{"id":4532,"date":"2004-08-27T13:40:20","date_gmt":"2004-08-27T13:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4532"},"modified":"2004-08-27T13:40:20","modified_gmt":"2004-08-27T13:40:20","slug":"the-internet-civil-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4532","title":{"rendered":"the Internet & civil society"},"content":{"rendered":"

Way back in 2001 (“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”), I wrote an article about the Internet and civil society. That piece has been reprinted in five versions, each updated and edited for a new occasion. The latest edition appeared just today: "The Internet and Civil Society<\/a>," in Verna V. Gehring, ed., The Internet in Public Life<\/a><\/em> (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), pp. 79-98.<\/p>\n

I argue that the Internet is potentially good for civil society, but we need to worry about five problems:<\/p>\n

  • inequality (I’ve updated statistics on the digital divide)<\/li>\n
  • thin social bonds<\/li>\n
  • threats to public deliberation (mostly concerns about “cyber-balkanization”)<\/li>\n
  • rampant consumer choice, and<\/li>\n
  • privacy violations<\/li>\n

    The rest of the book <\/a>is a useful contribution to debates about the political and social impact of the Internet. It’s ideal for college courses, since it’s small and priced at $16. It is a product, by the way, of my main institutional home, the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy,<\/a> which among other activities is generating a series <\/a>of inexpensive paperback anthologies on public issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Way back in 2001 (“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”), I wrote an article about the Internet and civil society. That piece has been reprinted in five versions, each updated and edited for a new occasion. The latest edition appeared just today: "The Internet and Civil Society," in Verna V. Gehring, ed., […]<\/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-4532","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\/4532","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=4532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}