The success of platforms such as 38 Degrees shows how the free association of individuals on the internet can give rise to mass participation in lobbying, petitions and tangible change in the real world, as well as igniting the enthusiasm of huge groups of people for causes and ideas frequently overlooked and ignored in mainstream discourse.
In a social order increasingly devoid of mass action, communication, shows of popular unity or political will, those looking to the internet see a means of reviving democratic ideals lost in an age of social atomization, rampant individualism and the commercial domination of public space.
However if we consider the innovative potential of millions of diverse and creative people with the means of participation at their fingertips, petitions, protest or lobbying groups begin to appear actually rather unambitious.
Global initiatives raising money for good causes through crowdfunding -ensuring those with a desire to work for the common good of humanity aren't financially restrained from doing so- are doing exactly what a Government should do, putting money and resources to use where they are most needed to alleviate hunger, poverty, ignorance and human suffering, but in a superior way which is to say directly, anyone who experiences a lack or observes a need can immediately and independently publicize it and appeal to the human instincts of potentially huge global audiences.
You will notice that real world societies do not treat such examples of lack, poverty and degradation in the same way, sure isolated acts of kindness take place, but they are few and insignificant enough to make no difference whatsoever.
Things were a little different in the past when wealthier inhabitants of regions still felt a degree of communal responsibility, enjoying the freedom, time and concentration of wealth to fund philanthropic initiatives such as Bourneville and New Lanark among other model villages. [1]
It was exposure to the new ideas of Utopian Socialism, the rational application of religious ideals, and the optimistic belief that a new world of peace and prosperity could infact be obtained in this life which served as a catalyst for the great social reformers of the 19th and early 20th century. All information available to us today but apparently shrouded and incomprehensible to the passive voyeurs of the information age.
Today those with a desire to cooperate to improve humanities collective lot are still in a minority, a situation requiring a cultural shift that the Internet as it is increasingly colonized by the brutish banalities of the real world and vapid consumerist culture, becomes less and less able to effect, and which politics and the media appear never to have been able to.
Representing the people as helpless beneath the heel of speculators, profiteers and as slaves to their own self interests, the public's only established means of securing the general interests of all; the Government in their myopia and pandering sycophancy to financial interests, seem more and more to serve only as an obstacle to people responding to and improving the general conditions of their society.
By refusing to alleviate social and individual alienation and the sale of one's labour as a commodity, encouraging dependence on money rather than facilitating freedom from it; the Goverment in allowing the general population to be treated as a prize dairy cow and milked for all they're worth, is complicit in diverting human ingenuity and industry away from the immediate problems which demand our attention, towards the dead end of self absorption, conformity and self obsession that is destroying one of our last free spaces.
Rather than co-opting and exploiting the Internet for their own ends;
politics, media and the real world more generally should learn from the
horizontal nature of large social media networks, digital public
platforms, independent blogs and obviously the internet more generally, by considering the freedom, diversity, creative & democratic potential inherent to them but sorely lacking in the real world.
More or less everybody now
has access to the information, software, hardware and means of producing
and publishing, even marketing whatever they like, whether artistic,
musical, nonsensical, intellectual or materially useful, everybody has
the ability to reach the kind of large audiences formerly reserved for
television and print media outlets and those able to procure it's use.
Of course this has not gone unnoticed by the media and political establishment, not content with telling us what to think, care about, do, buy and
support all day everyday in the real world; exactly where all our
problems reside and stem from-- the agents of mainstream mediocrity
have ventured forth with their university diplomas, media careers and
dedicated followings to colonize, homogenize and reproduce the real
world's flaws in our newest public space; the digital commons, using
their mundane doctrines in order to distract us all from the project of
self realization, autonomous actions, unrestrained artistic creation and
borderless, unmediated communication.
In fact it can be worse, now causes utterly disdained in the real world, by the magic of film making, PR and exclusively favourable self promotion; through the freedom of the internet can grow into large potential fifth column's existing subterraneously in modern Democratic societies.
Anti-Semitic, conspiracy theorists, neo-fascism, neo-nazi, white supremacist, terroristic, misogynist and backwards groups of all kinds, use their particular representations of the real world to enthrall and captivate audiences who are primed for passive consumption online.
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[1]
In 1893, George Cadbury bought 120 acres (0.5 km²) of land and planned, at his own expense, a model village which would 'alleviate the evils of modern, more cramped living conditions'. The Cadburys began to develop their factory in the new suburb. Loyal and
hard-working workers were treated with great respect and relatively
high wages and good working conditions; Cadbury also pioneered pension schemes, joint works committees and a full staff medical service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournville
New Lanark, with its social and welfare programmes, epitomised Robert Owen's utopian socialist principles. In Owen's time some 2,500 people lived at New Lanark, many from the poorhouses of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Although not the grimmest of mills by far, Owen found the conditions
unsatisfactory and resolved to improve the workers' lot. He paid
particular attention to the needs of the 500 or so children living in
the village and
working at the mills, and opened the first infants' school in Britain in 1817, although the previous year he had completed the Institute for the Formation of Character. The mills thrived commercially, but Owen's partners were unhappy at
the extra expense incurred by his welfare programmes. Unwilling to allow
the mills to revert to the old ways of operating, Owen bought out his
partners. In 1813 the Board forced an auction, hoping to obtain the town
and mills at a low price but Owen and a new board (including the
economist Jeremy Bentham) that was sympathetic to his reforming ideas won out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Lanark
