Open publishing and digital democracy

By Ignacio Andrés Amarillo

The modernity was constituted by the thread of the “Republic of the Letters”, of a public sphere of opinions that directs the destinies of the life in society.

For Jean Jacques Rousseau, the most influential author for the French revolutionaries, “the common will doesn’t arise from the concurrence among private interests (...) The volonté général, guarantee of a nature state restored under the conditions of a society state, sprouts rather like a kind of humanity's instinct, it sprouts, therefore, of the nature state and it penetrates savingly in the society state. There Rousseau sees, contradicting Montesquieu, the spirit of the Constitution not written in marble neither in metal, but anchored in the heart of the citizens, this is, in the opinion.”[1]

This rousseaunian conception opens the path to a wide idea of democracy. “A direct democracy demands the real presence from who is sovereign. The volonté général like corpus mysticum is bound to the corpus physicum of the gathered people. Rousseau imagines the idea of the durable plebiscite in agree with the image of the Greek polis: the people was there, for this way to say it, gathered without interruption in the square; likewise the place publique becomes to the Rousseau’s eyes in foundation of the constitution.”[2]

Immanuel Kant, the great theorist of Enlightment, called “age minority” to the inability of being served by the own understanding without the address of another. It considered that “«it is difficult for all the individually considered men to make an effort to leave the age minority (...) But it is more possible than a public it is illustrated itself; just by that is left in freedom, it is almost unavoidable». for that reason in the enlighted conception thinking for itself seems to coincide with thinking aloud, exactly the same as the use of the reason is equal to its public use (...) The publicity, inside which the philosophers practice his critical craft, has stopped to be meantime, however of its academic nucleus, merely academic. (...) Not only in the republic of the sages is carried out the publicity, but in the public use of the reason, exercised by all those that guess right to that use. (...) Of there it is the postulate of the publicity like principle: «The public use of his reason must be free in all moment, and he can only give place to Enlightenment among men; the private use of the same one, however, often can end up being very limited, without for it, nevertheless, to block seriously the progress of Enlightenment». Everybody are called to be «publicists», to go «to the own public, that is to say, to the world, through writings».”[3]

“The founding fathers of this country, the ‘egalitie, fraternitie and libertie’ of France and most other liberals that moved society toward freedom and liberty in the 1700’s could not have been expected to visualize the growth of populations, radical evolution of science, vast increases of technology and incredible increases in mobility of information, money, goods, services and people. (...) Except for a notable few, one of whom was Abraham Lincoln, they could not imagine that corporations, once a creature of nation states, would so expand while ridding themselves of social responsibility to the point they could hold virtually any government to ransom for the privilege of their presence. Today, nation states and elected politicians are more creatures of corporations than corporations are creatures of nation states. Unfortunately, while it was democracy and liberty corporations needed to reach their present dominance, in the main, their governance is the antithesis of democratic, free and just. I do not think it bodes well for the future of democracy.”[4]

The development of the modern media leads to the constitution of the contemporary corporate system of media. Although this it is “porous” (in the sense that it opens some spaces to different ideological lines), it is not transparent. This system has two limits: on one hand it delimits the discussion margins (this has been broadly explained from diverse theoretical perspectives that goes from the agenda setting theory to Cultural Studies). On the other hand, it restricts the access to media: although the press workers can enunciate (between some limits and according to the hierarchy that they occupy inside the system) their opinions and visions, for the rest of population, the messages are “intermediated” by the apparatus of media and journalists. But, also, we should it considers that “the founding father defined ‘the press’ as individuals and small groups with printing presses to represent the voice of the people and that currently, newspapers are just printing machine owners and paper distributors just like telephone companies are a bunch of telephone poles and pipes.”[5]

Journalism and press were for the 18 century a space in which people and political groups could express different ways to see the world, at the same time that exercise the control of power: in definitive, like a constituent element of the democracy. “The petitions, letters to the editor, pamphleteering that preceded the American and French revolutions were essential enabling institutions for the experiments in self-government that followed.”[6] In times in that the corporate concentration also catches to the sphere of the communication, in the development of big transnational conglomerates of media. The same corporate concentration that challenges the authority of the national states, restricts the social potential of the means, through the multinational monopolies. “For software it’s Microsoft. For publishing it’s CNN. For both software and publishing it's AOL Time Warner.”[7]

Now then; which are the characteristics of this system? “To see the news you need to pay with money or with your time spent watching ads (usually for cars) or both. To create the news you need to pay expensive public relations consultants. To write the news you need to obey corporate news values, making stories on a production line, for maximum advertising impact at minimum cost. To edit the news you need to be a global stock market newswire service or a multinational media company. To distribute the news you need to have one of 6 TV transmission towers in a city of millions. (...) What we have is a very complex system within which the humans have recently gained enourmous power but as yet they have no correspondingly powerful network of communication infrastructure to support it. We have no neural network to process information. Not so much a global village as a global megaphone.”[8]

“There are signs that after more than a decade of political insignificance, the democratic potential of the Internet is being realized by more people every day.”[9] It is in this situation picture that Internet two way technologies allow an interaction and communicative participation degree few times seen. One of these technical resources is the denominated “open publishing.” “Open publishing means that the process of creating news is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions, they can copy the software because it is free and change it and start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site.”[10] It is also known with the name of “open editing” the specific possibility that users can make on-line editorial decisions. The concept that underlies in all these resources is “blogging”, which is based on the possibility of “posting” in websites articles, images, videos, etc. With the peak of the cellular telephony and the portable computer resources, went that it began to speak of “moblogging” (mobile blogging).

Who impel these spaces they sustain that it is through them the restrictions that the system of means imposes can be challenged: “For all its entertainment and social networking value, the most important promise of blogging is that it could help revivify the moribund public sphere that is as essential to democracy as voting. (...) In Korea, Ohmynews helped tip an election and elect a president. Worldwide, Indymedia provided ad-hoc counter-media at the scene of political protests. During the worldwide demonstrations against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the BBC Web site showed stills from cameraphone shots sent to them directly by participants in demonstrations from Stockholm to Rome. (...) Moblogging is at a convergence of technical capabilities with the insatiable human thirst for new ways to learn, create, and communicate, and the political necessity for a truly effective peer-to-peer journalism as a counter to ‘disinfotainment’ cartels. (...) Once upon a time, reporters were heroes. Maybe moblogging will help revive the endangered and vital tradition.”[11]

We don't know the limits of this process that it is transforming the communication processes and, possibly, the society; however, their influence can already be appreciated in the commercial and hierarchical Web. The new conception and, therefore, the new practices, they are modifying the system that the corporations of the late capitalism knew to build. When saying of one of the fervorous militants of open publishing, “we are not working to convince people that this is a good way to do things. We are providing a space in which people might decide themselves if this is a good way to do things.”[12]

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[1] Habermas, Jürgen, Historia y crítica de la opinión pública, Gustavo Gilli, México, 1983, page 131.

[2] Idem, page 133.

[3] Idem, page 137-139.

[4] Hock, Dee, “An email from Dee Hock about the emergent democracy paper”, March 10, 2003 (http://joi.ito.com).

[5] Ito, Joichi, “Future of journalism”, May 15, 2003 (http://joi.ito.com).

[6] Rheingold, Howard, “Smart Mobs Revisited”, Online Journalism Review, July 9, 2003 (www.ojr.org).

[7] Arnison, Matthew, “Open publishing is the same as free software”, June 9, 2003 (http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~matthewa/catk/openpub.html.).

[8] Idem.

[9] Rheingold, Howard, op.cít.

[10] Arnison, Matthew, op.cít.

[11] Rheingold, Howard, op.cít.

[12] Arnison, Matthew, op.cít.