At face value, this book tackles a subject to which I've been drawn due to its lack of opposition: due to our increasing ability to filter what we see, read, and hear through communication media (especially the Internet, but not exclusively), we'll be able to somehow manage our world of ever-increasing media more effectively-and that this is a wonderful thing. I found myself agreeing with the author's skepticism of this brave new filter-friendly world, but found that his assumptions and proposed solutions largely miss the point.
Mr. Sunstein begins his book well, assuming a solid distinction between our consumer and citizen-oriented behaviors; the former favoring individual choice and the latter being more civic-minded. This dichotomy falls apart when presented as a false choice: you're either one or the other (I suspect most of the populace blurs the two), and the perilous consequences of unfettered personal choice make clear which the author favors-and which should be regulated. He further cheapens his consumer choice argument by drawing on dubious critics of consumption culture-among them one Robert H. Frank, author of such vitriol as 'Luxury Fever' and 'The Winner-take-All Society,' whose arguments seem to boil down to "consumer goods can't make you happy" and "we want goods because our neighbors have them," forever damning us to a "consumption treadmill." With this decked stacked against the consumer, Sunstein plows forward, arguing the need for government to step in and help the dumbfounded citizenry. They simply can't be left alone against the dreadful free market-characterized as having "potentially destructive effects" and "producing serious problems" when it comes to cultivating democracy.
The strawman of "consumer sovereignty" takes a more-deserved pounding in a chapter on freedom of speech. But again, Sunstein stacks the deck: you either emphasize this sovereignty or you "stress the democratic roots of the free speech principle." No prizes for guessing which side he favors.
This assumption clearly reveals-to me-the author's cynicism. Media regulation-at its grubby little heart-can't help but see the populace (consumers or citizenry, take your pick) as sheep: drones willing to watch or read anything the evil media barons put in front of them. In this view, government takes on a crusader's role, ensuring hours of children's programming or airtime for opposing viewpoints. Under the spell of the duplicious media, of course, the great unwashed would never demand such things.
My most frustrating experience reading republic.com resulted from the lack of cause-and-effect arguments about media choice fragmentation. All the author's arguments explain little about our *reasons* for filtering and fragmenting the torrents of media thrown our way. His attempts in this area are strangely circular: fragmentation is bad for democracy because people are acting as consumers-and when they act like consumers, they tend to fragment their choices. The few evil examples offered-the "cybercascades" of Matt Drudge and his ilk-merely highlight fringe cases; if *this* is all we have to fear from this phenomenon, Sunstein needn't have spent 202 pages on it.
Another assumption involves "regulation," defined as just about anything good government accomplishes. Besides playing the old government-invented-the-Internet card (and surely would have beefed up ARPANET to include Netscape, Microsoft, AOL, and eBay, given sufficient funding), Sunstein clearly thinks those profiting from the net do so due to the graces of big, ugly government. He strangely seems to place government protection of property rights on the same plane as, say, regulating broadcasting; government certainly has a rightful place in the former sphere, but many good arguments have been advanced about its place in the latter. In either event, his assumption that "the Internet is already regulated, get over it" rings hallow since he can't seem to justify any regulatory ideas beyond those currently applied to TV and radio.
But that's the best he can do, and ultimately, this book really runs aground when the author puts forth solutions. Links to opposing websites? (What is "opposing?" What if I'm neither a 'conservative' or a 'liberal?') Economic subsidies for balanced discussions? (Determined by whom?) "Must carry" rules for the Internet? (Since websites literally take seconds to create, the 'scarcity' argument that advanced must-carry rule for TV 30 years ago hardly holds water now.) The only proposal I found somewhat intriguing involved having media sources "disclose what they're doing"-under some government auspices. Not bad, but even the author doesn't 'disclose' what he's up to in this book-you have to *read* it. How a website would differ is left as an exercise.
After all these assumptions and proposals in this book, I started to see any paranoia about excessively filtering as overblown. While not the unarguable good put forth by Bill Gates and Nicholas Negroponte, filtering nevertheless has its place. Trying to balance excessive filtering by brute force is not only untenable, but wrong-headed: most educated people tend to change their minds by heeding good arguments and debate that influence their opinions - not by reading viewpoints diametrically opposed to their own.
I found an amusing irony as I completed this book-namely, that I was personally an exception to the cures proposed by Mr. Sunstein. First, I recognized that reading his book was, perhaps, a form of filtering itself: I was reading material that "preached to my own choir." But alas! I found myself disagreeing with much of what he said, and more: that I didn't need a government solution (or even "voluntarily-imposed regulation") to read this opposing viewpoint! I had-somehow-found it on my own!
Even the author seems dimly aware that the very act of writing and publishing his book might be construed as preaching to a like-minded audience. He softens just about every point he makes by some very balanced back-tracking ("Insofar as new technologies make it easier ... for communication among people with common experiences, ... they are a boon") to the point of being hypersensitive to creating his own fragment. He shouldn't, of course, be so concerned. His educated audience can easily draw their own conclusions.
