Regards, Norm
---- Begin Forwarded Message
Here is the text of the article in the June 'Governing' Magazine -
a national publication that is especially read by Cities, Counties,
and State government officials.
Reproduced with permission.
Dave Hughes
----------------------------
TELEDEMOCRACY
FOR BETTER OR WORSE
Will the marriage of computers and instant communications bring about
a new, richer public dialogue? Or will it bring an electronic mob into
city hall?
By Christopher R. Conte
SKETCH OF COMPUTER SCREEN WITH THE FOLLOWING
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WELCOME TO THE CITY OF COLORADO SPRINGS CITYLINK
WHO IS THE MESSAGE TO? Mayor Isaac
WHAT IS THE SUBJECT? Your refusal to be interviewed
ENTER TEXT OF MESSAGE.
I am disturbed that you have refused to be
interviewed by a reporter...on the topic of the `Use
of Electronic Bulletin Boards by Government.' ... I
think it both rude and unhelpful to refuse to
express your views on this subject openly.... Either
you are a public official with open views on topics
of official operation in your own city, or you are
not. I would like an answer as to why you can't
bother yourself with serious inquiries on the
subject. You can bet your bottom dollar I have
expressed my views on the same subject.
Dave Hughes
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
It undoubtedly is just one of many messages Colorado Springs Mayor
Robert Isaac receives one February day. But it differs from most in
one important respect: It is posted on the city's electronic
bulletin board, where anybody with a computer and modem can read it.
The reporter, who moments earlier had carelessly let slip that the
mayor had refused to meet with him, is embarrassed. He would have
preferred to fight his battle for access privately. But before he can
object, Dave Hughes, the self-proclaimed "Cursor Cowboy," has fired
the critical missive from his laptop computer to city hall and all
around town. The reporter's private battle is now a public issue.
This is democracy in the information age. To advocates like Hughes,
the marriage of the computer and instant communications promises to
bring citizens unparalleled access to--and influence over--their
government. But skeptics warn that it will bring an electronic mob
into city hall, overwhelming officials with diverse demands and
undermining representative democracy. Some--including such
self-proclaimed visionaries as Alvin and Heidi Toffler, gurus to U.S.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich--have even explored the idea of taking
some aspects of decision making back from elected representatives and
handing them over to citizens armed with computers and telephone
lines.
Whoever is right, it's clear that the crowd is growing at city hall's
gates. By Hughes' count, Colorado Springs has 135 computer bulletin
board systems. On several occasions, they have proven to be quite
effective at mobilizing opinion and swaying government decisions.
Nationwide, politicians as diverse as Gingrich and Vice President Al
Gore extol the information superhighway and its use by government,and
the number of households connected by computer is growing
exponentially. While only 3.5 million households nationwidecurrently
are "online"--that is, linked to the information superhighway by
computer and telephone line--that figure is expected to grow to 25
million, or one-quarter of all U.S. households, by the end of the
century.
Like it or not, government officials soon will have to learn thisnew
form of communication with the public. The question is: Will they tap
it and produce a new and richer public dialogue? Or will they be
overwhelmed by it?
The ease and sheer speed of new communications technologies give the
information superhighway its appeal. But those same qualities provoke
fears among people who see it as a threat to representative democracy.
"Real democracy is slow and deliberative," notes Andrew Blau, director
of the communications policy project for the Benton Foundation, a
Washington, D.C., group that promotes non-commercial uses of the
information superhighway. "It's so easy to imagine a scenario inwhich
technology is used to get instant judgments from people. If it isused
that way, we haven't seen anything yet when it comes to high-tech
lynchings."
Blau contends that that nightmare needn't come true--a view Dave
Hughes readily endorses. A former Army colonel who was chief of staff
at Fort Carson during the early 1970s, Hughes runs a commercial
electronic bulletin board that also provides subscribers a link to the
Internet. He believes that such bulletin boards--essentially computers
where people can send messages and read those that others have
posted--could combine the virtues of the Chautauqua and the New
England town meeting in a modern setting, reviving debate in a public
numbed by sound-byte politics and apathy.
To understand his view, consider what distinguishes the information
superhighway from earlier forms of communication. Computers enable
people to be active participants in debate rather than passive
observers; this can breed a sense of engagement in place of
alienation, advocates contend. Because electronic debates are
conducted in writing, they can be more substantive than face-to-face
confrontations; "Today's issues," says Hughes, "are too complex for
oral debate."
Moreover, since people online can be judged only by the content of
their comments, racial and ethnic distinctions can disappear.
Appearance counts for nothing. People who are shy or who stutter can
blossom. "It's the only real place we have where all prejudices go
away," says Shelley Moses-Reed, the former chairwoman of Colorado
Springs' Telecommunications Policy Advisory Committee.
