The prediction, in brief:

If the prospects of democracy on the Internet are viewed in terms of encryption, then the security of the existing national government becomes the limit of the matter: what is secure for the nation-state is taken to mean true security for everyone, a highly dubious proposition. The question of potentials for new forms of social space that might empower individuals in new ways are foreclosed in favor of preserving existing relations of force as they are viewed by the most powerful institution in the history of the world: the government of the United States.

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:”In the case of encryption, the United States government seeks to secure its borders from ‘terrorists’ who might use the Internet and thereby threaten it. But the dangers to the population are and always have been far greater from this state apparatus itself than from so-called terrorists. More citizens have been improperly abused, had their civil rights violated, and much worse by the government than by terrorists. In fact, terrorism is in good part an effect of government propaganda; it serves to deflect attention from governmental abuse toward a mostly imagined, highly dangerous outsiden enemy. If the prospects of democracy on the Internet are viewed in terms of encryption, then the security of the existing national government becomes the limit of the matter: what is secure for the nation-state is taken to mean true security for everyone, a highly dubious proposition. The question of potentials for new forms of social space that might empower individuals in new ways are foreclosed in favor of preserving existing relations of force as they are viewed by the most powerful institution in the history of the world: the government of the United States.”

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: Communication

Subtopic: Security/Encryption

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: Anderson, Janna Quitney