In its simplest terms, my book Cybering Democracy explores whether the Internet can contribute in practical ways to promoting democracy. I do not, however, provide a simple answer. Instead, I suggest that this question is deceptively simple. Other commentators have approached the question as if what we mean by the Internet or by democracy is obvious. But "democracy" isn't just about voting, and the "Internet" isn't just another means of distributing porn.
I argue that space is the linchpin to understanding how democracy and the Internet intersect. Democracy is itself a concept heavily imbued with ideas about political spaces. The Internet, in the meantime, is also a social and political space but unlike any human beings have hitherto experienced. In fact, it is best understood as a kind of other space (a heterotopia) that can only be understood in relation to the spaces we know better (or rather, that we think we know better).
Given the actual complexity of the initial question posed, this study raises and explores the following related issues:
- How space is political and how politics is spatial
- The role of the body in politics and citizenship
- Whether theorists of direct democracy have adequately shown why it matters if citizens can meet face to face
- The ambivalent role of anonymity and invisibility in (1) protecting individual liberty and (2) democracy and collective action
- Precisely how cyberspace is spatial and whether it can contribute to a new theory and practice of democracy
- The role of space in social change
- The history and architecture of the Internet and characteristics of its online ethics and communities