Because online discussions are more convenient and efficient, they
can be conducted over longer periods of time; people can listen, drop
in and out of the discussion, refine their views, offer rebuttals or
change their minds--all on their own schedule in the comfort of their
own homes. And everybody has a say. "Technology is developing to
liberate people from the mind managers," argues Bruce Chapman,
president of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank.
In extended online discussions, Hughes contends, voices frequently
tend to soften over time and areas of agreement emerge. Even those who
disagree with the outcome tend to accept it more readily if they
believe their views got a fair hearing. "Debate to consensus--that's
what's been missing in our sped-up world," says Hughes.
At least that's the theory. But teledemocracy is no field of dreams;
building the information superhighway won't automatically produce a
democratic revival. Many of Colorado Springs' 320,310 people don't
even know CityLink exists, and some who do know about it lack the
computers or modems needed to reach it. The city doesn't advertise or
otherwise promote the system; on one recent day, a city hall operator
couldn't even give a caller the telephone number for the system. Mayor
Isaac has made no secret of his lack of enthusiasm for communicating
with the public by computer, and only two of the city council's nine
members regularly use the system. Not surprisingly, traffic on the
system is light. On one typical day, just 30 users log in. Their
online discussion, though substantive at times, is uneven and
meandering.
But the political potential of electronic bulletin boards is
formidable. Hughes demonstrated that in 1983, when he used his own
system--named for Roger's Bar, a watering hole in Colorado Springs'
west end where workers from the nearby gold mills used to go to talk
union politics--to fight a city zoning ordinance that would have
clamped down on home-based businesses. The ordinance and proposed
revisions were debated repeatedly on Roger's Bar. Eventually, a
consensus emerged, and the alternative hammered out over the wires
sailed through the city council. "The public hearing was held in the
ROM of a neighborhood computer," Hughes boasts.
If the city hadn't noticed Roger's Bar after that battle, it got a
reminder in 1987, when Wayne Fisher, proprietor of the Whole Earth
Botanical Gardens shop, was elected to the city council on the
strength of a campaign conducted almost exclusively on Hughes'
computer bulletin board. "If I hadn't been on the bulletin board, I
wouldn't have been elected," says Fisher, who defeated a better-known
and better-financed opponent despite spending just $2,000 on newspaper
advertising and engaging in virtually no door-to-door campaigning.
Fisher prodded the city to establish its own bulletin board,
initially to facilitate communication between city staff and council
members. Then came an explosion. Fisher learned that Mayor Isaac, who
had opposed establishing the computer system even though he used
electronic mail himself to communicate with the U.S. Conference of
Mayors, was reading council members' supposedly private e-mail.
CityLink was shut down for two years while the city sought to sort out
its policies on electronic communications. But the damage lasts to
this day. "The e-mail flap pretty much soured the council on using the
system," says Rich Laden, a reporter for the Colorado Springs Gazette
Telegraph.
Nowadays, the Colorado Springs bulletin boards' influence seems
largely confined to areas where their own self-interest is at stake.
Last year, for instance, they successfully rallied against a proposed
ordinance that would have held them responsible for any computer
harassment conducted over their systems. The city drafted the
ordinance after two city youths, using a stolen computer password, put
out an obscene message on a nationwide computer bulletin board
inviting people to call an unwitting victim. After a heated online
discussion that literally spanned the globe--one participant commented
from Turkey--the ordinance was rewritten to exempt system operators
from responsibility for improper use of their systems.
"The bulletin boards were a very effective means to get a lot of
information into my office," says City Attorney James Colvin. "There
were a lot more participants in the discussion than usual, and a
consensus developed among all those who were involved."
But other city officials are less generous. "In this city of over
300,000 people, there are just 250 active users [of CityLink]," says
Jacques Perdue, the city's information systems manager. "We don't
believe that is going to give as much public feedback as when a
council person holds a public hearing at a shopping center."
Perdue says the city gets much more bang out of City Source, a
telephone system in which callers can receive any of 200 recorded
messages on everything from Dutch elm disease problems to information
on exhibits at the popular Pioneer's Museum. And he says the city is
exploring the idea of installing kiosks in public places to provide
information, and possibly even to enable people to pay their city
utility bills or renew drivers' licenses. "As city government, we're
saying to the citizens, `Don't come to us, we'll come to you,'" he
explains.
But in those cases, the communication is essentially one-way. Neither
City Source nor kiosks would give citizens an unbridled opportunityto
initiate discussion or talk back to city hall. In this respect, city
officials are missing what fundamentally motivates many participants
in the online world.
"What people really are looking for is interactivity," says Tom
Grundner, president of the National Public Telecommunications Network.
