http://adpaascu.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/specific-measurable-and-immediate-the-ecitizenship-institute/ Wed, 15 May 2013 14:27:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://adpaascu.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/specific-measurable-and-immediate-the-ecitizenship-institute/#comment-305 Fri, 19 Nov 2010 20:06:52 +0000 http://adpaascu.wordpress.com/?p=959#comment-305 Great comment, Christine! And thanks for your perspective. I couldn’t agree more.

]]> http://adpaascu.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/specific-measurable-and-immediate-the-ecitizenship-institute/#comment-300 Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:17:51 +0000 http://adpaascu.wordpress.com/?p=959#comment-300 I really appreciate the question posed by the director of the Ferndale Library and re-posed by Cecilia here. It is not an irrelevant quesiton in my mind and not simply reducible to “technology is neutral” with effects dependent upon any given particular use. What I think is core to Habermas’ critiqe of the rise and decline of the democratic public sphere is a concern with a type of “false” publicness that can flow from mass media techniques within a commercial culture– where a endless march of “public” opinion polls and just opinion masquarade as public dialogue and democratic problem solving. Certainly the web 2.0 world is not entirely conquered by commercialism and the democratic functioning and potential of the digital world remains robust. But the questoin itself seems so entirely right-on since the standard by which our work in the institute should be judged is the degreee to which it is in fact helping to recover and reassert an independent (non-state controlled, non-commercial) public sphere for democratic dialogue and engagement. Sorry to wax academic but I think its a fundamentally political dilemma and I am so happy to read thoughtful reflection like this. Thank you Cecilia!

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