Is the Internet an Effective Forum for Public Debate?

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2007/10/27/Battle_of_Ideas_Digital_Commons

Liberal author and columnist Alexander Cockburn argues that the so-called "Digital Commons" has not evolved into an effective forum for public debate.

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"Digital commons: Does new technology add up to a new public sphere?" at the 2007 Battle of Ideas conference hosted by the Institute of Ideas.

New technology has become so closely associated with public engagement, both culturally and politically, that it has been heralded as a new democracy in and of itself. Undoubtedly we are in an era in which people have the freedom to access and create public information like never before, challenging traditional expertise and deference to authority: citizen journalists break stories, bands shoot to No 1 without A&R men from major labels, and presidential candidates connect with their electorate via YouTube.

But how revolutionary is new technology really? Often it is respected off-line institutions that seem to dominate the digital commons, even setting-up shop in Second Life. Add to that 10 Downing Street e-petitions, MPs’ blogs and the mainstream media flocking online, and is the internet not just coming to reflect the existing power structures of real life? Are multinational corporations and political parties simply using new technology for their own traditional ends? - IoI

Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the twice-monthly muckraking newsletter CounterPunch, whose Web site, www.counterpunch.org, now has a world audience in the millions.

He has established a reputation as one of the foremost reporters and commentators of the left by writing newspaper and magazine columns for three decades. Cockburn’s areas of interest include the American political scene, economics, the environment, labour issues and international policy, the perils of conspiracism.

The author of a bi-weekly column for The Nation called Beat the Devil, Cockburn also writes a syndicated newspaper column that is distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate and has appeared regularly in such papers as the Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Examiner, Minneapolis Star-Tribune and Detroit Free Press.

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[TheSeaMyst]

Your right there are rich thinkers that value money over human kindness and it is wrong.

Where a Christ forgave us for everything we have dune, and said yet these few can say no We are god now of this internet 'No They all go this way or that way I say enough, They are wrong for letting them look. So we are all wrong you cannot regulate any society with laws that are imposable to follow.

[BanalCarnal]

What this speaker needs to take into account is the number of people in modern times as well as all the fragmented opinions that continue to grow UNMONITORED. This outdated idea of the common as a platform form public debate via opinion is naive considering the chaos that would possibly ensue. "designated" areas are a necessity in our times.

This man should turn his fire on the English government, which certainly needs it.

[twistrmike]

rofl the guy whos pc got flagged for saying bomb was probably playing cs.

[odietarceo]

he's the man!

[JerryX68]

And I love the way he nails the lie that the Net's a safeguard against creeping authoritarianism. As the embattled secular and democratic Egyptian Left says, 'They let the dogs bark.' The poet R.S. Thomas put it more subtly:

Period

It was a time when wise men

Were not silent, but stifled

By vast noise. They took refuge

In books that were not read . . .

Two counsellors had the ear

Of the public. One cried "Buy"

Day and Night, and the other,

More plausibly, "Sell your Repose."

[littlegreymen]

I love the way Alexander Cockburn says 'oorf' instead of 'off'.

[emagicmtman]

He echoes Herbert Marcuse's comments about how the centers of power create the illusion of democratic participation while all the time going about their own agenda. In our own times, they use the net to reinforce their deceptions. With only a choice betwixt the Dems. and Repugs., and with the centers of power in either party only offering a possible pull-out in Iraq by 2013, a perceptive person might not even bother with the electoral process.

[alabamarasta]

FORA TV gets its videos through partnerships with organizations like the Aspen Institute, the Commonwealth Club, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Long Now Foundation (Stewart Brand) and C-SPAN. (Seed money from Hearst)

Cockburn's pessimism is justified. What appears Democracy today may well evaporate as web presence becomes monopolized. First we get what appears open debate-- just as we got "value" and "choice" when the first WalMarts and K-Marts appeared.

[Zoidborg1]

I definetly do share most of his political views but I don't think intelligence has much to do with it. He actually cares about the people and real freedom. As do I

[OmegaRage]

I definetly don't share most of his political views, but it is certainly most refreshing to hear viewpoints from outside of the Democrat/Republican and Labour/Liberal spectrum. And he is beyond question a very intelligent man.