debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
The need for a visual inspection of human activity became necessary in the eighteenth century: Jeremy Bentham contributed to this concept with his idea of Panopticon (1791), which he was working on in the period of the French revolution: the Panopticon, as the name suggests, is a place where everything is visible, where everything can [...]
We know information technologies are broadening the channels of political participation (Obama’s election in 2008, the Arab Spring, the Spanish Indignados movement, Occupy Wall Street, etc.). What is less apparent —and I would argue even more consequential— is the fact they are restructuring the economic fabric of societies —particularly in advanced economies. The political effects [...]
Here’s the good news. The economic pie is growing again. Growth in the 4th quarter last year hit 3 percent on an annualized rate. That’s respectable – although still way too slow to get us back on track given how far we plunged. Here’s the bad news. The share of that growth going to American workers [...]
English is the dominant language of the Internet, business, and world trade. Do we need another? This column applies an economist’s rationale to the question. “I don’t speak English. Kurdish I speak, and Turkish, and gypsy language. But I don’t speak barbarian languages.” “Barbarian languages?” “English! German! Ya! French! All the barbarian”. —Yasar Kemal, a [...]
Not long ago, I read Daniel Ellsberg’s[1] autobiography, Secrets, and also watched the film, The Most Dangerous Man in America. A striking feature of the book was that Ellsberg’s biggest problem in leaking the Pentagon Papers was the logistical difficulty of making 20 or so copies of a 7000 page cache of documents. It took him and [...]
One is tempted to say: social inventions or re-inventions (as the newly invented/discovered possibility of restoring to the city square the ancient role of the agora on which rules and rulers were made and unmade) tend to spread “as forest fire”. One would say that, if not for the fact that globalization has finally invalidated [...]
Two apparently unconnected items of news appeared on the same day, 19 June – though one can be forgiven overlooking their appearance… As any news, they arrived floating in an “information tsunami” – just two tiny drops in a flood of news meant/hoped to do the job of enlightening and clarifying while serving that of [...]
The recent blog-campaign against David Held once more brings into focus an increasingly grave and urgent issue that is by no means confined to that case. Reviewing in the NYT of 3 January a collection of studies edited by Marta Nussbaum and Saul Levmore and published under the title The Offensive Internet, Stanley Fish follows [...]
Whilst a lot of hyperbole is spoken with regards to online campaigning we shouldn’t underestimate its importance. Online campaigning is useful because it can facilitate a more bottom up and consultative process than traditional campaigning. It can also join geographically distant groups relatively cheaply. For that reason a well organised online campaign movement for the [...]
Social democratic parties have had a difficult time adjusting to the internet age. They have severe difficulties in understanding in what way – positive and negative – online technologies penetrate people’s lives. The age structure of parties is an additional obstacle as different generations tend to use the internet differently. When parties have dealt with [...]
Margot Wallstrom posted an interesting video on politics in the internet age: By the way, I have never comes across this Big Think website before. Looks quite interesting…
It might well be that e-government will get an additional meaning very soon. If this happens the word would not just describe how we use technology for government purposes but also how we govern technology. There are currently issues cropping up all over Europe and the traditional theoretical foundations of political parties do not provide [...]
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