The State of the Information Society

Hi, Cass!  Debating the state of the information society is a tall order, and it's one that makes me feel a bit inadequate.  But perhaps we can at least look at a few important aspects.

First, in an increasingly balkanized society -- with all the potential for mischief that the Balkan roots of the phrase suggest -- is Internet-based political discourse making things better, or worse? 

The answer to that question, I think, is "both."  It's making things better, because the elites who used to control political discourse through the gatekeeping functions employed by newspaper editors, television news producers, and the like have lost a great deal of power, and they've lost it not least through making clear that they're not up to the job.  The gatekeepers combined bias and ineptitude in a way that for many is symbolized by the Dan Rather "memogate" fiasco, in which producers and anchors at CBS were fooled by crudely forged documents that Internet users exposed within hours.  (You discuss this in Republic.com 2.0 at pages 146-47).  History is now repeating itself (if the first time was farce instead of tragedy -- and it was -- then the second time is, I guess, really farcical farce) as Dan Rather sues CBS for $70 million, even though doing so requires him to disavow things he told us on the air when he apologized for that disaster.  But those on the left have their own litany of complaints, focusing on Judith Miller's reporting about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction before the Iraq invasion.  Indeed, there seems to be agreement across the blogosphere that members of the professional journalist class aren't living up to their claims about objectivity, competence, and those famed layers of fact-checkers and editors as a guarantee of reliability.

So elites who didn't deserve the trust that they once enjoyed no longer enjoy anything like that trust.  That's probably good, as it seems clear that the trust was, often, unearned and undeserved.

On the other hand, you're right to suggest that there are dangers to the splintering of American society, something made worse as commonly shared media outlets get less attention.  We hear a lot about the Red/Blue divide, but my recent reading of pollster Mark Penn's new book on the American polity, Microtrends, reminded me of what Fred Rodell is supposed to have said when asked if the Yale Law faculty was polarized:  "Of course not -- they're far too divided for that!"

Penn slices and dices Americans into all sorts of interest groups, each comprising a tiny fraction of the electorate, and suggests that one of the concerns in Republic.com and Republic.com 2.0 -- the loss of a shared common civic culture -- may be more serious than I realized.  On the other hand, Penn makes another point that seems more cheerful, suggesting that much of the angry division may be limited to elites, who he says are more emotional and less rational in their politics than ordinary people.

Penn finds, for example, that the "elites" are far more likely to form their political opinions based on fashion and gut-feelings than on reasoned assessment of policy differences, while "Joe Sixpack" types turn out to be far more rational and informed in their political thinking.  ("Elites look to other elites to reinforce their views, and they convince themselves that the way they see life is how the other 90 percent of America is also experiencing it.")  Luckily, as the elites get more disconnected, the ordinary voters are getting better informed and more involved.  Penn concludes:  "So if you can get over all the din created by the chattering elites and the out-of-touch journalists, you can talk to some pretty smart people out there."

That's certainly been my experience from running a political blog with a published email address.  I will confess, however, that since the first edition of Republic.com came out, I find myself living in your nightmare scenario to a degree, and struggling to avoid worse.  I do try to read blogs that disagree with me, but the higher level of name-calling -- and in my case it's not so much generic name-calling as name-calling directed at me personally -- makes that more of an effort than it used to be.  This probably isn't a widespread problem, though.  But the other problem is a harbinger of the "Daily Me" that you discuss:  I get a lot of my news via the 1,000+ emails I get every day.  This is great in many ways: There's no technological news-aggregation system yet that's as good as having thousands of people  scanning the Web and saying "this looks like something Glenn would be interested in" and emailing a link.

The downside is that they get their ideas about what I'm interested in from what I blog about -- and if I let my blogging be driven by the email, recursion sets in and my posting will get deeper, but narrower. I try to counteract that by skipping around to newspapers, magazines, other blogs with different views, and aggregation services like Memeorandum and Techmeme that deliver a different selection of stories.  But what I'm experiencing today is probably what most people will experience soon as systems ranging from Amazon recommendations to Tivo to various news-customization interfaces get better.  Will casual consumers of news try as hard as I do to get other angles?  I doubt it.  I doubt that I would, if I weren't blogging.

Of course, a lot of people blog, and maybe that will help.  But I do think that the increased divisiveness of the blogosphere today -- which is itself a subset of the increased divisiveness and acrimony in the political sphere generally -- makes it harder to get all sides of an issue.  The acrimony just makes things unpleasant.

It's also the case that some political operatives -- such as Mark Penn himself, and his predecessor Karl Rove -- see slicing and dicing the public into numerous demographics that can be frightened and/or catered to as the key to political success.  That approach may be effective (especially if there are no real social sanctions against it) but it probably does more to break down the social glue than blogospheric division ever will.

