Sharing Liberally
Evgeny Morozov,
Boston Review,
Jun 17, 2010
Level-headed review of what I must confess is an odd concept from Clay Shirky. The concept is this: the internet lets us fill our free time more creatively than we would otherwise by, say, watching television. Now, I have thought of the internet as a lot of things, but I don't think I've ever thought of it as filler to occupy my free time. Evgeny Morozov comments, "Shirky's digital populism not only blinds him, McLuhan-style, to inconvenient facts, it blinds him to the immense complexities and competing values inherent in democratic societies." Now - I use the internet very deliberately to try to improve social and political conditions here at home and worldwide. That's why for me it is much more than merely what I do with my cognitive surplus. Whether the internet can be used in this way is another matter, perhaps - and I'll probably have to discourse at length some time in the future on the subject of the internet and governance, because Morozov and other critics are right in at least this, that a democracy composed snappy one-liners posted in response to YouTube videos is a non-starter.
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