I went along to a lecture that Habermas gave in London about religious tolerance and cultural rights in democracies. I wasn’t planning to approach him, but he walked off-stage practically into me so I took advantage of the opportunity to ask him about his attitude towards new media. He confirmed that he hadn’t written anything specifically about the new media and that he felt its impacts were ambiguous. He expressed concern about the possible fragmentation of the public sphere that comes when the Internet brings interest groups together – concerns voiced by Cass Sunstein in his book Republic.com and other places. I could have argued with him on that point but I thought I had taken enough of his time – I just urged him to give the matter some more thought and let us know his views when he had formed them.
Thanks to the folks at iSociety for letting me know about the lecture!galerias interracialgranny holland sexnaked women masterbating pictures ofhairy – atk janellesonic porn furrystripers shemalemilfs interracialtoon school strip girl free Map
Too bad I missed you there. I left feeling rather deflated, as he seemed to avoid answering questions on the Hijab and on the teaching of creationism. However, I soon remembered that in Autonomy and Solidarity, Habermas says that substantive political questions should be answered by citizens, not philosophers. The philosopher’s role is to suggest the framework in which such discussions take place. Something of a cop-out? Perhaps, but at least it is a consistent one!
Comment by Lee — 29 March 2003 @ 10:17 am
I was at the lecture as well, which I thought was pretty good, even if it was covering slightly familiar territory. As I understand it, a Habermasian perspective would highlight two things about online interaction, one good one bad.
1. Online interaction has an anonymity about it which the liberal public sphere ought to uphold. People can interact as rational voices, rather than on the basis of their cultural identity.
2. Online interaction tends to splinter into disparate and culturally homogeneous groups, which constitutional democracy ought to resist. The problem is that people have too much freedom to associate in cyber-space; Clay Shirky’s analogy of constitution-building for social software doesn’t cover the fact that people can always exit an online community as soon as diversity doesn’t work in their favour.
By my reckoning, the liberal task is then to achieve the benefits of the first, without falling into the second. Somehow, minority voices have to be respected in an online environment so that the minority is neither over-ruled nor led to exit. How though…?
Comment by Will Davies — 1 April 2003 @ 2:55 pm
Blogging Practices and Habermas’s Communicative Action
Continuing from my previous post, I think blogging/moblogging might be something like what Habermas has in mind in his theory…
Trackback by Technology, Self, & Community — 24 February 2004 @ 6:59 pm