04.11.
Oh, hello.
Have you seen this? It’s written by a pretty awesome dude. He’s called Jed. Hi Jed. And Jed has done something that I’d hoped would have happened earlier, i.e. coaxed me out of my Blog Cave with something a little inflammable. Okay, not inflammable, more a slow burner of the brain, and I’m going to respond.
For all of you who ignored the first link, I politely suggest a clickey-click, otherwise this entire post may or may not be an exercise in pointlessness.
Okay, good.
Politics. And the internet. According to Jed, should never the twain meet, because it’s not the vehicle for change that Jed assumes people assume it is. Well, personally, I’d say of course not, I agree with you there. The internet won’t ever be the place that produces the change people want 100% of the time. Perhaps not even 10% of the time. But it is one of the vehicles that gives a voice to people who perhaps want to attempt to make a change.
Along with, and not restricted to, protests, petitions, Gunpowder, and dressing like your favourite Marvel character whilst ensconcing yourself on Harriet Harman’s roof.
But it seems, we disagree/agree for exactly the same reasons. In Jed’s political internet it’s too crowded. Too many voices, too many opinions. But I personally think it makes a change from the institution of middle aged, middle class, overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly predictable, political commentary that we get in the print press and broadcasting. I personally think at the minute there’s not enough good (clue: that was the operative word) political commentary on the internet yet that’s not affiliated with a national institution, whatever the volume.
Also, on the theme of disparate opinions, I welcome the subtleties and more opinions. Because, quite frankly, nobody in the UK seems to believe that you can have small-c conservative tendencies and small-l liberal tendencies without shoving the fence pole up a certain orifice and declaring yourself a Lib Dem ineffectual. While our US friends are allowed these subtleties in political parties because of the size of their country and inhibiting lack of parties, we in the UK are expected to be quite uniform in belief if you declare yourself one party, or the other, or the other. You’re instantly stereotyped. Why? You can walk from town to town, from county to county and hear discernibly different accents. Why should our political beliefs be any less complex, and why shouldn’t they, more to the point, be expressed if there is a suitable vehicle for expressing it? If you don’t want to hear it, Jed, that’s totally understandable, but you know better than anyone how to fine tune your news feed. No-one has to listen if they don’t want to.
“…trying to reach a common goal will still leave each voice slightly disappointed.”
Sure. But that’s life. You can’t have every cookie in the cookie jar, and we all as adults, know that.
“Decentralisation, distilled into a super-local level would still be too far from our expectations if we’re promised total democracy”
Decentralisation to this extent isn’t “total democracy”, it’s Hobbes’ state of nature. Democracy’s practical application means the majority will always win. There are no two ways about it. My gang is bigger than your gang, is bigger than your opinion, is bigger than… It’s simply the way it works, and the sot is that the losers at least get heard. You’re of the minority opinion? Sweet, we’ve got a seat in the corner for you. It’s delightful. You’re going to love it.
The internet (amongst other things) gives this minority opinion a) a voice and b) the chance to perhaps make themselves a bigger minority and eventually the majority. Tide-turning is slow, but cyclical, as evidenced every decade or so by General Elections in countries of representative democracies.
“Giving power to the people will only result in mass disappointment when that power is given to someone in power.”
Perhaps. But I don’t think too many people are under the illusion that, just because they’re fighting the good fight and utilizing the internet while they do it, they’re ultimately going to win. Even ignoring the internet, and doing it the old school way doesn’t always work, so, personally, I’m going to give more credit to the people who are attempting to mobilize through web 2.0 and assume they understand the fundamental hierarchy and the limitation of tools. Wielding the internet is a type of power, but it’s not absolute and I don’t think people who partake are under the illusion that it is.
After all, it’s not at all different to how people have mobilized in the past except for making it a damn site easier. The printing press and pamphlets got there first. Then came the broadsheets. Now we have twitter. Ease is not equatable to guaranteed outcome – in my view the two are mutually exclusive – and I personally think Jed’s sentence smells suspiciously of inevitability. You’ll only lose, so why clog up my interwebs with your thoughts? Be gone, annoying minority, get back to that chair!
So.
“Is the internet a good vehicle for democracy and ‘the voice of the people’? I don’t think so”
Well, in conclusion, sir, I vote, yea. Politics is, and has always been, about communication. The web is the platform of our generation. Not using it for democratic purpose seems such a waste to me. Yes, it means trying to keep a discerning head. But I think it’s a small price to pay.
That said, I would loveloveLOVE the trolls to leave, but that’s in a perfect world and that’ll never happen. And that’s the sad inevitability of my personal imagined political utopia.
*** Disclaimer – I take some of Jed’s sentences out of order. Jed, if you feel this bastardizes/completely changes your argument then I apologise – I wrote and re-wrote and re-wrote this, and as such everything didn’t exactly end up linear, if y’know what I mean ***
ps: My “comments” sections aren’t playing ball right now, so if you have comments, please do email me at laura.tosney@gmail.com and I’ll put them up in a separate post, or (if it’s okay with you Jed) leave a comment on Jed’s original blog post.
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