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Virtual Greeks and Cyber Slaves
To date I have explained a rather lengthy validation to the existence of an E-Nation,
otherwise known as Athens v4.2, and then moved on to providing a governmental
framework that will suit our small class sized group, along with the added advantage
that democracy will lower the chances of being bombed by the US…hehe, crazy
Bush.
But now, the question remains, can the medium of the internet truly uphold the
principles of democracy? And in order to answer this question we must compare and
contrast the nature of our model democracy – Athenian Democracy, and our version
of this model – Virtual Democracy.
The first premise of democracy can be held in the misnomer that all participants in a
democracy have an equal voice in the running of the state. This was the theory back
in 445BC, and it is the same theory that binds the entire western democratic society,
and it’s the theory that I threw at everyone regarding our Virtual Democracy. Why is
this a misnomer? Lets first of all look at the term ‘equality’. Within our Virtual
Democracy, as I have said before in a previous blog entry, “I have a voice, nothing
more, nothing less”, which would lead people to believe that they can contribute
equally to the blog forum. But within the Virtual Democracy such equality is a myth
that needs some clarification, because it reflects the Athenian model much closer than
we would care to admit.
The first point of inequality within our Virtual Democracy defies the very nature of
Democracy, Virtual or Athenian. This charge of inequality is levelled squarely at the
nefarious character we commonly know as…Luke Goode. Yes sir. Luke represents
a centralised point of authority within our class structure, with the means available to
arbitrarily censor or contain the actions of members of the class. Luke exercises this
power of control because of his position as the administrator to the blog site, which
enables him to censor or delete anyone’s entry. Thus it can be seen that Luke holds
power over other members of the class when it comes to utilizing the very voice,
which provides their equality. Now, in civilized society, this phenomenon is not
unheard of. The Greeks, prior to their adoption of democracy cam from a tradition in
which they were ruled by a Basileus, or a king, which favoured the obvious despotic
or dictatorial structure in which this class is currently structured. Now in defence of
our good man Luke, yes, he holds the power, but he wields it with a care and finesse
that is in keeping with upholding popular peace – making his arbitrary power a
reflection of benevolence. However, this is not in keeping with our intended
democratic ideals. A true test of benevolence is to take away their power and see if
this alters their philosophical outlook. And I believe that if ‘we’ decided to instigate
a popular uprising to take away this despot, to dethrone this digital kingpin, then his
marked neutrality and benevolence would be displaced by the desire to regain the
power and punish the usurpers – as this is University protocol. As an example, if I
were to consult a fair number of the class, and we decided to ‘take this despot down’
so that we may pursue self determination of a class democracy, then we could in all
reality, hijack the blog site through some rather fundamental hacking, and displace
Luke as the administrator and instead leave no-one in the role of administrator, thus
leaving no controlling force over the class voice, and hence restoring democracy to
the Virtual body politic. This indeed would be a bold move against the University
hierarchy, and we would have to expect some form of restoration to this order. Much
like any Greek Basileus would have done, Luke would regain the control over the
blog site, after a lengthy discussion with his ‘men’ (the FTVMS dept.) and then would
launch on a campaign of persecution to the culprits that threatened his power. This is
the way of things, people do not relinquish power easily, it is the human condition.
This actually highlights an underlying power structure that rules over our fledgling
E-Nation. As the Greeks evolved from a system of government under the Basileus’ to
a new leadership structure of Oligarchy, or “rule by a few men”, so too does it
become apparent that Luke is not the only constraining power on the class, but is in
fact a member of this ruling few…the FTVMS dept., as they are ultimately
responsible for the actions that take place within an assessment. This level of control
isn’t as significant as Luke’s guidance, but it reflects a dominant ideology that will
guide, and ultimately foil our E-Nations ability to self determine our own democratic
identity.
Now obviously, to remove these constraining power structures all it would take is for
a mass class relocation to another more neutral site that falls away from the
jurisdiction of the University. Also a more transparent structure of site maintenance,
so as to ensure that the person responsible for keeping a site democratic, isn’t in fact,
leading a shadowy campaign for control. This would be a fundamental step towards
the creation of an E-Nation.
After the restoration of democracy to Athens v4.2, there still lies an issue of
inequality. The nature of the internet as a medium to facilitate democracy and its
consequent provision of voice is based upon equal access to that voice. But there are
inherent hurdles to this notion of ‘access’, as discussed in the lecture the other day
about the Digital Divide. The first such hurdle to providing equal access to a netizens
voice is the issue of Physical Access. This obstacle manifests itself in terms of
actually being able to connect to the internet and how often, and to what extent.
Internet Connection: This basically falls under those who ‘can’ and those ‘can
not’… which means that those who ‘can not’ are unable to access the internet and
consequently provide their voice towards democratic deliberation. This also draws
attention to what actually constitutes access. Is someone who has to travel 5km to
their nearest cyber-café to access the internet the equal of someone who can roll out
of bed and flick on their computer and logon. This is ultimately a question of ‘ease of
access’, and to what extent those who don’t have it easy, are disadvantaged.
