Drowning in Digital Democracy: Part I
By J.C. Caruso
It’s become commonplace, and maybe even a little passé, to describe our own ongoing digital revolution as analogous the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press in the 15th century. Indeed, some points of comparison do continue to seem remarkably apt. For example, the role of printed documents in spreading new ideas during the Reformation looks a lot like activists using Facebook and Twitter to share news and schedule protests during the Arab Spring. Both show how technology can be a powerful force for democratization. (Apologies if I’m stepping on any toes by seeming to valorize the Reformation as a positively democratic movement on the blog of a Catholic university, but you know what I mean.)
However, critics like Adam Gopnik in his New Yorker piece “The Information: How the Internet Gets Inside Us” (Feb. 14, 2011) have been quick to point out that overly enthusiastic interpretations of such revolutionary possibilities not only tend to confuse correlation with causation – that is, did the printing press give rise to the Reformation and the Enlightenment, or did it just help spread the word? The truth probably rests somewhere in between cause and coincidence, but we should be careful not to ignore the distinction.
Similarly, technology’s vocal cheerleaders seem all too ready to ignore the potential negative aspects of such improved communication technologies – like the inconvenient historical fact that totalitarian regimes have typically printed far more works of propaganda than they’ve destroyed in book burnings. Dictators figured out quickly that it’s far easier to drown out the voices of opposition than silence them. Pervasive misinformation can do far more damage than tearing down handbills.
Now, I’m not suggesting that our globalized digital community is a totalitarian regime. At least on the surface it feels like just the opposite, though Jaron Lanier expresses some dire warnings about what he calls “cybernetic totalism” in his “One-Half of a Manifesto.” I’ll plan to address Lanier’s thoughts more fully in a future post. For now, it’s enough to observe that in this brave new world of online culture we’ve adapted to communication being instantaneous, everything being available all the time, and everyone having a voice. Well, in such an environment, succumbing to the endless seas of unmediated information (and misinformation), the rule of the mob begins to feel like a real possibility.
We’re drowning in digital democracy.
Forgive me if I sound less than perfectly egalitarian here, but when everyone not only has a voice but has the ability to speak in a polyphony of voices masked in anonymity, we’re no longer looking at a lively exchange of ideas. We’re looking at the well-known horrors of mob rule, and it doesn’t make the stakes any lower or the threats any less real that it’s happening online.
Even in the best of scenarios, when everyone has a voice the quality of the conversation can plummet very quickly. I’m not talking about those annoying people who use their social media to tell everyone from Boise to Bangladesh that they’re making a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Those folks are easy enough to avoid and to ignore.
No, my concern is that too many of our students and friends and journalists and politicians and, hell, all of us are relying on Wikipedia and Google. Not only are we trusting crowd-sourced encyclopedias written by people who may have little or no education or expertise (and some of whom are hoaxers or pranksters), but we’re relying on logarithmically-driven and advertisement-enhanced search engines to provide most (or all) of our information, without pausing to question or to ascertain the authority of what we’re reading.
Not only that, but because of such ready access to information we’re hearing people who are smart enough to know better trumpeting the end of all cultural and social authority. “The expert is dead,” such digerati claim. And indeed throughout much of our irreverent, anything-goes society, many people do seem to be acting as if at last the king is dead.
But is it really true that we no longer have any need for cultural, political, and intellectual authority?
No, in fact just the opposite is true. Greater freedom brings with it greater responsibility. We now need experts in every field to exert their authority more powerfully than ever. Reason must lead. Functional democracies (even digital ones) still need organization and leaders. Otherwise we’re left with the chaos of a shouting match.
Having a voice is not the same as knowing how to participate a conversation. Access to information is not the same thing as knowing how to use it. We didn’t close up schools because every home had a set of encyclopedias. We didn’t tear down universities because people had access to public libraries.
All those online sources might be fine places to start looking for information, but we need to be constantly vigilant about verifying what we’re accepting as valid and credible. We also need to get better about documenting and providing links to our sources (as you’ll notice I’m trying to do in these posts).
And finally, we need to make sure we remain very clear about the vital differences between having ready access to information and gaining an education. Now more than ever, our students need us to teach them how to read, how to research, how to analyze information, and how to participate responsibly in this emerging digital democracy.
Of course, if the Digital Revolution truly lives up to its name, its effects will be further reaching and less predictable than any of us can imagine. That’s the problem with revolutions – they change everything.
Stay tuned next week for the second part in this mini-series by John Caruso.
A 19th-century Americanist and textual scholar, John Caruso teaches at Marylhurst University in both the Department of English Literature & Writing and the Department of Culture & Media.
Excellent, insightful observations! I look forward to Part II.
BH
Nice post. The internet only exacerbates a common problem we see as instructors (I am a Marylhurst adjunct)–the belief that everything is a matter of opinion and that one opinion is as good as another. What I try to teach, to quolte a book I assign, is that some arguments “are more grounded in fact and reason than others.” I tell my students in fact that “opinions” are meaningless and we should forget about that word entirely–the question is, what are the evidence and arguments for your points? And as you note, learning to read critically is an important aspect of that.