"If you want to hold users, the more you allow two-waycommunication,
the more successful you'll be." Grundner's organization promotes the
construction of community-based computer networks. "Free-nets" already
have been built in 46 cities, and 30 more have lined up funds to begin
construction. An additional 120 cities in 42 states and 10 foreign
countries have formed free-net organizing committees.
Cheryl Gillaspie, one of the two Colorado Springs council members who
participates in online discussions, believes the electronic bulletin
board could open a needed channel of communication betweengovernment
and the public. "Colorado Springs is at a crossroads in decidingwhat
the proper role of government should be, but there is no consensus,"
she says. "We need an organized forum to know what the people want."
There is plenty to talk about. In 1991, city voters approved an
initiative requiring that any tax increase be submitted to a popular
vote (a similar statewide initiative was approved the next year). In
addition, city voters decided to roll back the city's half-centsales
tax for infrastructure. As a result, the city is pressed for revenues
at a time when it is under considerable pressure to increase spending.
Its population has climbed almost 12 percent since 1990, fed by an
influx of Californians. Funds aren't available to widen Interstate 25,
where congestion is a growing problem. The city hasn't fundedplanned
improvements to its storm sewer and drainage facilities, even though
summer floods are a growing concern. The Broadmoor Hotel has torn down
its skating rink, which had attracted renowned figure skaters and
helped make the city the headquarters for the U.S. Olympic Committee,
but the city council is unwilling to propose new taxes to help build a
new arena because that would require going to the voters. One common
suggestion for raising needed money, selling city-owned Memorial
Hospital, is mired in controversy.
"The voters say they want limited government, but it's a mixed
message," says Gillaspie, who describes herself as the council's most
conservative member. "We need some values clarification."
Two years ago, Gillaspie tried to interest the council in organizing
a CityLink forum on issues facing the city, but the idea was turned
down. She says she still doesn't have the votes, but insists it would
be a good idea: "The voters have us over a barrel; they control the
purse strings. We need to bend over backwards to regain their trust."
Mary Lou Makepeace, a council member who isn't online, believes
resistance to the bulletin board is largely a function of age. "A lot
of older people just won't use it," she says. But across town at the
city Senior Center, Torp McMahon seems to belie that argument.
McMahon, who is 83, is a constant presence on the center's own
bulletin board, the Senior Network Users Group. SNUG has counted some
35,000 dial-ins in its three years. Discussions can be lively. One day
in February, members debated a controversial exhibit the Smithsonian
Institution planned on the atomic bombing of Japan. One participant,
in the course of another discussion, posted the text of the Federalist
Papers for members to read.
But trying to talk to city officials online is an exercise in
frustration, according to McMahon. "They don't like to get on, and
when they do, they try to get off as soon as possible," he says.
Fisher believes city officials are reluctant to go online because the
forum is too public. "They lose deniability," he says. In addition,
it's much harder to control online discussions. "A lot of people go on
and just talk and talk and talk," says Makepeace. Sometimes the
problem is even worse. Some people can get positively abusive in
online discussions--a phenomenon called "flaming." And discussions can
wander way off the subject ("topic drift").
Flaming almost destroyed the nation's leading city-run computer
network, the Public Electronic Network in Santa Monica, California.
Despite some successes, usage has fallen below expectations, and city
council members have almost completely disappeared from the system.
"It seems every time I went on, a personal opponent was there
attacking me," explains Judy Abdo, a council member who has been mayor
three of the last four years. "I got tired of putting myself out
there. It was boring to me and to other users of the system."
"City hall can't take the heat," responds Michele Wittig, a
psychologist at California State University who was drawn into the
political process by PEN. While PEN discussions are free-wheeling, she
says, "the council runs its own meetings very much to its own
advantage; when someone speaks, they're limited to two or three
minutes and they can't address any remarks to an individual member."
Fisher acknowledges that online discussions can be pretty rough.
"People don't pull any punches on a bulletin board," he says. "At a
public forum, where you're sitting on a dais like God, people pull
their punches."
But even advocates concede that online discussions aren't always
high-octane debate. Wittig says a lot of talk on PEN comes from people
who are mentally ill, extremely shy or just lonely. And Fisher says
online discussions sometimes resemble a mob. But he argues that the
discussion would improve if city officials joined in--a point
Makepeace acknowledges. "It's a chicken-and-egg thing," she says.
Commercial online discussion groups have developed elaborate
procedures for organizing online talk. San Francisco's renowned WELL
(Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), for instance, offers some 260 different
discussion groups on a wide range of topics. Each group has "hosts"
who help structure and guide the discussion.
Ken Phillips, the systems operator who helped launch the Santa Monica
system, is trying to apply some of the lessons learned there in
developing a comparable network for the city of Salem, Oregon, and
surrounding Marion County. To prevent "the fringe element" from
driving thoughtful people away, he plans to bring "community leaders"
from various walks of life onto the system first. He hopes they can
set a positive tone. He also plans to line up "moderators" to lead
discussions on their areas of expertise.
