Computers as Communication: The Rise of Digital Democracy

Computers as Communication: The Rise of Digital Democracy

The words of Licklider and Taylor, quoted above, proved to be prophetic in the three decades since their publication, as computers have become an important means of communication for hundreds of millions of people across the world. Individuals are able to exchange information effectively through computer networks like the Internet, connecting with other people at a great distance. Computers were not originally perceived to be communication tools. The early use of computers was limited to number-crunching and other repetitive data-handling tasks. The potential of computers for human communication, and thus for digital democracy, however, has been realized most fully only in the 1990s with the rapid diffusion of use of the Internet.

How did computers change from number-crunching devices to become communication media? This chapter traces a history of how the perception of the computer in the 1960s underwent a crucial transition. Abundant funding, certain key institutions, and several visionary individuals played an important role in this development. One of the most important factors was the vision of computing-as-communication that was held by key individuals like J.C.R. Licklider, who guided computer development in the 1960s. But this dramatic change, from number-crunching devices to communication channels, in how we use computers moved slowly until the 1990s. Then a rapid spread of the Internet occurred.

As interactive forms of electronic communication became widespread, their potential uses for digital democracy evolved through a series of specific applications, such as the Berkeley Community Memory Project, the Public Electronic Network (PEN) in Santa Monica, CA; the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) in Blacksburg, VA; and the La Plaza Telecommunity in Taos, NM. These community-based projects in digital democracy are analysed in this chapter. [Page 11]However, the potential of the Internet and the World Wide Web for participatory politics has not yet been fully realized.