What is the fate of the parliaments in the information and communication? Some years ago, when he began the debate on electronic democracy, it seemed that new technologies have led to the gradual disappearance of representative democracy, replaced by more and more common forms of democracy Direct. In the new electronic agora citizens could always take the word and decide on everything.
The memory of ancient Athens and the model of the town meetings of New England appeared to be the new form of democracy, with a mixture of old and new that would gradually erased the role of parliaments. Today these assumptions are far away, and electronic democracy going in different directions from those of a brutal and deceptive simplification of political systems. But this does not mean that parliaments can overlook some great new information and communication technologies, which have a profound effect on their role and how they structure their relationship with society. We are not faced with simple technical means, but a powerful force, technology as a whole, which is radically transforming our society.
We are moving on a global scale, from a technological equilibrium to another. The first great task of parliaments, today, is therefore to take this moment to make timely choices necessary for all the smart technologies will be resolved in an overall strengthening of democracy.
became clear some lines of analysis and intervention, which can be summarized as follows:
- to ensure that new technologies lead to a concentration instead of a spread of social and political power;
- to ensure that new technologies become established as a form of populism in our time, with a continuous sliding into a plebiscite democracy.
-avoid that we are increasingly faced with control technologies rather than technologies of freedom;
- preventing new inequalities in addition to those existing
- to avoid the great potential creative use of new technologies does not lead to a diffusion of knowledge, but insidious forms of privatization.
Pure digital age, therefore, has its sins, seven as tradition, and were listed as: 1) inequality, 2) commercial exploitation and abuse information, and 3) the risks to privacy, 4) disintegration of communities; 5) instant plebiscites and dissolution of democracy, 6 ) tyranny of those who control access; 7) loss of value of public service and social responsibility. There are, however, the virtues, first and foremost the great opportunity to give voice to an increasingly large number of individual and collective subjects, to produce and share knowledge, so that now many believe that the definition that best describes our present and a future closer, is just that of "knowledge society".
Beyond the images and metaphors, parliaments are not called to choose between good and evil. Faced with a complex reality, in which live the knowledge society and risk society, parliaments are not being asked to choose between good and evil. They must reaffirm their historic and unique role as guardians of freedom and equality.
references are not rhetorical. The technology provides us with many promises.
democracy offers the means to combat the declining efficiency, and up to propose a regeneration. But if we look at the real world, trends in act, we risk to meet increasingly use technology that makes extensive and continuous monitoring of citizens. Must react to these trends, not only to escape to a kind of institutional schizophrenia that leads to the construction of a world divided between the hopes of freedom and the danger of surveillance. And 'necessary, especially realistically considering the social dynamics, beginning with those which could produce new inequalities.
This problem is usually referred to as digital divide, and indeed the use of technology, the Internet first, produces social stratification, the emergence of new classes of haves and have nots, the haves and its have-nots with regard to the fundamental resource of information. But the most reliable research on the digital divide, highlight the gap between developed and less developed countries as regards Internet access, can not be examined by referring mainly to differences in income. Although still very deep, in fact, the distances on the Internet tend to fall faster than those related to wealth.
This means that the factors of influence are not so much economic, but rather the social and cultural rights.
Knowledge is a word that sums up the access to the sources, to develop the material collected, disseminate information freely. Already in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights United Nations has affirmed the right of everyone to freedom of opinion and expression "and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of Frontiers. Today this right is threatened by the claim of many states to control the Internet, for the exercise of real power of censure, for convictions of perpetrators of those particular communications network that are blogs.
This situation can not be ignored, especially as some large companies - Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Vodafone - Announced by the end of the publication of a "Charter" to protect freedom of expression on the Internet. Parliaments can not accept that the guarantee of free speech, that the U.S. wanted to entrust their First Amendment of the Constitution, become the stuff of which deal only with individuals, which obviously will only offer guarantees compatible with their interests.
Internet is the largest public space that humanity has known, where he is also making a great redistribution of power. A place where everyone can speak, acquire knowledge, generate ideas and not just information, to exercise the right to criticize, discuss, participate in the common life, and thus build a different world to which all citizens can equally be said.
But all this may become more difficult, if not impossible, if knowledge is closed in pens owners without considering the very novelty of the situation we face and that requires looking at knowledge as the most important assets common.
The question of the commons is essential. New words travel the world - open source, free software, no copyright - giving the sense of a change of epoch. Today, the conflict between ownership interests and collective interests can be found not only around scarce resources, in view increasing dramatically as water scarce. In the global context we see a continuous creation of new goods, knowledge, first of all with respect to which the shortage is not the result of natural data, but of deliberate policies, misuse of the patent and copyright, which are leading to a movement of "closure" similar to that in England, led to the enclosure of the commons, the first freely available. This artificial scarcity, created, and threatens to deprive millions of people with extraordinary opportunities for personal growth and collective political participation.
The challenge for parliaments is not only about the need to find new balance between logic and logical properties of common goods. Invests the same way of understanding citizenship. The real novelty of democratic information and communication technologies, in fact, is not to give the public the misleading illusion of participating in major decisions through electronic referendums. It consists in the power given to each and everyone to use the extraordinary wealth of material made available for technology to develop proposals to control the ways in which power is exercised, to organize society. With this wide world - in which democracy is manifested in a "live", but no overlap with the "representative" - \u200b\u200bthe parliament must find new forms communication, through consultations, informal networking of proposals on which it urges the citizens' opinion, procedures to allow the parliament to extend in proposals drawn up by groups to whom, then, are also recognized the possibility of intervention in the legislative process.
The rigid opposition between representative democracy and direct democracy may well be exceeded, and the same parliamentary democracy would receive new legitimacy from its stand as a constant partner of the company.
In this context, parliaments must in particular rule that needs to fight terrorism and crime and the demands of economic system will lead to the creation of a surveillance society, the selection and control, altering the democratic character of political systems which Parliaments are the first and essential guarantors.
Just technologies, with their apparent neutrality, have strengthened the push towards the creation of huge collections of personal data.
policy is delegating to the technical management of the different aspects of society, forgetting, for example, a principle clearly stated in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In this rule is permitted to limit rights for various purposes, including security national law, provided, however, that it measures compatible with the characteristics of a democratic society. Parliaments should exercise this function with the utmost rigor of control, without delegating it to other state bodies, be it constitutional courts. Only thus can prevent the transformation of citizens into suspects, and prevent, with the argument of the defense of democracy, the democracy is being lost.
This is the speech Stefano Rodota held at Montecitorio for the opening of the International Conference of the Interparliamentary Union (March 6, 2007)
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