at the creating of web-based oligopolies. Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Shouldn't individual's organize information? And shouldn't we be deciding, over a pint, what is accessible (what, for example, is private?) and what is useful?

I'm not anti-Google. I prefer it to Microsoft and Apple. But it's an advertisement company. It's like Clear Channel, just with a greater sense of ethics and fewer enemies . . . so far. Still, I need something more than a "don't be evil" statement for me to trust you. I need a voice. I need to be heard. I need to listen. Google can't listen to me. Google can't have a pint with me. A Droid can't sit on my front porch. 

I mention all of this, because I am concerned with a trend I see in blogs right now. Fewer and fewer bloggers seem to be creating new content and organizing it on their own terms. Few people use labels and folksonomy. Many bloggers seem to simply embed content from larger media organizations.

I guess that's fine, but I like the notion of the citizen storyteller and as bizarre as it might be, the internet seems to be one of the last places where this is occurring.