Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers ... to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture, genius, learning, [or] wit ... so let the village. Do not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions ..." -- Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Henry David Thoreau asked why we should let the editors at Harper select our reading. Now that HarperCollins is owned by Rupert Murdock, and promotes authors like Michael Crichton and a right wing attack agenda that is far out of synch with public opinion, the problem has not exactly diminished.

Simply put, an increasing number of people are finding that the monopolistic media system no longer serves their needs.

They were outraged at the Federal Communication Commission's ruling last summer that allowed even more concentration in the media. The idea that there will soon be TV stations, newspapers and radio stations with the same owners in the same town conjures up grim images of Jimmy Stewart's heroic fight against big media from the floor of the US Senate in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Worse, but less known, are rules that have virtually killed any chance for new low-power FM and UHF stations. There will be no diversity in broadcasting. Wierd Al will never be able to rescue his local UHF station. Instead, we have TV cable channels covering a political spectrum (and artistic range) from the right of Atilla the Hun to the dead center of American politics. Liberal, European and developing world perspectives are not on the menu. To put it in a nutshell, the History Channel is really not about history.

Don't wait for diversity via the print media either. Only two or three major cities in America have competing newspapers anymore, thanks to the the Failing Newspaper Act of 1970 that exempted publishers from anti-trust laws. And most newsrooms have far fewer writers than they did when that act was passed.

A cold winter on a bleak rock, with Rupert Murdoch as pedagogue and Michael Crichton as parson.

So, people must also be wondering what happened to the Internet, that wonderful new medium that was supposed to bring diversity into their homes. Isn't that what this new technology is supposed to be all aboutt?

The potential, to put it mildly, is untapped. Most of the early experiments in so-called electronic democracy, like the Blacksburg Electronic Village, are gone. The raging tides of the web rose over the banks of the little lakes and streams of Bevnet.

Some of the newer experiments are downright ludicrous, like Kuma War, where yesterday's news becomes today's shoot em up video game. As Ambrose Bierce once said, war is God's way of teaching Americans geography. This experiment brings the geography lesson home.

Not long ago, a group of computer science grad students in Northern Virgina put together a "scary" vision of EPIC: the media in 2014 where the New York Times goes offline and becomes a print-only newsletter for elite and elderly. Although their theory relies on a misreading of copyright law, the simulation gets interesting when it envisions a system where everyone contributes, where professional journalists and editors are paid in proportion to the popularity of their contributions. Actually, its not a bad idea.

So let's imagine ...

Imagine what could be done. Imagine something called a democratic news service. Something that allows you to "select your reading" according to whatever was conducive to your culture or wit, as Thoreau would say.

Imagine that with the new communications technology, each reader / viewer could select their own personal information envelope in a way they found most comfortable. Not just a few choices of categories, as the current crop of "Daily Me" web sites full of murder, accident, mad dogs and steamboat explosions.

Instead, imagine a fully developed, scaleable, personally tailord information system, designed for your needs, located on a presentation platform of your choice. Imagine that you could choose not only your favorite subjects but also an optimum spectrum of information delivery modes from continuums like these :

In a democratic news environment, readers and viewers could all vote for the most important stories and set the agenda. This was done in the MIT "Fishwrap" experiment at the Media Lab for several years in the mid-1990s. Most of the stories that were voted up the agenda chain were unusual or funny stories rather than serious things. But that was part of the fun of being involved in Fishwrap.

In a democratic news environment, consumers would not only choose storeis, and their place on the agenda, but would also have a voice in the way information is developed in the first place. They would know in advance about topics coming up in the news and would have an opportunity to comment or contribute. If a critical mass of readers wanted a reporter to look into a public situation and report back, it should be worth a day's effort. At some level, reporters could propose and bid on these kinds of projects. One sticking point is that there are legal rules about criticizing private people and making private issues public, and any money making organization may need to explain the rules from time to time, but it can be dealt with. Overall, public agenda setting would be a healthy way to approach public issues.

We're already starting to see a lot of this consumer generated news, or public journalism, in the form of "blogs" -- but most blogs are personal and opionionated. There have also been blogger/reporters for hire at major news events, especially the political party conventions, in recent years. Obviously, there is more to come here. A new experiment in Bluffton, South Carolina -- Bluffton Today -- is a news organization providing a method and server space for personal blogs and photo uploads. It will be watched closely.

We've imagined ourselves acting collectively to improve our personal information enviroments, but now imagine a grizzled old hard-drinking, cigar-chomping editor holding his ample belly while he guffaws at the Gawd-awful naivete that we have just diplayed. Imagine the old coot leaning back in his squeaky chair, thumbs hooked into his suspenders and eyes filling with oceans of pity. Democratic newspaper? Hell, there's no such thing as democracy. You can't have a democratic PTA meeting in a township of twenty souls, much less an information system that serves people individually on a mass scale. You need guys like me to tell you what you need to know.

OK, now imagine electing your own editors. Maybe we could even imagine that grizzled old editor getting the sack.

It seems dreamy and impossible, sort of like electing officers in the Army. But in fact officers are elected in some armies, and those armies tend to do as well as the others.

But wait, news people everywhere will object. The editor is appointed because he doesnt have to cater to vulgar public tastes, because he doesnt tell people what they want to hear, but instead tells them what he believed they should hear. He is merely upholding high standards. Why give him the sack?

Simply because Americans rarely pay people to uphold high standards. Look at music. You can uphold high standards until you are blue in the face, but its nog going to bring people back to opera or Stephen Foster songs. Our news media is no less calcified and archaic than opera and Stephen Foster songs -- in fact, all were developed in concept around the mid-19th century.

Yes, the monopoly media has, like any monopoly, become arrogant. We think we are the ones who are "trained" to know know what is "news." We can't be questioned and we cant be responsive. But we can be challenged through the power of new technology.

When this begins to happen, as it will, it would be best if we had one idea firmly in mind: We can move in the direction of MORE, rather than less, democratic information systems. We can face the technological revolution fearlessly, and make the best of it, rather than allow it to make the worst of us.

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Links:

Center for Digital Democracy == Digital Community

Excerpt from Lincoln Dahlberg, Extending the Public Sphere through Cyberspace -- The case of Minnesota E-Democracy, First Monday

The conditions of the public sphere as set out in Jurgen Habermas' theory of rational communication.

• 1. Autonomy from state and economic power. Discourse must be based on the concerns of citizens as a public rather than driven by the media of money and administrative power that facilitate the operations of the market and state.
• 2. Exchange and critique of criticizable moral-practical validity claims. Deliberation involves engaging in reciprocal critique of normative positions that are provided with reasons and thus are criticizable - are open to critique rather than dogmatically asserted.
• 3 Reflexivity. Participants must critically examine their cultural values, assumptions, and interests, as well as the larger social context.
• 4.Ideal role taking. Participants must attempt to understand the argument from the other's perspective. This requires a commitment to an ongoing dialogue with difference in which interlocutors respectfully listen to each other.
• 5. Sincerity. Each participant must make a sincere effort to make known all information - including their true intentions, interests, needs, and desires - as relevant to the particular problem under consideration.
• 6. Discursive inclusion and equality. Every participant affected by the validity claims under consideration is equally entitled to introduce and question any assertion whatsoever. Inclusion can be limited by inequalities from outside of discourse - by formal or informal restrictions to access.

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More on Thoreau and the news:

"I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip...

"Our inventions are ... pretty toys which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end ... We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."