The prediction, in brief:

The age of the public sphere as face-to-face talk is clearly over: The question of democracy must henceforth take into account new forms of electronically mediated discourse.

Predictor: Poster, Mark

Prediction, in context:

In a 1995 paper titled “CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere,” Mark Poster, a member of the humanities faculty at the University of California at Irvine and author of “The Second Media Age,” writes:”If ‘public’ discourse exists as pixels on screens generated at remote locations by individuals one has never and probably will never meet, as it is in the case of the Internet with its ‘virtual communities,’ ‘electronic cafes,’ bulletin boards, e-mail, computer conferencing and even video conferencing, then how is it to be distinguished from ‘private’ letters, printface and so forth? The age of the public sphere as face-to-face talk is clearly over: The question of democracy must henceforth take into account new forms of electronically mediated discourse. What are the conditions of democratic speech in the mode of information? What kind of ‘subject’ speaks or writes or communicates in these conditions? What is its relation to machines? What complexes of subjects, bodies and machines are required for democratic exchange and emancipatory action?”

Biography:

Mark Poster wrote the paper “Cyberdemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere” in 1995 while teaching at the University of California, Irvine. He also wrote about technology for Wired magazine. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics

Subtopic: Democracy

Name of publication: Mark Poster's Web site

Title, headline, chapter name: CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/writings/democ.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Schmidt, Nicholas