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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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A friend of mine has been feeding me Lawrence Lessig media. I know this is old hat for most of you, but anyone wanting a refresher, reminder, or (as in my case) introduction to his lucid inspiration on free culture should take time for this graphically-enhanced lecture. Lessig's book is available here in PDF. Below is an excerpt from a section on blogs and democracy (pg. 42).
[For] most of us for most of the time, there is no time or place for “democratic deliberation” to occur. More bizarrely, there is generally not even permission for it to occur. We, the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm against talking about politics. It’s fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme. We say what our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say.
Enter the blog.The blog’s very architecture solves one part of this problem. People post when they want to post, and people read when they want to read.The most difficult time is synchronous time.Technologies that enable asynchronous communication, such as e-mail, increase the opportunity for communication. Blogs allow for public discourse without the public ever needing to gather in a single public place.
But beyond architecture, blogs also have solved the problem of norms. There’s no norm (yet) in blog space not to talk about politics. Indeed, the space is filled with political speech, on both the right and the left. Some of the most popular sites are conservative or libertarian, but there are many of all political stripes.And even blogs that are not political cover political issues when the occasion merits.
The significance of these blogs is tiny now, though not so tiny.The name Howard Dean may well have faded from the 2004 presidential race but for blogs.Yet even if the number of readers is small, the reading is having an effect.