Is the Web like a bad pub?
Anthony Barnett (London, OK): While suffering from a bad cold I got a very interesting long email from David Marquand who started with our Networking Democracy initiative, and said
I like the idea in principle, but the tone of the comments both on the OurKingdom piece and on your Guardian piece is so deeply depressing that I have to say I doubt if anything of great (or even any) value will come out of the exercise. The trouble with internet communication is that people blast off the first thing that comes into their head, without thinking through a coherent argument. There is a discipline in writing for print publication which the internet loses; and the gains in spontaneity and freshness (which are real) are outweighed by the loss in responsibility and accountability. The more I see of it the more I feel that internet communication is rather like a conversation in an overcrowded pub, where everyone is shouting so loudly that they can’t hear anyone else, much less think about what other people (or for that matter they themselves) are saying.
I know what he means although it is a little bit unfair on OK - I told a couple of CiFers how I felt. However there are also constructive reflections popping up across blogland such as a thoughtful one from Podnosh who also links to the connected republic. Jon is away in Florence we’ll post up more of the responses when we can. But CAN YOU HEAR ME?
Filed under: Internet and democracy, Networking Democracy
I think we all know what Marquand means but the reason the internet is so fantastic is because we no longer have to listen to academics and intellectuals without right of reply.
I’m sure Marquand preferred it when his reflections were scrutinised by peer review, men of letters, or subject to the occasional critical snipe in Prospect or the New Statesman, or whatever.
Now he’s just told it’s bollocks by all and sundry. It makes depressing reading because he knows the truth of it, the people hurling the abuse are sometimes right, and what’s worse - they’re not pretentious knobs stuck in the dusty reading rooms of red-brick universities,. They’re the people who for years have put up with being lectured by intellectuals and politicians, and who’re sick of having had every facet of their lives and being analysed and critically appraised by wannabe social-engineers and reformers. It wasn’t long ago that Marquand was on these very pages arguing that the nation of England should not be self-determining because it was too reactionary for his liking. Listen to yourself man.
I love the internet because it’s democratising, which is precisely the reason why politicians and former politicians are horrified by it and so slow and painfully inadequate at embracing it.
Gareth,hear! hear!
As Sargeant Jones says’”they don’t like it up em!”
I have to agree with Marquand, unfortunately, which is also the reason that I didn’t comment on your original post on Networking Democracy.
The fundamental problem is that the Web does not reflect public opinion in any significant sense; while it presents technological and economic barriers to entry, it also has absolutely no basic requirement for any sort of knowledge on a particular topic. As a result, discussions on critical subjects frequently degenerate into a shouting match where those with the biggest chips on their shoulders (”pretentious knobs”, Gareth?) and the most time on their hands dominate. People therefore tend to congregate with the like-minded - as they do in real life, but the key difference is that in real life we cannot avoid other opinions, whereas on the internet it is perfectly possible to live in an echo chamber.
I agree with Gareth that the internet is “democratising” - and that this is a source of fear for professional politicians is something I welcome - but I sometimes wonder what people actually mean when they use the word “democratising”. More pertinently, I wonder whether people truly realise the impact that technology will have on democracy, because it is entirely possible that the forms that it is likely to develop into may to be forms that they themselves will not like.
Nobody should accept experts’ statements on face value, but nobody is an expert on everything. The internet is an extremely useful tool for developing the former point, but if you don’t recognise the latter then you are simply part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
Comments above absolutely prove David Marquand’s point. We’re in a bad pub where we can just yell at everyone else, not even pretend to listen to anyone else, and ask anyone disagreeing if they want to take it outside.
The problem with the net in politics is that it’s a petit bourgeois force - not much money or time to be buying and surfing the blogs when you’re trying to feed a family off the minimum wage, to put it brutally bluntly.
Now post-Thatcher, we have a petit bourgeois internet force, overwhelmingly male, that thinks, because itself and its estate agents had full sway over Government for 18 years, and because Labour has kow-towed to it in order not to lose the Mail vote, that it knows it all.
How could it not? It had a grammar school education (wow) pre-comprehensivisation, and it reads the Mail and Express and believes everything it’s told.
Isn’t that enough? Plus now that it has comments sections on blogs it doesn’t even have to engage the brain it has: it can just type “Bollocks” and be patronising to people who’ve studied various subjects for far longer and in far more depth than it ever has.
These reactionary middle-class boors view the web ‘democracy’ [sic] as A Good Thing, because they dominate it - both because they’ve the time and cash, but also because their shouting and bile-filled invective drives anyone who disagrees, or who wants a rational argument, away.
So the Networking Democracy idea is a bad one, and will fail. Best to use your panel of experts, think up some rational policy, and work with governmental institutions. Luckily we do have Peter Oborne’s “political class” who can think beyond the tax cuts and Europhobia of the blogosphere and who are perpetually in power, so Government doesn’t have to listen the petit bourgeois drones.
One reason why there is disengagement from mainstream politics, something many influential people are wringing their hands over, is that people claim they do not feel they have any influence - that their engagement with mainstream politics doesn’t make a difference.
And here we have David Marquand and Anonymouse saying that they aren’t interested in hearing what particular people have to say. At least they’re honest about that, but I wonder what their definition of democracy is - indeed whether they even like the idea of democracy at all.
Is the web like a bad pub? No, it’s like millions of pubs and other forums where the quality of the conversation depends on the venue, its participants and the beholder. If you have clear objectives you can get a lot of out it. Your objectives may well change, and that too is something you can get out of it.
But with regard to mainstream politics, until normal people feel they have a say, normal people will not bother to say anything.