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Paradoxical partners: Electronic communication and electronic democracy

A cultural fascination with the accelerated immediacy of interactive Internet technologies be it euphoric or cataclysmic predictably accompanies the transition to a mysterious new millennium. Rapid-fire chat and conversation outlets are prevalent in quantity (albeit not in quality) with new interactive applications, such as ICQ, Third Wave, Gooey, Yahoo! Chat and new forms of collaborative groupware, competing for a share of the seemingly insatiable market for interaction. E-mail is, without a doubt, the 'killer app'. The potential for an increase in interpersonal interaction, what has been called 'the ecstasy of communication', is responsible for the Internet's exponential growth and attractiveness as an entertainment medium. The logical but false conclusion is that this communications revolution will profoundly strengthen the fabric of political culture in wired societies. Despite the explosion of outlets for communication, there is in fact no noticeable improvement of the democratic quality of political institutions. Traditionally, free communication is integral to the flourishing of a robust civil society, where conflict is managed through conversation, rather than violence, and free communication enables responsible citizens to participate vocally in their own governance. In the nineteenth century Alexis de Tocqueville marvelled at the din of democracy he encountered on his travels in America. He wrote: