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Republic.com
See only what you want to see, hear only what you want to hear, read only what you want to read. In cyberspace, we already have the ability to filter out everything but what we wish to see, hear, and read. Tomorrow, our power to filter promises to increase exponentially. With the advent of the Daily Me, you see only the sports highlights that concern your teams, read about only the issues that interest you, encounter in the op-ed pages only the opinions with which you agree. In all of the applause for this remarkable ascendance of personalized information, Cass Sunstein asks the questions, Is it good for democracy? Is it healthy for the republic? What does this mean for freedom of speech?
Republic.com exposes the drawbacks of egocentric Internet use, while showing us how to approach the Internet as responsible citizens, not just concerned consumers. Democracy, Sunstein maintains, depends on shared experiences and requires citizens to be exposed to topics and ideas that they would not have chosen in advance. Newspapers and broadcasters helped create a shared culture, but as their role diminishes and the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving. In their place will arise only louder and ever more extreme echoes of our own voices, our own opinions.
In evaluating the consequences of new communications technologies for democracy and free speech, Sunstein argues the question is not whether to regulate the Net (it's already regulated), but how; proves that freedom of speech is not an absolute; and underscores the enormous potential of the Internet to promote freedom as well as its potential to promote "cybercascades" of like-minded opinions that foster and enflame hate groups. The book ends by suggesting a range of potential reforms to correct current misconceptions and to improve deliberative democracy and the health of the American republic.
Chat with Cass Sunstein in a Message Forum hosted beginning April 1, 2001.
Republic.com exposes the drawbacks of egocentric Internet use, while showing us how to approach the Internet as responsible citizens, not just concerned consumers. Democracy, Sunstein maintains, depends on shared experiences and requires citizens to be exposed to topics and ideas that they would not have chosen in advance. Newspapers and broadcasters helped create a shared culture, but as their role diminishes and the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving. In their place will arise only louder and ever more extreme echoes of our own voices, our own opinions.
In evaluating the consequences of new communications technologies for democracy and free speech, Sunstein argues the question is not whether to regulate the Net (it's already regulated), but how; proves that freedom of speech is not an absolute; and underscores the enormous potential of the Internet to promote freedom as well as its potential to promote "cybercascades" of like-minded opinions that foster and enflame hate groups. The book ends by suggesting a range of potential reforms to correct current misconceptions and to improve deliberative democracy and the health of the American republic.
Chat with Cass Sunstein in a Message Forum hosted beginning April 1, 2001.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 29, 2001
6 people are currently reading
188 people want to read
About the author
Cass R. Sunstein
167 books732 followersCass R. Sunstein is an American legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics, who currently is the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration. For 27 years, Sunstein taught at the University of Chicago Law School, where he continues to teach as the Harry Kalven Visiting Professor. Sunstein is currently Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he is on leave while working in the Obama administration.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 13, 2022
I bought this book when it came out (dear God -- 20 years ago?) thinking I might use it in a class I planned to teach; the class got scuttled and I never got around to reading it, but plucked it off a shelf recently out of curiosity. Sunstein makes an excellent and chillingly accurate case for the power the internet has to silo political speech in ideological echo chambers and, in so doing, radically threaten democratic society by striking at it's foundation -- informed conversation among a range of participants. When Sunstein sticks to this he's brilliant and -- not persuasive, exactly, since we have the benefit of hindsight, so let's say visionary; that's even more striking when you remember that he's making his argument in the infancy of social media -- before Facebook, before Twitter, before YouTube, before even MySpace, when internet conversation was largely confined to bulletin boards and Usenet groups.
Where he falls down, however, is in his prescription. It's exactly what you would expect from a technocratic liberal who later worked in the Obama White House (and married Obama National Security Advisor/Biden USAID Director Samantha Powell): an overly optimistic faith in good speech driving out bad, coupled with naïve calls for regulations reminiscent of those the FCC applied to broadcasting in the pre-Reagan era. It may be very unfair to ding him for this naiveté, given how spot on much of what he is saying is; but we can only read this in the present, and in the present his prescription is so obviously politically impossibly, philosophically dubious, and inadequate to the crisis at hand that it made me want to hurl an otherwise good book across the room in frustration. There's a dire need for a current meditation on these issues by someone this thoughtful; if Sunstein has a Republic.com 2.0 in him, I'd read it.
Where he falls down, however, is in his prescription. It's exactly what you would expect from a technocratic liberal who later worked in the Obama White House (and married Obama National Security Advisor/Biden USAID Director Samantha Powell): an overly optimistic faith in good speech driving out bad, coupled with naïve calls for regulations reminiscent of those the FCC applied to broadcasting in the pre-Reagan era. It may be very unfair to ding him for this naiveté, given how spot on much of what he is saying is; but we can only read this in the present, and in the present his prescription is so obviously politically impossibly, philosophically dubious, and inadequate to the crisis at hand that it made me want to hurl an otherwise good book across the room in frustration. There's a dire need for a current meditation on these issues by someone this thoughtful; if Sunstein has a Republic.com 2.0 in him, I'd read it.
March 25, 2012
An extremely thoughtful and accessible consideration of the Internet's possible effects on the life of deliberative democracy, and a consequent plea for greater exposure to unplanned encounters (with people, ideas, etc.) and to a variety of viewpoints on any given issue.
x-not-for-me
September 15, 2025Too dated. As another reviewer says, a new edition w/ serious updating might be worthwhile.
May 15, 2010
Also Posted at http://nicodemist.wordpress.com/2010/...
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 always been in the pay of the government and, 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.
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 always been in the pay of the government and, 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.
June 18, 2007
I had to read this one for school, and while it was kind of interesting, I don't think it gave me any new insights or informed me of anything. I do like his point about how people use the internet to filter their relationship with reality. Is that why we're all on goodreads instead of actually having a book club IRL?
April 21, 2013
Ganz interessante Grundthese: Was passiert mit der Demokratie, wenn wir uns über Filter etc. immer gezielter nur die Nachrichten raussuchen und lesen, die uns in der eigenen Meinung bestätigen? Die allerdings übermäßig aufgeplustert und Lösungsvorschläge fehlen auch.
January 1, 2012
This book did not interest me. It is about filtering and the internet.
June 19, 2015
Non male, ma l'ho letto solo per l'esame imminente.
[Ti prego Dio, fammi prendere un buon voto in questo penultimo esame].
[Ti prego Dio, fammi prendere un buon voto in questo penultimo esame].
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews