Q: What, in your opinion, would be the best way to use cyberspace to further your ultimate goals?
A: As boohab, provocateur and gadfly, there isn't much new left to do. I would merely be cycling the same materials for newbies. I am satisfied that I have scoped out the pulse of America, and I have every reason to believe that those who are cyberpresent are the more influential of Americans. I've proven to myself that you can have very meaningful dialog between the races which can resolve differences between individuals and really grapple with the most complex of all racial issues in a way that is unprecedented and unrivaled by traditional media. However, I believe that the limits of anti-racist activism, indeed any type of activism in cyberspace are constrained by the way cyberspace is currently structured. Chat rooms encourage chat. Discussion groups encourage discussion. What is required of us as citizens to resolve the more pressing issues of race in society is neither chat nor discussion, although they are healthy and necessary. What is needed is to engage the cyberpresent chatting classes in real political change. And that requires something a bit more involved than what exists today.
A lot of people debate the pros and cons of 'direct representation', and I believe that the new media will be made to accommodate deliberative processes which can change the way citizens consent to be governed. While we have projects like vote-smart, coin-op congress and Thomas to give us a better insight as to what goes on in our official deliberative bodies, it's all read-only. We have yet to close that circle and be able to *write* back. I am a firm believer that Harris and Nielsen are going to eventually be disintermediated. Interest groups will represent themselves from the bottom up on the web, and politicians will have to listen. The next generation of Internet tools will have to begin to flesh out and refine that process.
People who follow other political issues on the net as I have followed race, will be drawn into any process which will allow them to abstract and quantify the broad set of opinions and reasoning they have seen, without a sacrifice of detail. These people have the potential to shape the future of democracy in this country.