Intellectual Freedom and Democracy

Technologies of Power (Tehranian)
Technologies of Freedom (Morrisett)

Technologies of Power (Majid Tehranian)
- battle of main media vs. small media

main media is large media networks with large infrastructures, which can be controlled by governments or large corporations (TV, supercomputers, etc)

• agree w/ Marxist idea:  ownership = control
• Example of movie:  Control Room: FOX News, CNN and Al Jazeera networks all have a different message, but are fed by media suppliers in the U.S. military's control / operations room
• Democracies can feed the media with the information they want them to have, paint the picture they would like, and withhold other important information (filtering)

small media is a counter to main media, which is not controlled by large governments or companies- such as underground radio, personal computers, etc

Communication mediums can be used for either democracy or tyranny- can be used to control people or to allow them to express themselves.

Technologies of Freedom (Lloyd Morrisett)

Marx in Das Kapital:  "in changing the technical world, Man changes his own nature"

20th century technology:  newspapers, TV, radio, telephone, etc:  have been 'technologies of freedom' because they make knowledge available, delivered news, expanded our ability to communicate

Our ability to 'use' the technology correlates to our ability to 'get' information

We must be careful in believing all of the information we get as it can influence us (show care in believing / filtering the information to avoid propaganda, etc)

Elections have moved to TV / radio, will move to Internet next (eVoting?)

• security issues
• increased participation in politics?  (e-town hall meetings?)
• demogoguery or democracy accomplished?