What is modern democracy? Do we need to revitalise democracy? What should be preconditions for the revitalisation of democracy ? Will technology kill democracy or reinvent it? Technology has brough us undeniable benefits but also presents challenges to democray. But how? Indeed, using technology, millions of citizens enjoying flexibility & feasibility of direct involvement in policy making faster than before. Using social media, all are able to get updates of news & information. Citizens can openly deliberate.
The amalgamation of internet & democracy is called as either e-democracy or internet enabled democracy or cloud democracy. This has two meanings, first, using the internet to strengthen real world democracy & second, democratic conduct of virtual communities. For this 'e-democracy', technological infrastructures should be well equipped like applications , platforms , servers, wifi, dashboards, connectivity etc. Without digital education & civic education it is impossible to bring evolution in it. The question that arise in my mind is, how technology impacting to the way to democracy ?
There is a digital democratic utopia which includes harmonious, reflecting liberty & equality in global community of netizens. But at another side, sadly we are witness of identity theft, cyber crime, manipulative analytics, fake news & trolling, hacking elections & polarisation of open societies. Unfortunately, in India, not everyone is permanent netizen. Even, you may read in news that social media companies are hiring thousands of editors to fight hate speech & robotic information curruption. Forget about global democracy, we first need to deal with current structural deficits of representative systems.
A. Foreign Influence shaping opinion
B. Cyber bullying
C. Online wars for popular opinion
D. Discussion moderation
E. Rigid opinion & less judgements
F. Unlimited & unecessary use of limited & necessary technology
G. Virtual thought disturbance
What is active citizenship? Actually, it relies on citizens being not only politically mature & independent minded but also capable of forming and making their own judgements. Unfortunately, today, very few are aware about negative impact of technology if we hold it to occupy our brain. Most of the time, technology encourages self censorship which discourages political development. Essentially, Shaping your opinion and makes to think about your thoughts whether it will get questioned or challenged which in turns inhibits your ability to learn and develop your thinking. There are threats to active citizenship through artificial citizenship. When you,search for a word on google or say youtube, Al remembers it. At the same time of the next search, just before you type something, you will be shown an introduction to the word you searched for earlier. Like this, Automatically, society get fragmented into like minded people who are convincing same thought to each other just in another creative way. As AI becomes popular, it will be able to make decisions that are popular one. It has been observed that most of the time people becoming increasingly agitated and entrenched in their views and beliefs, which make it increasingly difficult for them to both communicate & cooperate with those who share different opinions. In a result, they become most violent ones creating political deadlock.
Offcourse, we human being are very smart to keep technology in custody for blaming its negative impact. Whereas, technology is human creation. If we know how to create technology, we should know how to use it, if we know how to use it, we should know how and upto where to limit it.
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