Customer Reviews

Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy

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There is an irony in writing a review of Jeff Chester's (Center for Digital Democracy) critique of new media and the future of democracy on this site given how successful Amazon has been in using the internet to do the things that Mr Chester so despises. The book contains very detailed discussions about how large telecommunications companies have and are subverting democratic processes in America. The book is both a brief history of political developments in modern communications and a work of art in judiciously critiquing these developments in order to suggest what we as citizens should do about it. Armed with this in hand roll on the revolution!

In this book Mr. Chester warns that the big communications media -- TV Networks, Big Cable Companies, Microsoft, etc. are attempting to find ways to take over, control, and therefore make a lot of money on the Internet. He is absolutely correct. They would love to do just exactly this.

The author is head of an organization, The Center for Digital Democracy, that is attempting to preserve the openness and diversity of the Internet in the broadband era. The book is a Wake-Up call to get people's attention to the problem.

I'm not so sure that I fully agree with his fears. Yes, from a connectivity standpoint he is right, someone, probably a large company will own the wire that comes into your house. But I don't see it likely that they will have much control over the content being delivered. If they could, the politicians would find a way to eliminate the SPAM (I get several a day), phising (I just got one of these today), viruses and porn that is on the net now.

Part of the problem from the big company standpoint is that the web is international in scope, you can't control the web hosts in China or Nigeria. It will be interesting to see how this works out in the future.