And this may be where I tie in Infotopia and An Army of Davids.  Both of those books, in different ways, talk about the potential of letting individuals self-organize to tackle all sorts of problems.  Does the decline in civility that we see on the Internet, coupled with the tendency of politics these days to break people down into interest groups at the expense of larger concerns about citizenship, make that sort of self-organization harder?  Or does the intensity of feeling that it produces energize people?  Your thoughts?

Comments

[Frederick Hamilton]

Mr. Reynolds,

I enjoyed your comments. I agree with you that the most vitriolic and divisive are the "elites" who know better than the common man what is best for the common man. They give no credit at all to a lifes worth of experience to the average person tells that average person what the "truth" really is. Lincoln was pretty much right on the mark with his observation about fooling some of the people some of the time........

Keep up the good work. And the overal public does have a big say in how the country goes, not the "experts". As Moynihan put forth, culture is more important than politics. If it were up to our experts, we would have had same sex marriage and free borders a long time ago. Three cheers for Joe Sixpack.

[Joan A. Conway]

In search of pure knowledge is 'awesome'!

Just try using the check spelling function on your computer and soon you realize that there is nothing like the human effort to edit a text as the 'final task' indicates.

I don't particularly like 'Joe Sixpack' deciding for me what is right anymore than I like the 'expert' approach either.

I suggest they are extremes, because it is highly likely the decision weighed depends on individual factors or the totality of circumstances, and not a conclusion is not easily drawn for this day in history.

At another time, the decision may be a simple yes or no! But today, we are voting with our pocket books.

In that case, Joe Sixpack wins over the experts, who perhaps see other shades of gray not considered.

Somedays I see the advantage of foregiveness clearly, and at other times I am blinded by personal resentment.

"On a clear day, I can see forever!"

[Andy Freeman]

> I don't particularly like 'Joe Sixpack' deciding for me what is right anymore than I like the 'expert' approach either.

One of the differences between the "elite" and "Joe Sixpack" is that the latter isn't as interested in deciding for you. (Yes, "joe" gets interested when you're spending his money, but that's good and you have alternatives.)

[Joan A. Conway]

This reminds me of the fact that my landlord skips on repairing the brick walks around the entrance of my building that lead to the side steps and to the garbage containers, while it tolerated some of its maintenance men to harass the tenants in the lobby of the building monthly, extortion business practices, that lead many tenants to move before their next lease. Maintaining tenants like maintaining the property are equally important, and neither were being done here. The maintenance men don't care about what someone else pays for their rent, since their rent is free. These men are from the "Joe Sixpack" demographics that you see as making decisions about spending his money, and that it is good, and that I have alternatives.

I see it has speding someone else's money, and that is not good, and this alternative is a guise for no alternative whatsoever.

[Andy Freeman]

Huh?

If we're going to have dueling miscreants, I'll raise you William "doesn't everyone keep cash in the freezer" Jefferson.

My "as interested in deciding for you" refers to using the law to push behavior. Joe Sixpack is less likely to do so, and when he does get involved, it's often over dumb public spending.

For some reason, JS is more likely than elites to see tax money as "his".

[Yong ZHAO]

For people who want to "to tackle all sorts of problems", firstly had to recognize what the problems are in this infor-society. As many scholars have pointed out, of course including Prof.Sustein and Prof.Reynolds,that the elites as the gate keeper to control the information or its flowing, it's getting very difficulties for most of other people to figure out what the truth really is, or just to get out of someone other's "world". So, it's necessary now for people to take care of the "brain in the vat" problem.

We are experiencing a time in which the infor-tech play a more essential role in the forming or changing of our way of thinking than others. It costs you lots of time and money to express yourself in the traditional way such as newspaper or TV.Maybe you will never have that chance to do that or will never success even you have spent lots of.But with a laptop and network you can do more than that. Especially after the web 2.0 tech have been promoted,you not only can express yourself, but can change the way the information forming and spreading, which in the past time have been mainly controlled by elites or "sorts of interests groups".

When people found they can do much more ,as the elite become more disconnected than past, the ordinary people will be disconnected either I think. Both of the elites and the ordinary people are involved and influenced by this infor-society. So, I will not expect it's "the potential of letting individuals self-organize to tackle all sorts of problems". Maybe the situation will become more complex. In the past, people are the recipient of information, but now they are themselves the creators. When each of people become an independent source or information "broadcaster",the self consciousness will become more stronger. Maybe that trend has not yet happen or not so much explicitly now,but I believe it will happen someday. And when that happen, it's not necessary for you to find the so-called "common shared value", each person himself/herself is a single value, not stand for some value.Then the agreement or consent between each other maybe the first choice for them to tackle the problems instead of "individuals self-organized". Because when what stated above happened, the agreement or consensus way is the best choice for people to fulfill their "single value" at the dispose of their "single value" by themselves.