Defending Rheingold

Although Rheingold deploys the metaphor of "Athens without the slaves" his position becomes more nuanced by the end of chapter 10. He qualifies this by the end of the paragraph, the condition being a proper understanding of the use of technology in democracy. Rheingold slow plays his alternative conception, only in the closing moments of the text does this get spelled out as the strategic use of technology for particular political ends that entail a commitment to civil discourse. This view requires that individuals cultivate a particular interested attention to democracy and that this attention maintain a distance from the medium.

Rheingold is careful to separate his position from Habermas, he does not think that the internet provides a regenerated public sphere, this view is confirmed in his story of the Santa Monica BBS, the city of Santa Monica did not move online, but citizens got easier access to resources for the democratic process. In literal terms, the internet stepped in to function like a big city newspaper in a market where that type of newspaper would not be economically viable. This does not depend on the city council being an ideal speech situation but depends on a particular way of using the information on the web. It is hard to find a way to apply this on the level of national politics.

The critique from Debord and Baudrillard is harder to defend against. The spectacle is independent from all reference to reality it is a self-sustaining system. Rheingold has a fairly moderate reading of Baudrillard, situating his work as Virtual communities and politics would be more real then reality, the responses faster the debates more heated and the impact non-existent. This kind of political activity would modeled after a flame war, it would not model the civic dialog model that Rheingold believes that internet driven democracy would take. The second facet Rheingold deploys is a distinction between mediated politics (meaning political spheres existent through technology alone) and the use of mediated technology for other politics. The specific quote describes the difference between a conference call and a town meeting, supporting our reading of chapter three. It would be fair to line up Robbins in this set of arguments.

Rheingold is not saying that the internet constitutes the public sphere or that he has a vision for reconnecting the human experience through the internet, but that the internet can be deployed for particular ends by people if they have a clear vision of how they intend to utilize it. This strategy gives users of technology a good deal of credit in their use of technology.