Democracy in Question? - How can we structure digital spaces more democratically?

How can we structure digital spaces more democratically?

07/15/21 • 25 min

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Digital technologies have changed and are changing our world. But the euphoria about these technologies not only improving connectivity, but creating a global public sphere have given way to caution about their impact. With the increasing monopolization of digital infrastructure and accumulation of power by a few giant Big Tech companies, there is increasing concern over its impact on our freedoms, as well as the ways in which it shapes how we live and perceive the world. In this episode, Evgeny Morozov (founder of the content recommendation website The Syllabus) helps us understand how we can structure digital spaces more democratically, while harvesting the transformational potential of these technologies.

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• The Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: IWM

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Excellence Chair and Soft Authoritarianism Research Group in Bremen: WOC

• The Podcast Company: Earshot Strategies

Follow us on social media!

• Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: @IWM_Vienna

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

• Our guest Evgeny Morovoz: @evgenymorozov

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Digital Socialism? The Calculation Debate in the Age of Big Data. (2019).

• To Save Everything, Click Here. (2014).

GLOSSARY

What is Davos?

(00:07:00 or p. 5 in the transcript)

Davos is a town in the Swiss Alps which is best known for hosting the annual World Economic Forum. To learn more about the World Economic Forum, click here.

Who are Larry Page and Sergey Brin?

(00:19:30 or p. 13 in the transcript)

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the founders of Google. They met in 1995 at Stanford University. In this part of the episode our guest Evgeny Morozov is referencing Google’s origin story. To learn more about Google’s history click here.

What is Mountain View?

(00:19:30 or p. 13 in the transcript)

Mountain View is the birthplace of Silicon Valley and is the location of many of the world's largest technology companies, including Google and Alphabet Inc., Mozilla Foundation, Intuit, NASA Ames research center, and major headquarter offices for Microsoft, Symantec, 23andMe, LinkedIn, Samsung, and Synopsys. Source.

Who is Edward Snowden?

(00:22:30 or p. 15 in the transcript)

Edward Snowden is the whistleblower who revealed the NSA’s mass surveillance program in the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history. Learn more about his leak from this 2013 article.

What is AI?

(00:25:00 or p. 16 in the transcript)

AI is short for Artificial Intelligence, a term that describes the ability of computers to perform tasks that are usually associated with intelligent beings. The term also often refers to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans. Click here to learn more.

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Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• The Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: IWM

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Excellence Chair and Soft Authoritarianism Research Group in Bremen: WOC

• The Podcast Company: Earshot Strategies

Follow us on social media!

• Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: @IWM_Vienna

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

• Our guest Evgeny Morovoz: @evgenymorozov

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Digital Socialism? The Calculation Debate in the Age of Big Data. (2019).

• To Save Everything, Click Here. (2014).

GLOSSARY

What is Davos?

(00:07:00 or p. 5 in the transcript)

Davos is a town in the Swiss Alps which is best known for hosting the annual World Economic Forum. To learn more about the World Economic Forum, click here.

Who are Larry Page and Sergey Brin?

(00:19:30 or p. 13 in the transcript)

What is Mountain View?

(00:19:30 or p. 13 in the transcript)

Who is Edward Snowden?

(00:22:30 or p. 15 in the transcript)

Edward Snowden is the whistleblower who revealed the NSA’s mass surveillance program in the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history. Learn more about his leak from this 2013 article.

What is AI?

(00:25:00 or p. 16 in the transcript)

Previous Episode

Can democracy survive in Hong Kong?

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The pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong is facing its most severe crisis today. The Chinese government has been tightening its grip over the island to stifle political protest, impose restrictions on freedom of press, and hamper free and fair elections. Activists have been fighting for civil liberties and democratic rights, from the Umbrella Revolution of 2014 to the huge anti-extradition law demonstrations in 2020. Jean-Pierre Cabestan (Hong Kong Baptist University) explores the events leading up to the backlash against civic activism, the current state of democracy in Hong Kong and its future prospects.

Since the recording of this episode, the Apple Daily has been forced to close. It was the last print news outlet openly critical of the Chinese government.

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• The Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: IWM

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Excellence Chair and Soft Authoritarianism Research Group in Bremen: WOC

• The Podcast Company: Earshot Strategies

Follow us on social media!

• Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: @IWM_Vienna

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• China Tomorrow: Democracy or Dictatorship? (2019).

• Hong Kong: The Second Handover (2020).

GLOSSARY

What happened to Apple Daily News?

(00:01:30 or p. 1 in the transcript)

To learn more about the events leading up to the newspaper’s closure click here.

What was the Umbrella Revolution?

(00:01:30 or p. 1 in the transcript)

On September 26, 2014, Hong Kong students led a strike against the government, demanding change after recent reforms to their election system. The changes would restrict who would be allowed to run for Chief Executive, effectively allowing only pro-China candidates. The protests escalated as time went on, resulting in nearly 100,000 people protesting at any given moment, and nearly two months of student occupation of city centers. Source.

What are the Tiananmen Square commemorations?

(00:01:30 or p. 2 in the transcript)

The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre was a deadly crackdown by Chinese soldiers on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing with estimates of the dead varying from a few hundred to several thousand. Macau and Hong Kong are the only places in China where people can commemorate the anniversary of the massacre. However, in 2020 and now in 2021, authorities in Hong Kong banned an annual vigil for the event, citing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic for the restrictions. The 2021 anniversary was the first since a new controversial security law was approved, aimed at ending the city's pro-democracy movement and criminalizing dissent. Learn more. To learn more about the massacre itself, click here.

Who are Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping?

(00:10:00 or p. 6 and 00:17:15 or p. 11 in the transcript)

Deng Xiaoping was a Chinese revolutionary and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China from December 1978 to November 1989. After Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng gradually rose to supreme power and led China through a series of far-reaching market-economy reforms, earning him the reputation as the "Architect of Modern China.”

Xi Jinping is a Chinese politician and government official who served as vice president of the People’s Republic of China (2008–13), general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (2012– ), and president of China (2013– ).

Next Episode

When and how is power visible in politics?

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Power is a crucial, if essentially contested, concept. Its nature and exercise in democratic politics are not always easily grasped. Understanding who holds power, how it is used, and the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed, is critical in any political system. Professor Steven Lukes (formerly NYU) helps us figure out how to map power in politics and explains when and how it is visible.

Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:

• The Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: IWM

• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD

• The Excellence Chair and Soft Authoritarianism Research Group in Bremen: WOC

• The Podcast Company: Earshot Strategies

Follow us on social media!

• Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna: @IWM_Vienna

• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentre

Subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Power: A Radical View. (First edition published in 1974; third edition published in 2021).

• Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work. A Historical and Critical Study London. (1975; republished with new preface 1985).

GLOSSARY

Who are Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault?

(00:06:00 or p. 5 in the transcript)

Antonio Gramsci (1891—1937) was an intellectual and politician, and a founder of the Italian Communist Party whose ideas greatly influenced Italian communism. Extracts of Gramsci’s prison writings were published for the first time in the mid-20th century. Many of his propositions became a fundamental part of Western Marxist thought and influenced the post-World War II strategies of communist parties in the West. Source.

Michel Foucault (1926—1984) was a French philosopher and historian, and one of the most influential and controversial scholars of the post-World War II period. Foucault continually sought for a way of understanding the ideas that shape our present not only in terms of the historical function these ideas played, but also by tracing the changes in their function through history. Foucault describes three types of power in his empirical analyses: sovereign power, disciplinary power, and biopower. To learn more about Foucault’s work on power, click here.

Where can I learn more about Shoshana Zuboff’s book “Surveillance Capitalism”?

(00:11:15 or p. 7 in the transcript)

Find a review of the book here. Click here for the book.

Who is Marquis de Condorcet?

(00:12:30 or p. 8 in the transcript)

Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, (1743—1794) was a French philosopher of the Enlightenment and advocate of educational reform and women’s rights. He was one of the major Revolutionary formulators of the ideas of progress, or the indefinite perfectibility of humankind.He died in prison after a period of flight from French Revolutionary authorities. Learn more.

What is Cambridge Analytica?

(00:14:30 or p. 9 in the transcript)

Cambridge Analytica is a data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign, and harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches. It used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box. Learn more.

What is the Chinese model of state capitalism?

(00:20:00 or p. 12 in th...