Post in Read any useful research lately, unanswered research questions

Jul 23 11:02 UTC

Taylor-Smith, Ella wrote:
>
> A public without women then.  (No offence Michael - it's a problem
> with Habermas, that women are not considered necessary for a public
> sphere)

Do you mean - not considered necessary by the authorities?  By those
who wrote the electoral rules?  They wouldn't have considered my vote
necessary, either.  I'm working class, and I couldn't have passed the
means test.

To hell with them!  I'm educated, so I would have been an honourary
member of the middle class - so would you, on that basis - and from
there to the public sphere.  If you could read and write, then you
were in.  Letter writing, for example, was all the rage.  People
poured themselves into their correspondence.  Letter collections were
published to a wide readership.  The first novels were in letter form.
Many of the novelists were women, and some of them were great artists,
such as George Eliot.  Her books were *talked* about, and had
political influence.

> But what proportion of the population could then read?  Or have
> access to the newspapers?

It was small by today's standards, but it was growing fast.

> ... 10% of the adult population of the UK, all excluded from access
> to written information, in 2008.  Maybe they get their "political"
> information (sensu lato) from watching television.  But if they
> cannot read and write, they almost certainly don't vote in any
> public elections.  Do they participate (effectively) in other ways?
> .. Can these 5 million adults use computers?  Do they use computers?
> Maybe they can and do, to gather information from on-line videos?
> Implications for eDemocracy, eParticipation?

I think the solutions will be partly technical, and partly social.
Some voting mechanisms are very open.  The one I'm working with can be
used, in theory, even by small children and the mentally infirm,
allowing them to contribute positively (net improvement of decision
quality).  Work still needs to be done to make that a reality.

On the social side, maybe people will take the influence they gain
from e-democracy and turn it to improving the situation for those who
are less fortunate.  I cannot imagine that anyone would *choose* to be
illiterate, or that others would want to *keep* them so.  I think that
people in the future will take a lesson from their ancestors - those
who built the last public sphere.  Didn't they also build the modern
world?  They had ingenuity, and a kind of power.  But they also had
compassion.

  Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the
  steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind.  Do not believe them:
  it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.

  (George Eliot, "Adam Bede", 1859.)