We can see now, I think, the possibility of a renaissance of democracy enabled both by new communications media, most particularly computer networks, and by the renewed interest in practical communication skills. The skills of using the net to get things done in your own life and your own community are also the skills of democracy. We can use these skills to rebuild democracy, and to organize ourselves around the necessity of a democratic definition of the institutions of human communication.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:The April 1994 issue of The Network Observer, an online newsletter, carries an article titled “Networking and Democracy” by Phil Agre, TNO editor, who was, at the time, working in the Department of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. In an edited version of his comments made earlier at the Fourth Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference in Chicago in March 1994, Agre writes:”We in the United States are witnessing the most comprehensive overhaul of telecommunications regulation since the 1934 Communications Act … I see at least two big differences between 1934 and 1994. In 1934, the culture of democracy was much more vital in the United States. This vitality was reflected in the public debate of that era, its flowering of popular organizations of all types, and in the public-interest model of communications that was embedded in the 1934 Communications Act. In 1994, by contrast, American democracy is suffering from the top to the bottom. The rule of money and pundits in Washington is not a law of nature; it is not inevitable. Rather, it fills a vacuum left by the decline of democratic culture, a trend caused in part by the educational practices that so disempowered students. The second difference, though, is more heartening. We can see now, I think, the possibility of a renaissance of democracy enabled both by new communications media, most particularly computer networks, and by the renewed interest in practical communication skills. The skills of using the net to get things done in your own life and your own community are also the skills of democracy. We can use these skills to rebuild democracy, and to organize ourselves around the necessity of a democratic definition of the institutions of human communication.”
Biography:Phillip E. Agre was an associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been the author of research studies on the Internet. He edited The Network Observer, an online newsletter on Internet issues. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: Democracy
Name of publication: The Network Observer
Title, headline, chapter name: Networking and Democracy
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/tno/april-1994.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne