Amitai<\/p>\nEtzioni<\/a> had arranged the whole event—and I was so ignorant about<\/p>\n
blogging that I failed to mention their blogs when I introduced these<\/p>\n
two panelists. (Meeting them may partly explain why I got into this business.)<\/p>\n
In any case, I have continued to think a lot about the discussion that<\/p>\n
evening.<\/p>\n
First of all, I’ve been thinking about public engagement<\/b>. Professor<\/p>\n
Volokh graduated from UCLA with a BS in computer science at the age of<\/p>\n
15, and then worked as programmer for some time before he became a law<\/p>\n
school professor. I asked him why he made the switch, and he explained<\/p>\n
that he wanted to lead a "public life" by testifying, writing<\/p>\n
opinion pieces for newspapers, etc. This kind of opportunity has a certain<\/p>\n
appeal for me, too, although I’m not sure that I could break into the<\/p>\n
mass media even if I tried—and I don’t try very hard. The reason<\/p>\n
I don’t try is that I want to lead a different kind of "public life."<\/p>\n
My goal is to help build and sustain public institutions or communities.<\/p>\n
That is quite different from expressing opinions (even informed and interesting<\/p>\n
ones) on broad matters of national or international concern. Institutions<\/p>\n
don’t primarily need people to express opinions; they need organizational<\/p>\n
work and products appropriate to their mission. Also, the institutions<\/p>\n
within which someone like me can have an impact are necessarily limited<\/p>\n
in scope. They either work in particular geographical locations or else<\/p>\n
they deal with fairly narrow issues. Unless you’re the Pope or the president,<\/p>\n
you can’t work through institutions and deal directly with all the great<\/p>\n
issues of the world. So I think that there is a trade-off between addressing<\/p>\n
a big audience and working within organizations. I seem to have chosen<\/p>\n
the latter course.<\/p>\n
Second, the panel was populated by First Amendment lawyers, and for them<\/p>\n
the Internet is primarily interesting as a venue for cheap speech.<\/b><\/p>\n
It’s extremely expensive to communicate through media like print or television,<\/p>\n
but it’s cheap to operate a Website or to send out bulk emails. Thus the<\/p>\n
Internet is supposed to be very good for freedom of speech. I find myself<\/p>\n
unpersuaded. The more people communicate on the Internet, the more they<\/p>\n
have to split the available audience, to the point that the average online<\/p>\n
"speaker" (that’s me) probably talks to two or three people.<\/p>\n
Being able to communicate to such a small number is no great advance over<\/p>\n
the olden days, when you could put up a poster. Also, "cheap speech"<\/p>\n
often turns into the blather of chat rooms. That is because people abuse<\/p>\n
common spaces by dumping ill-informed or uncivil speech into them. So<\/p>\n
I have realized that I am interested in the possibilities of the Internet<\/p>\n
for "affordable speech," not "cheap speech." Given<\/p>\n
the new digital technology, we can now create such goods as streaming<\/p>\n
videos, interactive online maps, local newspapers, and structured deliberations.<\/p>\n
These goods cost thousands of dollars instead of hundreds of thousands.<\/p>\n
The result is a great advance for the First Amendment, as many more people<\/p>\n
can participate in creating things of value. However, "affordable<\/p>\n
speech" is not free—indeed, it’s out of the reach of most community<\/p>\n
groups and non-profits. Which is why I am so interested in creating institutional<\/p>\nsupport for public uses of the Internet<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A little more than two weeks ago, I moderated a panel at the Association of American Law Schools Conference. Two of the panelists were famous bloggers (so I’ll use their full names): Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh. I had not selected the panel—Amitai Etzioni had arranged the whole event—and I was so ignorant about blogging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-and-public-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}