Citizenship - "Are You a Downloader or an Uploader?"
Who is “the public?” Where are they? This is far more difficult to answer than we think. The public is everywhere, all around us, frequenting shops and living in communities. But how do we address them? If we were to bring about democratic renewal, how would we make it truly public? There is a difference between public policy and the public itself.For the Internet to be of any use to democracy, it must first have a citizenry to address, and, at the moment, citizens are literally spread all over the map. But they are also divided into ideological groups, political parties, consumer groups and issue groups. And an increasing number of Canadians are becoming isolated and disengaged even as Internet usage expands. The greatest innovations on the Net are occurring in the private realm – media expansion, spectator sports, the entertainment industry. Conversely, the classic technologies of democracy – print media, political parties and parliaments – seem to be atrophying, growing distant from the average citizen daily, losing credibility and ratings in what appears to be an inexorable decline.With traditional democracy and its technologies fading, can the Internet fill the gap? To answer that question, at least in part, we have to acknowledge a certain premise: the public has largely been privatized and is therefore more isolated from true engagement than ever before. It is no longer certain what the public is or where to find it. Digital media, like its more traditional cousins, can gather populations, or it can divide them. But in essence they gather populations from far-flung places at one time to primarily act as spectators. Even traditional media, whose hoped for purpose was to enlighten citizens so they could make informed decisions, have largely taken to “foe creation” – the pitting of various viewpoints against one another, leaving the observer regularly flummoxed. Solid analysis, accuracy, and, yes, at times truth have mostly given way to the modern panel show, with partisans sparring endlessly with the usual nauseous results. Traditional media used to hunt for news within a context; now it is focused more on covering “sides” to a story – again, leaving the reader in more confusion than ever. When the spokespeople for pubic truth are in essence political partisans, what else could we expect?Can the Internet call us from our preoccupations and materialistic pursuits to forge a new consensus that can hold policymakers accountable? That’s the question, and at the moment there’s no clear answer. Most online political discussions tend to lose focus quickly or descend to ugliness with little prompting, and they often get worse than the blatant partisanship demonstrated on television.There are numerous reasons why social media has not yet reached that place where it can create the kind of drawing power necessary to instill new life into our political state. There is the absence of any kind of legal traditions that define acceptable online rhetoric and debate. Then there is the undermining of true sincerity and authenticity on the Net through anonymity – the refusal of participants to make their identities fully known. It remains a difficult thing to have an openly democratic process in cyberspace when people hide behind their privacy. And finally there is the incessant need for digital participants to have rapid exchanges and responses – allowing little time for true reflection and deliberative dialogue.The Internet might only be one tool in our rebuilding of a more citizen-based democracy, yet it could prove essential. For that to happen we have to figure out if we are downloaders or uploaders. Thanks to recent posts by writer Peter Nowak we are learning that there are real distinctions between the two and that they mean something. With the new CRTC annual Communications Monitoring Report, Nowak notes that this country ranks 33rd of OECD countries in download speeds, yet places 65th in upload speeds. In other words, as Nowak concludes, “While fast downloads allow for good media consumption, upload speeds are integral for creation and therefore innovation.”There you have it in a nutshell. We are consumers who desire to download our movies, emails, etc. in record time because we have grown to become impatient when kept waiting. But we creatively throw little on the Net. We want to be pleased, entertained, enticed, and we need speed to make that happen. Yet our insights, our own personal histories, our life-lessons, take a lot longer to put in the public space. We have to creep out of privacy and put ourselves where other citizens are gathered on the Net and we have to talk. What are our aspirations for ourselves, our children, for one another and our country? What are our fears about security in old age? What will we do about the ruination of our natural habitat? How can we combine our political will to have an election result that really counts for something, for our noblest ideals?It’s time to start creating and stop just absorbing. We have to probe through cyberspace and find one another, and then we must begin the process of rebuilding our country once more through open and respectful dialogue and lengthy deliberation. The Net might be able to facilitate this but it for sure won’t matter if we don’t find each other. We are a good people gone astray and frustrated in our isolation. It’s time to upload, to join together in both the physical and digital domains to fight to get the country back that we want. Uploaders or downloaders? The choice is ours.