Derrick de Kerckhove
19 de Maio de 2005
Four questions for cyber-democracy:
electricity, access, symmetry, and responsibility
People talk about cyberdemocracy as a renewal of the principles of democracy.
Power to the people. They usually refer optimistically to the possibility of the
citizen to engage in the political process; this possibility is there, at least for
some. But to really understand democracy we need to know where it came
from: it was a political consequence of the invention of the alphabet first, and
later expanded by the printing press. Both technologies put language under the
control of private citizens. The Ancient Greeks, along with Plato, invented The
Republic, the public domain, to guarantee private property, equal rights and civil
liberties. All of this was codified in as fair a legal system as was possible, but it
still took centuries to separate Church and State.
Today language and power are being reprocessed by electricity, at the speed of
light. The old ideals and models of democracy resists the assault and provide
us still with metaphors for social conduct. But cyberdemocracy is not yet
mature. Where is it going? I want to explore the effects of electricity and
digitization on governance. I want to question whether we need governments at
all, if it is not a luxury for those countries who sink their whole revenues in the
pockets of the few. I also want to talk about symmetry of power and
transparency between those who rule and those who are ruled. There is a great
political divide between those who can e-mail, surf, blog and express their
opinions, and those who don't even know what the words mean. I want to
examine whether democracy as it is interpreted by the present administration of
the United States of America is still meaningful and whether it can forcefully be
exported in cultures that have never practiced it. And, finally, I want to identify
what are the new responsibilities of the cybercitizen? Blog on.
Derrick de Kerckhove is Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology at
the University of Toronto since 1983. He co-edited with Charles Lumsden The Alphabet
and the Brain (Springer Verlag, 1988), a book to assess the impact of the Western
alphabet on cognition. Several other publications, The Skin of Culture (1995),
Connected Intelligence (1997), The architecture of intelligence (2001), McLuhan For
Managers (2003) pursue this theme addressing networked media and the developing
wireless condition. Many have been translated into Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish,
Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Derrick de Kerckhove has offered
connected intelligence workshops worldwide to business, government and academe to
help strategy development using digital technologies. In the same line, he has
contributed to the architecture of Hypersession, a collaborative software. For 2004, he
has been awarded the Papamarkou Chair in Technology and Education at the Library
of Congress in Washington.
Derrick de Kerckhove
Derrick de
Kerckhove
Biografia
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/derrickdekerckhove.htm
http://www.mediamente.rai.it/home/bibliote/biografi/d/dekerckh.htm
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dekerckhove.html
http://www.utoronto.ca/semiotics/html/de_kerckhove.html
http://www.infoamerica.org/teoria/kerckhove1.htm
http://www.google.pt/search?q=Derrick+de+Kerckhove&hl=pt-PT&lr=&start=10&sa=N
http://home.interlog.com/~blake/derrick.htm
http://www.nova-e.inf.br/bitniks/derrickentrevista.htm
http://www.nova-e.inf.br/bitniks/derrickartigo.htm
http://www.nextd.org/02/02/03/
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=22100&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://www.bitniks.es/WHO/DEF/DERR/1.shtml
Bibliografia
http://www.astralsite.com/Drama/read2.html
http://www.bookfinder.us/review6/3764364513.html
http://www.v2.nl/DEAF/96/nodes/KerckhoveDde/text.html
http://www.searchengineforbooks.com/61432_derrick-de-kerckhove.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&fieldauthor=Derrick%20De%20Kerckhove/104-2863960-8145518
http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/derrick.htm
Textos http://www.t0.or.at/kerckhov/kerckhov.htm
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/article_torontoschoolofcomm.htm
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/article_internettelevision.htm
http://www.va.com.au/parallel/x2/journal/derrick_dk/ddk.html
http://www.siptech.it/psychotec.html
http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~aviseu/eng_comments-ci_content.html
http://www.recensio.ubi.pt/modelos/listas/l_autor.php3?codautor=290
http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=14986
Conferências
http://www.nsb.com/speakerbio.asp?i_speakerid=49
http://congres.plq.org/derrick_en.html
http://www.comvirtu.uqam.ca/c_kerckhove.html
19 de Maio de 2005
Four questions for cyber-democracy:
electricity, access, symmetry, and responsibility
People talk about cyberdemocracy as a renewal of the principles of democracy.
