Cass Sunstein
Resumé (Chapter 3 and 6)
I have chosen this book, because it is involved in these problems which interest me. In Sustein´s book Republica.com, there are a lot of answers, but many more questions in connection with the Internet.
The main topics of this book are:
- Democracy
- Government regulation
- Freedom of speech
- Filtering information
Sunstein raises important and troubling questions about the effect of the Internet on a democratic society. Cass Sunstein considers herself a part of a “second generation” of people writing about the Internet, which is now more complex (experiences with viruses, hackers..) contrary to the “first generation” of writers, which were engaged in a kind of international celebration of it.
In these chapters, she has focused on filtering on the Internet. This is not new; filtering is as old as human life itself. If we had not been able to filter information, we wouldn’t have been able to think the way we do. Sunstain poses the question: Is this (Internet) filtering good for democracy?
In these times, there exists a real danger of people swapping and sharing information only with like-minded people, insulating themselves from competing views, which leads to an increase in hate groups such as KKK groups, White Racial Royalist etc. This means a serious risk for democratic society. It is very important that the citizens are exposed to many alternative viewpoints.
Sunstein is also interested in government regulation of cyberspace. The question is not whether we will have regulation, but what kind of regulation we will have. Essentially, cyberspace is a space like any other so we have to ensure necessary conditions for property rights and other law issues. A regulation-free zone on cyberspace is nonsense, he says. Everyone who has an e-mail account, or a website, benefits from regulation, every hour of every day. The regulation takes the form of governmental creation and protection of property rights, at the tax payer’s expense.
One of the most significant things about human beings is their ability to communicate on a certain level. In these times of internet, cell phones, and other possibilities, our ability to communicate is diminishing. For our society it is inevitably important to create spaces and institutions that increase the likelihood that citizens will actually see and hear one another, and have some chance of achieving a measure of mutual understanding. We need to create something like a convenient “architecture of the communication system”. For a healthy democracy, shared public spaces, virtual or not, are a lot better than echo chambers.
Cass R. Sunstein (born 1954) is a prominent law professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
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