Amazon.co.uk Review
The centre does not hold. The rise of customisable media has mainstream thinkers, used to a near-monopoly on attention, running scared. Legal scholar Cass Sunstein makes the case for a more robust information diet from a slightly left of centre point of view in
republic.com. Building on the ideas of the Technorealist movement, Sunstein focuses on the increasing volume of extremist voices as people choose to read or listen to only those points of view they already share. Though it seems that he occasionally overstates his case--it seems unlikely that we'll ever really be able to filter every unwanted or unexpected opinion--he does score some solid blows against the current, more or less laissez-faire system. His prose is clear and accessible, exactly the kind of reasoned discourse he values and wants to preserve. His proposed programme of government-sponsored and mandated public media spaces probably won't rouse many readers to wholehearted endorsement, but the suggestion that we have problems brewing ought to be enough to spur further thought. Since everyone from the American Nazi Party to the Zapatistas has found a stronger voice via the Internet, it's little wonder that we're starting to hear concerned prophets warning of a new Babel. Whether we can--or should--do anything beforehand is an open question;
Republic.com makes a strong and pointed case against the status quo.
--Rob Lightner
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Sunstein brings a thoughtful perspective to the unanticipated problems of a world in which an increasing amount of information is transmitted over the Internet... [He] writes in a clear and inviting style that brings wisdom to even the most obvious of points... Republic.Com raises important and troubling questions about the effects of the Internet on a democratic society. Sunstein's assessment is persuasive... Though Sustein hardly has all the answers, he performs an important service in casting a skeptical light on a medium more often seen as a utopian technology than as a potentially corrosive force. -- Stephen Labaton New York Times Book Review If Type-A cybermedia moguls, desperate to pre-identify and serve consumer choices, spent a sliver of their time pondering Sunstein, we'd all be better off. -- Carlin Romano Philadelphia Inquirer An enormously intelligent, accessible, and rewarding book. Log on. ginia Quarterly Review Complex and thoughtful ... a slim, sleek volume perfectly designed to appeal to Internet-era attention spans ... Publishers Weekly To Sunstein, the First Amendment was not only about banning censorship; it was also about getting people to talk with one another ... He fears that the Internet is contributing to a fragmentation of public discourse that is undermining democracy. For democracy to work, Sunstein says, it's important that citizens be exposed to many alternative viewpoints, occasionally encountering information that is unexpected or even jarring. -- Peter Coy BusinessWeek A succinct, eminently sensible little book... [Sunstein's] book deserves a wide audience and precisely the kind of open-minded, thoughtful consideration that he would like to nurture on the Internet. -- Merle Rubin The Christian Science Moniter Cass Sunstein sounds a timely warning in this concise, sophisticated account of the rise of the internet culture. He argues that it is our very ability to wrap ourselves in our own tastes, views, and prejudices with the aid of technology that constitutes a real threat to the traditional democratic values. -- Peter Aspden Financial Times [Sunstein] insists that we need to think more carefully about how to use the Internet as responsible citizens, rather than as mere consumers... Democracy, rather than pure populism, requires that we experience unplanned encounters with opposing views. -- Steven Poole The Guardian Sunstein persuasively warns that the Internet's capacity to serve up only what users order in advance could debilitate the clash of ideas critical to informed self-government ... We have always been able to seek out those who share our assumptions and ignore ideas we don't like. But the Internet's ability to filter information instantaneously makes the sifting process so much more effective that we are in danger of transforming ourselves into a society of egocentric techno-tribalists, Sunstein warns. -- Paul M. Barrett The Washington Monthly Sunstein's thoughtful plea is that the virtues and necessities of shared experience, exposure to divergent views, and democratic political deliberation not get lost amid the triumphalism of the information age. Foreign Affairs In the world of imperfect filtering, we stumble over ideas and views we would never seek out and with which we may violently disagree. But at least we encounter them; and these encounters are central to the US model of democracy. They are also central to freedom of speech, Sunstein argues. -- Patti Waldmeir Financial Times Sunstein has written a book that is thought-provoking in the most literal sense. It is a book less interested in giving answers than in raising questions, particularly about the rosy predictions for cyberspace. -- James H. Johnston Legal Times The phrase 'Information Age' doesn't really describe us but our systems and machines. That tells us a lot about ourselves... [For Sunstein] 'information' primarily means democratic, political speech and the knowledge required for rational democratic deliberation on important public issues. Sunstein is worried that technologies of the Information Age, especially the Internet, are allowing us to escape and ignore this kind of information. -- Gary Chapman Washington Post Book World Republic.com presents a novel and compelling argument, simply executed but eloquently turned, that marks it as an important book in the continuing debate over the press's role in democratic politics. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics
