Customer Reviews

Republic.com

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

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.

Repulic.com identifies a problem with the new popularity of the internet. With all of the filtering we are able to do through the use of modern software, we may only ever see the type of content that reaffirms our own biases. According to Sunstein, this will result in people having less and less exposure to opposing viewpoints, and the end result will be the fragmentation of the Internet into splinter groups of like-minded individuals. He then goes on to identify a series of ways that this problem can be fixed, all of which involve increased regulation on the content of the web.

The ideas behind this book were poorly thought out from the start, and indicate that the author doesn't have a firm grip on the reality of the Internet, or even of what social interaction involves. He states that we seek out like-minded people and that we can limit our exposure to information that is disseminated only by these people. While this may be true, no two people are ever entirely like-minded. A discussion group on music will have people from all different political backgrounds, a discussion on politics will have people from nearly any religion, and in a religious discussion every possible genre of music fan will usually be represented. People never discuss strictly one subject in an Internet discussion group, in fact this often poses a problem for moderators who want to keep the discussions on topic. Any internet discussion group will have so many different viewpoints that argument is inevitable.

At this point the author might point out that people will be able to filter this content to display only the information that they agree with, but this argument doesn't take human nature into account. People enjoy arguing and convincing others of the truth of their arguments. A person who reads only conservative discussions will inevitably head to a liberal discussion group and start an argument, and vice versa. Sure, they can be banned, but most discussion groups welcome open debates, and this trend shows every sign of continuing well into the future.

Sunstein then argues his case for the Orwellian regulation of all Internet media with the goal of exposing people to more viewpoints. He tries to draw a parallel to the regulation of other media, but misses several glaring differences. Television, newspapers, radio, and magazines are all distributed by a small group of corporations. This makes it easy for a small group of people to control the media, but it also makes them easy to regulate since there aren't many avenues for content to be distributed to the people. The World Wide Web on the other hand, is the diametric opposite of these types of media. Anyone can create content, anyone can find content, and no one can control content.

Throughout the book, the author beats up straw men, compares apples to oranges and extrapolates oversimplified trends to impossible ends. In the end, he never actually explains how his bad ideas could be realistically implemented, but it would inevitably involve a convoluted mess of government regulation. Read it if you must, but this book is only useful as an example of a poor persuasive argument written by an author with only a rudimentary understanding of how the world operates.

This is the third Sunstein book I've read, and definitely the worst. He's evolved into just another authoritarian who's upset that not everyone shares his views, so, by golly, it's time for Big Brother to "regulate" what other people say and write "in the public interest." So what else is new? Another writer could have set out the arguments in a more honest manner, but not Sunstein. Every time he seems to consider an objection, it turns out to be a caricature. His extreme legal positivism is presented as merely common sense, when it is a highly disputed approach in law. I regret having wasted my time on the book.

I realize, of course, that my subject line is harsh for someone of the author's credentials. But let us be serious here. If you think about anything much at all, it's very difficult to find a source of information with which you agree on any two disparate subjects, much less on everything. The supposed dangers of the "daily me" really only apply to people for whom the "daily me" is the same as hundreds of thousands of other people's "me's", because they aren't thinking for themselves and generating the highly individuated, almost fractal set of relationships that compose an evolving, examined perspective.

But information, packaged as news or "info-tainment" that confirms and reinforces the prejudices of large ideological demographic segments already has been with us for quite some time. Sunstein attributes to the internet a capability for more tightly encapsulating and restricting an audience ideologically, in a way that requires government-manadated content control to solve. This when the decades of three television channels, all alike are only just behind us, without the appearance of even a trend towards a national uniformity of view. But there is no room here for the consideration of data that contradicts the author's didacticism.

I'd write more, but much has been covered here. His own views are associated with common sense and escorted in the door, while opposition appears only in cariciatured, straw-man forms. If he had had the courage and honesty to really attack and dissect his own arguments, it would have been more palatable for him suggest these types of radical alterations in our culture of free speech. As it stands, one senses that he embraces a radical solution because he hasn't understood, or even really tried to understand, the problems that we may actually encounter with an increasing disintermediation of news managers and a corresponding dilution of a common trusted authority on what, factually, is occuring. A terrific example of this in action is the John Birch-like theorizing that occurs in the some of the more obscure corners of the political web, attached to all major points of view. This is not a new trend, just one that is amplified by the internet's ability connect widely separated people with a narrow interest in common. But this same capability is thought a virtue when a patient's group springs up to support people with a rare disease. Someone should have locked Sunstein in a room with Bruce Sterling for a couple of days before letting him start writing. (Sorry Bruce, someone has to do it.)

One could do better with time and money than to dispose of them here.

I give this book three stars not because I agree with it but because I think people need to read this book to find out that there are VERY influential people in this country who have a problem with the free exchange of information and ideas that occurs on the Internet. Sunstein's thesis is that the Internet fragments and personalizes information to such an extent that individuals are increasingly isolated from contrary views; this isolation allows "bad" ideas to go unchecked, thereby promoting extremism and threatening democracy. Sunstein proposes a series of "solutions" which are both unworkable and unnecessary, for his basic premise is flawed.

Contrary to Sunstein, the Internet gives people access to more, not less, information, more opinions, not fewer, and gives people more opportunities - not fewer - to challenge and respond to false or contrary information. Chat rooms and web bloggers provide unprecedented opportunities to engage people of differing opinions, opportunities unavailable in the days when everybody sat in front of the TV and passively accepted the scripted, highly centralized news reporting of a Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather. Sunstein seems unaware that even highly partisan websites ALREADY serve as forums for evaluating and responding to contrary viewpoints, and that bitter disputes occur even among people who share the same general philosophy.

Sunstein explicitly yearns for a return to the days when network news programming would provide a "shared frame of reference" for the public; in other words, he longs for the days when news - presented by people with views similar to his own - could function as propaganda, unquestioned by dissenting voices. Sunstein is thus an authoritarian masking as a libertarian; he wants to control and regulate what you see and hear.

...because it's not the Internet that I use. He talks about how the pervasiveness of the "Daily Me" will splinter our democratic republic into warring factions of special interest groups. Then he has the nerve to say that what the Internet needs -- to protect us from factionalization and viruses -- is more regulation. The regulations he proposes, such as "must carry" laws to websites with extreme opinions, could not exist in our current regulative environment, or even a future environment base don the current one. Sunstein comes off as a pampered academic who has very little understanding of how the Internet actually works, and how it is regulated.

At the same time as he slams the "Daily Me" approach, he refuses to take corporations to task for their part in it. He simultaneously blames browsers that come pre-packaged with links to sites representing the views of the browser manufacturer [hint Sunstein, you can always delete them] and yet will not take that one step further to claim that Microsoft may have something to do with that being a bad thing.

And he bashes the open source movement in ways that just reveal how little he understands about what they stand for or why their ideas might be a good thing. His basic argument seems to boil down to "there will be SOME regulation, we may as well make sure the regulations are just" He acts like some spoiled Yuppie that is unhappy that the "wrong element" has moved into his neighborhood, forgetting the fact that him and his ilk had gentrified it in the first place.

In a nutshell, Sunstein fears the power of personalized content. He has the notion that when people filter the Internet content they want to see, their Weltanschauung becomes far too myopic. This combined with his near deification of the media make those sections of republic.com pure rubbish. Sunstein fears that by having such filters, this limits the amount of shared experiences that people are afforded

Sunstein does raise some good points when he questions the nature of how the Internet can exacerbate the `consumption treadmill' in which people buy more and better goods not because they make us happier or better off, but because they help us keep up with others.

Sunstein has an irrational fear that when people limit what information they want to view, the social bonds of society are weakened. While that point is debatable, it has utterly nothing to do with the Internet. How an individual filters their content has been occurring for a long time, the only difference with the Internet is that the medium has changed.

After reading the book, the reader sees that Sunstein is obviously a brilliant legal scholar. But his myriad assumptions and hypothesis's in the book show how he needs to get out of the often-theoretical world of academia and have a few shared experiences with the common man.

The center is lethargic and holds. There is always a 10 percent "grumpy" element which wobbles through every society, and the Internet is like WD-40 in freeing their means, methods and mischief in staying in touch with related grumps.

Of course the 10 percent of grumpy people delight in the rise of customizable media to find related extremist views which reinforce only the points of view they already share. It has yet to be seen if this will produce more 'Flat Earth' societies, Oklahoma City bombers or Roswell visitors. Sunstein is worried it will create modern Know Nothings, similar to the rise of the original nativist anti-Catholic Know Nothings who became part of the Republican Party that elected Abraham Lincoln.

Banning "free" speech is not the answer. Instead, it is better to recognize the limits to idiocy depend more on population than pundits.

Sunstein is clear, logical and concise -- exactly the kind of reasoned discourse he values and wants to preserve. He ignores the fact politics is often murky, irrational and similar to tossing raw meat to hungry hyenas; yet out of this chaos certain themes emerge which become the strength of democracy. Would Lincoln have been elected without the Know Nothings? What would America be today had Know Nothing policies been implemented?

His idea of government-sponsored and mandated public media spaces is appalling; a free society stays clear of government-sponsored opinion and relies instead on compromise to implement majority consensus views. Sunstein is frightened that everyone from the American Nazi Party to the Zapatistas gets a stronger voice through the Internet; but, he ignores the fact that Barack Obama's skillful use of the Internet is what gave him such a strong election mandate.

[...] is a strong and pointed case against the status quo; but, the status quo is always being questioned in a democracy. The real issue is whether the Internet can generate change, or will merely be used by politicians and others as an echo chamber.

I'm a huge Net advocate and a believer in the possibilities of the Net promoting democracy. But Sunstein has written an important book, even if it is one many people online will consider heretic. He's challenging the tech world -- a sometimes narcissistic and elitist culture which often talks a lot about the masses and democracy, even though most people aren't online or tech savvy -- to consider that the explosion in collaborative filtering and other software (like that used here on this site) is causing us to only deal with ideas we know we're going to like. He reminds us that we are also citizens as well as free and empowered netizens, and that citizens need a public place to get together and be exposed to unanticipated and other ideas they might not agree with. The explosion on moderation and filtering is making it easier than every for people to screen out products, books, opinions they think they don't want to hear. In a civic sense, that leads to a sort of cultural Serbia. Sunstein is quite careful in this book not to be knee-jerk. He isn't anti-technology. He is challenging people to consider the implications of this powerful software. In the tech world, stuff is often judged by how cool it is, rather than by its consequences. My one strong disagreement is Sunstein's call for mandatory links to sites that offer opposing points of view. People shouldn't be forced to consider idea they don't like, they should be encouraged to get to places where they are exposed to them. But I think this is a very significant work, and I highly recommend it to people who love the Net and are interested in its impact on democracy.

Republic.com seeks to explore the often unreflected idea that the Internet is a boon for democracy, the logic being that the explosion of ideas readily accessible has all that is necessary for a genuinely democratic society. Such free speech purists have found in Cass Suntein a significant naysayer. Sunstein's criticism is against what he has labelled "the Daily Me", or more academically the synonymity of consumer sovereignty with democratic freedom. A good example of this idea of consumer sovereignty can be found in the prophetic words-spoken in 1999 - of Bill Gates, cited at regular intervals throughout Sunstein's book:

"When you turn on DirectTV and you step through every channel - well, there's three minutes of your life. When you walk into your living room six years from now, you'll be able to say what you're interested in, and have the screen help you pick out a video that you care about. It's not going to be "let's look at channels 4, 5, and 7."

As Sunstein points out, Gates' vision is a vision of "consumer sovereignty in action" (p. 44). It is this trend to consumer sovereignty that Sunstein argues endangers the democratic project. Absolute freedom to filter out news-stations, opinions, political and religious viewpoints etc with which we are not enamoured with threatens democracy because by this way the internet morphs from being the free marketplace of ideas that its defenders claim to becoming an ideological cul-de-sac.

This is not just a matter of like attracting like, Sunstein's argument develops the thesis the dynamics of groups is toward extremism, a phenomenon Sunstein backs up with social scientific research. Therefore, the internet rather than being a force for democratisation is, paradoxically, an inhibiting factor in democratic praxis. In short, freedom of speech is not synonymous with consumer sovereignty and its key idea that "customers" can filter the information that comes their way. A robust theory of citizenship by contrast requires that the citizen cannot discriminate (at least not the the extent of the consumer sovereignty model - although even Locke required filtering of political views - ) from those they disagree with, the term used to describe this process is deliberative democracy. In response Sunstein offers ways in which the negative aspects of internet ideological polarisation can be minimised, with ideas ranging from voluntary agreements to governmental legislation and censorship. To be sure Sunstein has offered an interesting thesis on the relationship of new media and democracy, particularly in relation to the deliberative democratic model. It is not however the last word on the subject.

For my part its major failing is Sunstein's lack of concern to which all media has been dominated by ideological polarisation. More pertinently the media has often been in the pay of the government or, more importantly, the conglomerate. My reason for highlighting this is that however valid Sunstein's argument may be, it is only replacing one anti-democratic force with another (although with the staggering commercialisation of the internet perhaps in time it will be the same powers merely working in a different medium). Finally, it strikes me that Sunstein is living in a different world to me. If Sunstein's thesis were accepted in toto, - and I think he has overstated his argument - it still remains the fact that every day people go to work with people from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, religions, and political opinion. Maybe the Daily Me phenomenon has reduced the scope for ideological challenge, however, it has certainly not obliterated it.