240 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0691133560
List price: $25

Despite skirmishes between students and school administrators over what students can post on their own websites on their own time, and despite pervasive teacher skepticism, many administrators and politicians (with the latter providing cheerleading via such documents as the National Technology Plan) have been embracing technology as a magic bullet than can fix just about anything that might be wrong with education.  Poor teachers?  Online instruction can replace them.  Too few resources?  Think online curriculum providers and resource pages.  Hard to get current information?  Search e-versions of national newspapers.  Too little opportunity for students to use creativity, to hone independent research skills, to explore personal interests?  Think web searches. 

While critics of such unbridled enthusiasm have called attention to such dampening issues as access, teacher education, and quality of resources, there has been a pervasive drum beating for the apparently limitless quantity of information on the web and the ability for users to choose from it exactly—and only—the specific information or viewpoints they desire.  Sunstein quotes Bill Gates on where these abilities will lead in a wondrous future:

When you turn on Direct TV and you go through every channel—well, there’s three minutes of your life.  When you walk into your living room six years from now, you’ll be able to say just what you’re interested in, and have the screen help you pick out a video that you care about.  It’s not going to be ‘Let’s look at channels 4, 5, and 7.’ (p. 39)

Such celebrated selectivity, however, is exactly what University of Chicago law and politics professor Cass Sunstein finds worrisome. 

In Republic.com 2.0 (the cleverly titled revision of his 2001  Republic.com), Sunstein observes that celebration of the Internet’s many advantages has not been sufficiently balanced by inquiry into whether individual filtering of unlimited information might also have attendant disadvantages, and how important those might be.  These are the question Sunstein himself explores, and his answer to them is that there are in fact potential disadvantages that can have significant negative impact on deliberative democracy.  Given the crucial—if often ignored—responsibility of schools to educate students for engaged citizenship, Sunstein’s points are important ones for educators to consider, especially if they are in the habit of directing students to topic or viewpoint specific websites.

Sunstein’s concern is that filtering encourages users to build extremely limited informational worlds:  we can, and do, filter out topics that don’t interest us—community or world events, politics, art, whatever—and filter in only information on topics that have already caught our interest—perhaps sports or crafts or cooking or religious blogs.  Sunstein points out that this is a kind of control we don’t have as we walk down a sidewalk, or maybe more to the point, when we read a newspaper.  On the way to the sports page, for example, sports fans can’t help seeing headlines above the fold on the front page alerting them to the latest tragedy or political scandal.  As they page past the editorial section, they scan snippets of commentary from conservatives and liberals both.  Often, a headline manages to lure readers into an article they would never have sought out.  Thus, newspaper readers receive at least minimal information on a wide range of topics they would likely to have filtered out of an Internet experience. 

The potential problem Sunstein sees is the dissolution of a shared information base, or at least a shared awareness, that leads citizens to engage each other in political discussion at the office or on the job site.  Such conversations often begin with “What do you think about . . . ?”  or “Did you see in this morning’s paper that . . . ?”  In such situations, news and ideas spread, and contrasting viewpoints are likely to be aired and heard by all participants—an essential element of civic life.  Sunstein asks readers to think seriously about what will happen if the increasingly ability to limit the information we receive produces a citizenry exposed only to a select few topics and only to people who already share their viewpoints.  Research has already demonstrated, for example, that conservatives prefer to receive their news from FOX.  With each communication that reinforces pre-existing thinking, the conviction that one is “right” strengthens.  As opinions and stances harden, compromise is less and less evident, and fragmentation grows and calcifies.  In this narrowing of experience and perspective lies a potential danger to democracy, which depends upon communication, debate and compromise among the citizenry.  The red state/blue state fracture that has been much in the news already demonstrates how divisive and destructive such fragmentation can be.

Still, Sunstein is no Paul Revere warning of approaching disaster.  He is, instead, a knowledgeable and thoughtful observer and commentator, a philosophical kin to John Stuart Mill and John Dewey, who asks simply that we consider the situation.

What I am offering is not a complaint about the Internet, but an account of the frequently overlooked importance, for a system of free expression, of shared experiences and the provision of information to people who would not have chosen it in advance.  (p. 110)

I don’t know much more clearly he can state that he does not intend to damn the Internet, and like him, I am puzzled by criticism of Republic.com suggesting that he does damn it. He says clearly in this edition, as I thought he did in the first, that he is not arguing against the Internet or for any kind of technological censorship.  Instead, he characterizes his “real goal” as “to explore some of the preconditions of democratic self-government and to show how unrestricted free choice might undermine those preconditions” (p. xiii).

His argument is detailed, and he offers support not only from his philosophical ancestors but from contemporary research, especially in social behavior and communications.  He provides a list of recommendations which are just that—suggestions for things that might be considered, not a manifesto of that which might be done.  The ideas are provocative and worth consideration, regardless of whether or not a reader agrees with his central argument.  For example, he suggests that we might create “deliberative domains,” spaces specifically dedicated to public debate on timely issues.  He points to an example already in place, which is worth a look: “The Center for Deliberative Democracy,” http://cdd.stanford.edu.    A rich relevant resource he points to is the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, http://www.deliberative-democracy.net.

Critical educators and others promoting citizenship education are likely to be especially interested in Sunstein’s speculation about why the book has excited strong and emotional negative reactions.  He notes that in the United States, “democracy” has become equated with “unlimited consumer choice,” so that to even ask about the potential effects of  allowing users unlimited ability to choose, and thereby limit, the information they are exposed to is perceived as an anti-democratic assault on technology.  While this is a stupid response, it makes perfect sense that it would arise in a neoliberal society stressing consumerism.  His answer, rightfully, is that there is a world of difference between the roles of citizen and of consumer, and that “most citizens have no difficulty distinguishing between the two roles” (p. 127).  While many citizens might personally prefer comedies as consumers, Sunstein notes, few would think it unimportant for networks to broadcast presidential political debates.  The questions he raises are properly answered not by reference to consumerism, but by reference to citizenship.

The main differences in the new edition, besides general updating of technology-related passages, include: changes in context since the pre-9/11 version; attention to linkages between technology and violence; and, the rise of blogs.  Time and events have persuaded Sunstein to revise his original policy recommendations as well, and extensive reaction to the first version (translated into several foreign languages) has led him also to respond to criticism and try to set the record straight on what he did and did not intend to say.

I suspect this book will provide nourishing food for thought for any reader interested in democracy, citizenship, and/or technology.  The awareness Sunstein raises in the reader is both permanent and helpful, and those who have already read the first edition would likely be interested in discussions of reaction to the first edition as well as the several other changes and additions.

Suggested Further Reading

Putnam, R. D. (2000).  Bowling alone:  The collapse and revival of American community.  New York:  Simon & Schuster.

Shapiro, A. L. (2000).  The control revolution:  How the Internet is putting individuals in charge and changing the world we know.  New York: Public Affairs.

Zatz, N. D.  (1998).  Sidewalks in cyberspace:  Making space for public forums in the electronic environment.  Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 12(1):  149-240.