For a brief moment in 2011, standing among thousands of people occupying Syntagma, the central square in Athens, it looked as though social media would change the world. A row of laptops set up next to the subway entrance became the beating heart of an anti-austerity movement that promised to go well beyond simple protest politics, up to perhaps reshaping the political culture of a stale Greek parliament.
From Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring and the streets of Europe, a demand for such new politics and more democracy made itself known to the wider world through tweets and Facebook posts. Truly it appeared that if you gave people the tools to connect and actually meet each other in the digital commons, a demand for progress and change would arise almost naturally.
It’s strange to think about those days now. Regardless of ones political leanings, the breakdown in communication, civility and nuance are in ample evidence. These same tools and technologies, once brandished as weapons of democracy and progress in the face of tyranny, now appear almost sinister. And they’re only the more visible end of a huge wave of change, that includes automation and self-driving cars, which will drastically change the way we work and live. In the end, the question is no longer if technological advances will reshape democracy. The real question is if democracy can survive these changes at all.
In a journey that started with his debut The Dark Net, Jamie Bartlett — of this parish and the think-tank Demos, where he has been writing on these issues for years — took us through the hidden wonders and horrors of the fringe communities active in the Dark (and Open) Web, before following their graduation to IRL politics with The Radicals (the title of his second book).
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in