But he's a filthy Tory! It would have been nice to have a punch-up over fiscal policy, labour market reform or the cruelties of monetarism, but politics has moved on from such trifling little issues. Instead, my once-in-a-lifetime chance to go head to head with a senior (well, about my age) Tory occurs in the pages of the RSA Journal this month regarding 'open source politics'.
George Osborne MP, Shadow Chancellor, argues (amongst other things):
These days, a person at home on a computer can access as much information as a whole government could a generation ago. As a result of this process, there’s no longer an asymmetry of information between the individual and the state, or between the layperson and the expert.
To which my response (though not having read his piece at the time) is:
To paraphrase the trickle-down economists, the rising tide of digital technology lifts all ships. While citizens can now Google each other, search parliamentary debates using theyworkforyou.com or gather medical information to challenge their doctor’s opinion, similar technologies have been harnessed by the powerful to entrench their informational advantages. Retailers use digital technology to improve their profiles of us, governments use a range of surveillance devices to scan and record everyday social interactions, and expertise becomes defined increasingly by types of tacit or privatised knowledge that evade Wikipedia. This is not a statement on the desirability or otherwise of all this, only to point out, contra Osborne, that such hierarchical structures do and will persist.
The point I try to get across in the piece is that the significance of 'open source politics' (and other e-democracy activities) must primarily be assessed relative to the power of secretive, one-to-many, traditional state structures. What impact is open source politics having on those? It is not enough that we simply have a bigger informational pie; democracy would consist in a fairer allocation of the slices.
As it is, we run the risk of an informational equivalent of 'the third way', in which as long as those at the bottom are becoming marginally more informed year on year, the fact that there are parts of society whose power and secrecy are growing far more rapidly is deemed acceptable. Spheres of participative democracy - perhaps even very vibrant ones - would then sit snugly within environments that have been produced and shaped by powers that entirely evade their control. This is political freedom of a sort, but only inasmuch as a bicycle offers navigational freedom to a resident of an oil tanker.
In both cases the other significant failure of the argument is that great numbers of people do not have access to the internet. I wonder what % of those who do not vote do not have access to a computer in their home ? Approaching 100
To think that this group is any better off with democracy in 21 century because of the internet and myspace seems ever so hopeful
Posted by: alex | June 16, 2007 at 08:30 AM
Osborne must have had another late one before writing that.
I'd like to make a less sophisticated point that yours Will. Why does George not think that the ability of Government to collect and process data hasn't increased at a similar pace?
Posted by: jamie | June 16, 2007 at 01:51 PM
Agreed Jamie. Which is kind of what I was trying to get at with the 'rising tide lifts all ships' metaphor.
Posted by: Will Davies | June 16, 2007 at 02:19 PM