Democratic Structures in Cyberspace

49 Reed Hundt, The Internet: From Here to Ubiquity, Speech to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (August, 1997), available online at <http://www.fcc.gov/Speeches/Hundt/spreh742.html>.

50 Id.

51 Fishkin, supra note Error: Reference source not found at 40. See also Jürgen Habermas, A Reply to My Critics, in Habermas: Critical Debates 218-283 (John Thompson & David Held eds., 1982).

52 Unger, supra note Error: Reference source not found at 269. Unger’s proposals for institutional reform are far deeper and broader than the comparatively tame proposal for deliberative polling.

53 Can an almost brand new society have decaying social norms? Can it more easily have such decaying norms if it is not geographically separate from societies which do have decaying norms?

54 This is, obviously, not a concern in real space.

55 Fishkin, supra note Error: Reference source not found at 162.

56 Id.

57 Id.

58 Andrew McLaughlin, Deliberative Polling in Cyberspace, .

59 Although bias in the materials given to participants appears difficult to eliminate.

60 Fishkin, supra note Error: Reference source not found at 168.

61 Id. at 162.

62 See Isbell, supra note Error: Reference source not found. See also McLaughlin, supra note Error: Reference source not found.

63 Fishkin, supra note Error: Reference source not found at 20.

64 Held at the Harvard Law School on Sunday, December 6, 1998.

65 Joseph Lockard, Progress, Politics, Electronic Individualism and the Myth of Virtual Community, in Internet Culture (David Porter ed. 1997).

66 Information Infrastructure Task Force, The National Information Infrastructure: An Agenda for Action, Department of Commerce. Washington, DC (1993).

67 See Fishkin, supra note Error: Reference source not found at 4-5.

68 For a description of an even more “real” future virtual experience, see William J. Mitchell, City of Bits (1995), available online at <http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/City_of_Bits/Electronic_Agora/VoyeurismEngagement.html>. His description therein includes the following, perhaps fantastical (somewhat frightening) scene:

Electronic interaction will become increasingly multimodal, as when videoconferencing combines sound and vision. Robotic effectors combined with audio and video sensors will provide telepresence. Intelligent exoskeletal devices (data gloves, data suits, robotic prostheses, intelligent second skins, and the like) will both sense gestures and serve as touch output devises exerting controlled forces and pressures; you will be able to initiate a business conversation by shaking hands at a distance or say goodnight to a child y transmitting a kiss across continents. … Telemolesters will lurk. Telethugs will reach out and punch someone.

Would such a world be more or less conducive to societal interaction? Certainly, people separated by great distance but brought together by other commonalties (perhaps family ties, personal interests or ethnic similarity) would be able to interact on many more sensory levels than are currently available. On the other hand, is a world of reclusive individuals, alone in real space, enmeshed and entangled in a bizarre computer carapace faintly reminiscent of Darth Vader, really a society, a community?

69 See William Mitchell, supra note Error: Reference source not found at .

70 This group has been using the term “non-geographic gerrymandering” to indicate the formation of new, electronically-based social groups and subsequent power groupings which are not dependent on geography.

71 See Dave Healy, Cyberspace and Place: The Internet as Middle Landscape on the Electronic Frontier, in Internet Culture (David Porter ed., 1997)

72 See Derek Foster, Community and Identity in the Electronic Village, in Internet Culture (David Porter ed., 1997).

73 See Mark Poster, CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere (1995), available online at .

74 See Healy, supra note Error: Reference source not found, for a more in-depth discussion.

75 See id.

76 See Brian A. Connery, IMHO: Authority and Egalitarian Rhetoric in the Virtual Coffeehouse, in Internet Culture (David Porter ed., 1997).

77 See id.

78 See id.

79 See Lee S. Bumgarner, The Great Renaming FAQ, available online at

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