Thanks for your comment, Barry. I find the first challenge is in teaching students to differentiate between “opinion” and argument. Even if it doesn’t come naturally for them, it’s an important distinction to learn how to make. Teaching them some formal procedures for argumentation can also be useful, so they can notice an ad hominem swipe or recognize a straw man attack or spot a false either/or dichotomy. Learning this stuff can be tough for them, but once they “get it” they really enjoy taking apart expository essays by other writers.
John,
I wonder if the issue is not misinformation, but how thinking itself has been reduced to information itself. After all, what does one do with information when confronted with huge social, political and ethical issues? In fact, the popularity of creating panels of experts to discuss anything from bio-engineering to global warming seems more symptomatic of a political system tethered to the management of the market than it is a sign of enacting real change for the better. Perhaps the digital revolution is simply another iteration in technical reproduction, one that magically turns the consumer into an alleged participant of democracy, all done under the monetized banner ‘revolution.’
David
Thanks, David. I think you’re exactly right here. Access to information has become too often a substitute for critical thinking. And, yes, the “digital revolution” has already demonstrated itself as primarily what you aptly term “another iteration in technical reproduction.” But for me it’s not so much that the consumer has been turned into a “alleged participant” in so-called digital democracy, it’s rather that the banner of “digital democracy” serves as a sort of magician’s cape behind which the consumer is transformed into an unpaid laborer who produces capital for corporations under the guise of receiving “free” services. As long as the digital generation continues to believe everything online should be “free,” they’ll keep producing material wealth for the overlords of the new media without ever being paid a dime in return. As you know, this is what Jodi Dean refers to as “communicative capitalism” in Blog Theory and elsewhere. More people should read her work.
For a shorter piece that addresses some of these same concerns, I would refer people to R.H. Lossin’s “Walden in a Wired World” — http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rh-lossin/walden-in-a-wired-world_b_2120524.html
You’re correct: a polyphony of voices leads to a drop in the quality of conversation. Certainly, this post demonstrates a clear bias against digital culture, but not a lot of experience in or knowledge about that culture. The irony, of course, is that it is exactly the digital democracy that you decry that permits you to post what you’ve posted. You’re allowed because everyone is allowed. Your voice, as my own, as all voices enabled to the digital, can carve out and own its space within the mob.
Your points about authority are mostly correct. We still need educators, and we still need leaders in this digital democracy. But they must be leaders who are willing to abdicate their authorities in order to give rise to new, relevant voices. We cannot simply call in the old guard and hope that it will squelch the Internet. This revolution is not new, not even close to new, and there is an entire generation ready to enter college who have never not known the freedom to speak their minds, to uncover information, and to take action based on that information. Yes, information is not knowledge; but staunch leadership — critical of new voices (anonymous and otherwise), suspicious of the sources of digital information — is not the secret ingredient that will turn that particular lead into that particular gold. New culture requires new techniques for guiding that culture. To remain relevant as a leader, we must change our techniques, or those who need leading will ignore and dismiss us.
Educators, especially those purporting to be digital educators, need to stop demonizing digital culture. The Internet is our new classroom. Teaching students to use it properly, with mindfulness and awareness, cannot be done if teachers are not themselves conscionable, fluent digital citizens. And, as the McCarthy era pointed out so really very well, paranoia and suspicion do not good citizens make.
Thanks for your reply, Sean. I appreciate your willingness to engage on this topic. However, upset as you apparently are by my line of inquiry, you inadvertently demonstrate precisely one of the problems I was addressing. Our challenge is not just about the veracity of information and the reliability of sources, but also more importantly about the quality of our discourse. As educators, if we want our students to develop critical thinking, we must model those skills in our own writing. My post presents a reasoned critique without espousing any particular value judgments about digital culture; however, your reply blithely asserts that educators must “abdicate their authorities” or suffer the fate that students will “ignore and dismiss” them, and it does so without mounting an actual case for this scenario or considering what might be at stake in such an abdication. Further, you posit that our voices are made equal in this brave new world of digital democracy. But the fact remains that our posts are not really equivalent — because, at a fundamental level, argument and opinion are not equally valid. By conflating them, one dangerously erodes the value of our critical discourse.
John, you might find this a useful counterpoint to your argument here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704025304575284973472694334.html. Plus, this is the (snake eating its own tail) article from Wikipedia about the reliability of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia. And, finally, a nuanced argument about Wikipedia that digs deeper, beyond a simple consideration of its reliability: http://copyvillain.org/blog/2012/02/20/weighing-consensus-building-truth-on-wikipedia/. The evolution of digital culture moves at such a rapid pace that it’s hard for our analysis of it to keep up. Your argument here responds to the landscape of the internet in 2007 rather well, but I don’t recognize the digital you describe here. (Anonymity, for example, is no longer the norm in the digital cultures I inhabit.) And, in fact, my own thinking on digital culture is only just barely keeping up. My first link above, for example, is from 2010. I think teachers do need to encourage students to be critical evaluators of digital technologies (Howard Rheingold’s book Net Smart is a great start), but I believe teachers have as much to learn from students about “how to read, how to research, how to analyze information, and how to participate responsibly in this emerging digital democracy.”