Connection Extent: Even amongst those that ‘have’, there are still discrepancies in
equality. As Luke has often bemoaned in lectures about how long stuff takes to load
in comparison to his office. This issue manifests itself in our world by the type of
internet connection that we use, such as 56K dial-up, ADSL, Cable, Lan/T1. This
physical limitation to our access represents our ability to maintain immediacy and real
time interaction with the fellow inhabitants of Athens v4.2. Does this represent a
difference in equality? I would say that generally, no, but in some cases, yes. With
the main feature of the Virtual Democracy being the rational discussion, this can
easily take place on almost any connection (unless there are any poor saps out there
with some old school 2400baud rs232 modems). However, it is widely agreed that we
are in the Information Age, and that the main commodity in society today is
knowledge gained from this information. Also, it is widely accepted that todays
technology is advancing at a phenomenal rate, with larger applications and larger
blocks of sophisticated data (such as movies and porn). This means that those who do
have advanced connections over their peers are advantaged, leaving a sub group of
netizens without the ability to utilize information on the same scale or speed. When
combined with the access frequency issue, this can lead to a highly disadvantaged
subgroup that would fall away from the high end frequent users. This sub class,
assuming that they don’t just leave, would provide a commodity to the advantaged
class, much like the Greek Slaves or Metics did in Athens. Where the slaves
provided a mechanism to help the state and to develop it, but didn’t, or more correctly
weren’t allowed to participate in politics, thus leaving the real politics to the
advantaged.
The second issue related to the digital divide is based upon the Social Access.
Basically, even if everyone could have equal physical access there would still exist an
inequality in terms of the ability to utilise the medium. Peoples varying levels of
knowledge regarding computers and the operation within cyberspace can largely sum
this up. If you have been following the blog to any degree, it provides a glowing
example of these inequalities, whereby people, even as late as last week, were just
providing their first blog entries, showing that somehow they were unable to gain
access to the blog, whereas other people who had the access to the computer labs (the
great equalizer in terms of the access issue because they are available to us all) had
been keeping up with the play the whole time. This disparity of knowledge is the
result of many social factors, among which are education, skills, and economic
resources. This social divide can best be seen when you examine a larger scale
example (our small class would probably generate some statistical anomalies), such as
the US, which demonstrates an internal domestic divide, as I shall show along four
avenues.
Race: Research has showed that Afro-Americans and Hispanics have lower access
rates than whites. This results in these minorities having lower representation on the
internet which can act in marginalizing their views.
 80% of White University students use e-mail
 40% of Black University students use e-mail
 90% of Whites can use a computer
 78% of Blacks can use a computer
 This divide grows for regular use of computers
This is also comparable to the Greek example, whereby foreigners and slaves
captured during war were not allowed to participate in politics. Thus, due to the
internets ability to equalise voice, is there an element of white (Greek) hegemonic
suppression of alien social and political development of access?
Gender: There are inherent differences between the sexes regarding how the internet
is used. With males seeing the internet as a toy or for entertainment, this moves them
to try and master its uses and the way in which it is constructed. Females by contrast
see the internet more as a tool that can provide information, thus it is associated more
so as a medium to facilitate work. These differences lead to different usage habits,
which could impact upon how the genders are represented within a Virtual
Democracy. With the history of the internet based on military developments, this has
provided an intrinsically masculine feel, which complements the males desire to
master it. Does this mean that the idea of an E-Nation that fosters democracy
automatically alienate half the population? Not so, though males may feel more
comfortable, the female internet psyche is based upon the utilisation of the technology
to generate information to inform work (generalization of course!), which makes the
medium of Virtual Democracy an ideal bed partner for their assertive aptitude. This
is in direct contrast to the Greeks, they didn’t let women participate in politics – ‘get
in the kitchen wench!’
Urban/Rural: There are obvious differences in access between the urban sector and
the rural. Rural areas tend to have far less broadband access and also have less
choice of local ISPs. This means that they are starved of choice for access and have
to pay more for their ‘equality’. There are also discrepancies within the urban sector
as well. We all know that Telecom are undertaking an upgrade operation throughout
central Auckland with the aim of eventually upgrading the entire Auckland phone
exchange, but this all takes money. This means that upgrades are more likely to
proceed in areas with available income to pay for the services, resulting in poorer
socio-economic areas falling behind – the urban ghetto will inevitably fall behind
technologically, resulting in unequal participation online.
 47% of Native American homes have a phone! – let alone internet
access
 5% of towns in the US have broadband
Young/Old: nuf’ said – 3% of people over 65 use the internet
Thus, we can conclude that the nature of the internet in providing us with an ideal
democracy is inherently flawed. These flaws manifest themselves in two main ways,
the first being the inherent power structures that govern how a virtual community can
operate. Due to the constructed nature of the internet, it provides an opportunity for
those who create or administer virtual space to have a disproportionate effect on
democratic tradition. There are also influences that operate outside of the virtual
space that can infringe upon the smooth operation of democracy that cannot be fully
removed until we ourselves remove our virtual space from their influence; such is the
nature of power. These top down influences on democracy are further facilitated by
the innate inequalities of social and physical access to our ‘voice’ of participation.
These inequalities provide the influencing powers to disseminate their dominant
ideology by propagating their hegemonic hold over voices of dissent – through
censorship, or limiting access. From the bottom, democracy is a bold form of
government that is just an ideal, an illusion, that gives the appearance of equality, but
neglects the truth behind social and physical divides. On a small scale (such as our
isolated class) these divides are bridgeable, but on a larger scale they would form a
chasm between virtual groups within the E-Nation. With a gap in access to
knowledge in an information society, we would have our information ‘rich’ and
information ‘poor’, resulting in the Virtual Greek and the Cyber-Slave.
Well, bugger me, that was a long one! – 2300 odd words.
Will keep truck’n along – props to those keeping up with my dribble.
Matt
E-Nation Blogs
Governance/Citizenship:
Number 1 – E-Nation as an inevitable technological deliverance
Number 2 – Social determination of government (Athenian Model)
Number 3 – Netizenship, is it equal? (Digital Divide and Access)
Number 4 – Expanding Netizenship – Can we uphold democracy? (Fragmentation)
Territory:
Number 5 – Cyber real estate
Us and Them:
Number 6 – Competition in the real world – Do we stand a chance?
State Power:
Number 7 – Lets flex our muscles
Number 8 – Fitting in