The internet & cyber-democracy

I didn't attend the lecture yesterday, so I thought I'd better be good and attend it today (even though only about 5 people turn up each day). Rocked up about 10 minutes late because I had to make a small detour to Zaraffa's to get my morning caffeine fix (a grande double shot mocha please), but luckily Adam hadn't started the lecture yet.

The first half of the lecture was basically spent watching the rest of the movie that was shown in yesterday's class. As I wasn't there yesterday, it took a while for me to understand what was going on in the movie. I still didn't know what the movie was called, until I searched IMDb for Jude Law (he was the lead actor); the movie we watched was: eXistenZ. It toyed with the idea of virtual-reality games tapping into people's minds and how it impacts on their perception of true reality. Pretty mind-boggling stuff, but yet not totally incomprehensible.

Stephen Stockwell came as a guest lecturer for the second half of today's class to talk about cyber-democracy. Even though the internet is said to have impacted on the way mass media is portrayed, until the day that every single person in the world has access to the internet, we cannot call it a democracy. One of the main ideas that I thought Stephen was trying to emphasise, was the difference between direct democracy and representative democracy. As with all forms of democracy, the main idea is that people have a freedom of speech, which means that all ideas are heard and the best decision can then be made.

Direct democracy is when everyone has an equal say in a decision and it is usually the most satisfying. Problems associated with this type of democracy include exclusions (ie. In ancient Athenian times, women, slaves and people who weren't born in Athens were not included in any form of voting). Representative democracy is when small groups of people are elected to represent a larger group of people. A good example of this on a smaller scale are student council representatives voted for by all students, or local government representatives elected for by the general public.

Stephen went on to discuss the impact of the internet on today's society. Nearly anyone can have access to public domains and forums to express their opinions and ideas, join email lists, or create their own blogs (like what we've done). The internet allows us to research things ourselves, so we have more access to information, instead of just relying on what we get told by the Media. This also enables us to improve our knowledge and get the opportunity to hear different perspectives on important issues, before making informed decisions.

An interesting question Stephen raised was, "Is the internet an effective way to increase democracy?" In a way, I would say yes, for the reasons mentioned above before. Simply because the internet gives any one who has access to it, an opportunity to state their own opinions without censorship or judgement (if they post it anonymously). Likewise, I'm free to post anything I like on this blog and it's not a matter of how many people will view it, but just the fact that I CAN put what I want out there.