Power to the people. They usually refer optimistically to the possibility of the
citizen to engage in the political process; this possibility is there, at least for
some. But to really understand democracy we need to know where it came
from: it was a political consequence of the invention of the alphabet first, and
later expanded by the printing press. Both technologies put language under the
control of private citizens. The Ancient Greeks, along with Plato, invented The
Republic, the public domain, to guarantee private property, equal rights and civil
liberties. All of this was codified in as fair a legal system as was possible, but it
still took centuries to separate Church and State.
Today language and power are being reprocessed by electricity, at the speed of
light. The old ideals and models of democracy resists the assault and provide
us still with metaphors for social conduct. But cyberdemocracy is not yet
mature. Where is it going? I want to explore the effects of electricity and
digitization on governance. I want to question whether we need governments at
all, if it is not a luxury for those countries who sink their whole revenues in the
pockets of the few. I also want to talk about symmetry of power and
transparency between those who rule and those who are ruled. There is a great
political divide between those who can e-mail, surf, blog and express their
opinions, and those who don't even know what the words mean. I want to
examine whether democracy as it is interpreted by the present administration of
the United States of America is still meaningful and whether it can forcefully be
exported in cultures that have never practiced it. And, finally, I want to identify
what are the new responsibilities of the cybercitizen? Blog on.
Derrick de Kerckhove is Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology at
the University of Toronto since 1983. He co-edited with Charles Lumsden The Alphabet
and the Brain (Springer Verlag, 1988), a book to assess the impact of the Western
alphabet on cognition. Several other publications, The Skin of Culture (1995),
Connected Intelligence (1997), The architecture of intelligence (2001), McLuhan For
Managers (2003) pursue this theme addressing networked media and the developing
wireless condition. Many have been translated into Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish,
Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Derrick de Kerckhove has offered
connected intelligence workshops worldwide to business, government and academe to
help strategy development using digital technologies. In the same line, he has
contributed to the architecture of Hypersession, a collaborative software. For 2004, he
has been awarded the Papamarkou Chair in Technology and Education at the Library
of Congress in Washington.
Derrick de Kerckhove
Derrick de
Kerckhove
Biografia
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/derrickdekerckhove.htm
http://www.mediamente.rai.it/home/bibliote/biografi/d/dekerckh.htm
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dekerckhove.html
http://www.utoronto.ca/semiotics/html/de_kerckhove.html
http://www.infoamerica.org/teoria/kerckhove1.htm
http://www.google.pt/search?q=Derrick+de+Kerckhove&hl=pt-PT&lr=&start=10&sa=N
http://home.interlog.com/~blake/derrick.htm
http://www.nova-e.inf.br/bitniks/derrickentrevista.htm
http://www.nova-e.inf.br/bitniks/derrickartigo.htm
http://www.nextd.org/02/02/03/
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=22100&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://www.bitniks.es/WHO/DEF/DERR/1.shtml
Bibliografia
http://www.astralsite.com/Drama/read2.html
http://www.bookfinder.us/review6/3764364513.html
http://www.v2.nl/DEAF/96/nodes/KerckhoveDde/text.html
http://www.searchengineforbooks.com/61432_derrick-de-kerckhove.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&fieldauthor=Derrick%20De%20Kerckhove/104-2863960-8145518
http://www.media-studies.ca/articles/derrick.htm
Textos http://www.t0.or.at/kerckhov/kerckhov.htm
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/article_torontoschoolofcomm.htm
http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/article_internettelevision.htm
http://www.va.com.au/parallel/x2/journal/derrick_dk/ddk.html
http://www.siptech.it/psychotec.html
http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~aviseu/eng_comments-ci_content.html
http://www.recensio.ubi.pt/modelos/listas/l_autor.php3?codautor=290
http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=14986
Conferências
http://www.nsb.com/speakerbio.asp?i_speakerid=49
http://congres.plq.org/derrick_en.html
http://www.comvirtu.uqam.ca/c_kerckhove.html
