Last week, at a dinner party attended by a powerful East Coast state senator, one of the diners asked this question: “What does everyone at this table read? Newspapers? Books?” The senator picked at his green beans and said, “History and biographies. I read about how leaders in the past have worked through crises – lately, Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy.” A conservative Republican, he kind of mumbled Kennedy's name.
I offered my theory: Reading history is no longer about trying to figure out reality, but an escape from the current definition of reality – a way to take a break from the birdshot spray of electronic communication. The senator put his fork down a bit too hard. It smacked the plate. “I'll tell you what I don't read anymore, not ever. Blogs. I hate blogs.”
At first, I thought he was referring to the current mythology about the blogosphere, which is that it's liberal. Some plugged-in pundits claim that progressives are scrambling to create an online network to compete with conservatives – or at least social conservatives – who have grown powerful through their reality-based church networks. But that was not the tack taken by the normally tactful senator.
“I have a friend in the legislature, running for re-election, and he's a sensitive guy,” he said. “Too sensitive. He reads the blogs, and what does he see?” Some nut case on the far, far extreme in the abortion debate, accusing him – likewise a Republican conservative! – of killing babies. “I tell my friend, don't read the blogs. Don't read them. You'll go nuts.”
Or stupid. A study for computing firm Hewlett-Packard warns of a rise in “infomania” – workers distracted by and addicted to e-mail and phone calls suffer a fall in IQ more than twice that found in marijuana smokers.
The senator and I found plenty to disagree on that evening, but we agreed on this issue: The Information Age needs its own Miss Manners; or, better yet, perhaps public schools could bring back elocution, a formal discipline popular during the 18th century, which (OK, I looked these up on Wikipedia) “provided detailed instruction on voice control, gestures, pronunciation, and emphasis.” For the Internet age, we might call it “electronic elocution,” or “electrocution” for short.
Now comes countervailing theory about the impact of the Internet on civic life. James Scott, an associate professor in the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, has been studying the relationships between citizens and municipal Web sites. Scott reports: “Web sites reduce the cost of information for citizens. This in itself can serve as an important inducement and support for public involvement.”
Examining more than 3,000 municipal government Web pages in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, he found that 80 percent of the Web sites helped citizens and public elected officials communicate through e-mail or comment forms; 60 percent of the sites provided agendas for city council meetings; and many made routine public records readily available.
They also provided online payments for parking tickets, utility bills and property taxes. Few municipal Web sites offered any kind of direct democracy, in the form of online public dialogue or consultation, but they did “make it easier for citizens to be involved with local government, whether on-or off-line.”
Meanwhile, another University of Missouri researcher, Mitchell McKinney, assistant professor of communication, explains why so much public debate has been driven into cyberspace.
“Close scrutiny of the 'evolution' of town hall debates suggests that our presidential candidates have maneuvered to gain nearly complete control over the town hall exchange since the debate was first introduced,” McKinney reports. “A 'devolution' of the town hall debate as a public sphere has occurred, whereby every four years citizens' freedoms to participate in their debate – as they see fit – have been seriously restricted.”
He describes what many of us already know: Debate questions now tend to be screened and major issues avoided. In 2004's presidential debates, the economy, the issue the public deemed most important, was among the least discussed during the debates, coming in 10th out of 16 issues.
“Once the political candidates and their handlers realized the dangers of allowing citizens to actually participate freely in their debate, we end up ... with a debate dialogue that has very little relationship to the public's agenda,” according to McKinney.
It's unclear if the blogosphere is any closer to that agenda. But the dining senator is right: on-or off-line, political debate these days sounds like dialogue between Megalodons, those giant prehistoric sharks to which so many bloggers – and radio talk-show hosts and more than few politicians – seem none-too-distantly related.
Louv's column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at
rlouv@cts.com or via
www.thefuturesedge.com