One of the most dramatic demonstrations of the potential of the new
technology was a "virtual conference" conducted last November by the
National Telecommunications and Information Administration on the
issue of how to provide open access to the emerging telecommunications
network. NTIA laid the groundwork for the conference by publishing a
summary of five field hearings along with its own summary of the
issues. To give people without home computers a chance to participate,
it persuaded 78 libraries around the country to provide access via
their computers. When the conference began, guidelines for
participating were posted. Six separate discussion groups were
organized, each with a volunteer host who got the dialogue started by
presenting an essay on the group's topic. As the talk progressed,
"traffic cops" reviewed each discussion, informing conference
coordinators whenever anybody strayed off the topic or showed signs of
flaming. The traffic cops subsequently wrote reports summarizing each
discussion.
Originally scheduled to run a week, the conference was extended to
two weeks because of the lively discussion. While 50 people were able
to participate in any field hearing, and many of them were limited to
just two minutes of testimony, the online conference drew 400 advance
registrants. Because the format allowed participants to respond to
each other repeatedly, it's difficult to count how many people
actually joined the discussion. But it is known that computers from
around the country logged on some 10,000 times. More than 1,000
dial-ins were recorded from the Seattle Public Library alone. Comments
were received from central Alaska and even from a boat in the
Caribbean.
Roanne Robinson, special assistant for public outreach at NTIA, says
the conference convinced the NTIA that moderators are essential. Back
in Colorado Springs, Dave Hughes argues that CityLink should be
moderated by someone with considerable stature in the community and
city government. He suggests the assistant city manager. But in fact,
the city system has no moderator; a low-level city staffer monitors
the discussion, but only to prevent flaming and make sure officials
receive messages addressed to them. She has no online presence.
Even if the teledemocrats' fondest hopes are realized and society
becomes enlivened by rich online debates, one problem remains: What
about people who can't get online? "The gap between the information
haves and have-nots is wide and getting wider," warns Hughes.
That concern brings us to the San Luis Valley, an isolated region in
south-central Colorado. The size of New Hampshire but with a
population of just 40,000, the valley is cut off from the state's
population centers by the towering Sangre de Cristo Mountains to its
east. Its people are widely scattered and sharply divided along ethnic
and class lines.
In the town of Center, Hughes earlier this year sold one of his
electronic bulletin board systems to the school district. The
computer, along with five wireless modems (except for one classroom,
the school isn't wired), cost the school just $11,000. With it,
students can link up with other bulletin boards scattered around the
valley and even connect to the Internet, the true information
superhighway.
Though based in the school, the system belongs to the whole
community, says Superintendent Gary Kidd. Mayor Jim Tonso Jr. plans to
connect city government into the system. He sees opportunities to
bring new training and ideas to the town utilities department, which
is responsible for electricity, gas, cable, water and solid waste
services. Currently, the department can't send any of its four members
away for training for fear it will be caught short-handed in an
emergency. Mayor Tonso himself plans to brush up on his Spanish, an
important skill in this valley where 55 percent of the population is
Hispanic.
In nearby Alamosa, the community networking effort is a private
effort based at Christian Community Services. Noel Dunne, the CCS
director, oversees the formation of various valley-wide discussion
groups on the bulletin board, called La Cocina, or "the kitchen," the
place families customarily gather to talk. Math and science teachers
are talking about their work. Religious leaders are communicating in a
group called "pastor's corner." Kids are playing computer games, led
by a 14-year-old who has come to know so much about the system that he
helps Dunne run it.
While some of the discussions occur just on La Cocina, Dunne lets
others "echo" to various bulletin boards around the valley. Some
people have asked Dunne to use the system to gain access to the
Internet, but he discourages that. "We have to learn to talk to
ourselves before we talk to the rest of the world," he explains.
Dunne expresses some disappointment that there haven't been more
political discussions, but he believes that will come. To help the
process along, he hopes to have an Americorps volunteer serve this
summer as a "circuit rider," drumming up interest in the system and,
if the funds can be found, providing people with modems so they can
hook up.
La Cocina may get a big boost from Alamosa City Manager Michael
Hackett, an unabashed enthusiast for computer networking. He plans to
use the bulletin board to gather testimony that will be used to write
a comprehensive plan for the city and its surrounding areas. A
consultant will help structure an online forum. While the bulletin
board currently is limited because many people in the valley can't
connect into it, Hackett hopes it can generate useful discussion and
engage some people. And he hopes the forum and similar efforts will
help stimulate growth of the network. "This is a unique opportunity to
get information," he says.
Hackett sees new telecommunications technology as a great leveling
force, enabling isolated areas like the San Luis Valley to compete
more effectively with the state's population centers while giving
metropolitan areas like Colorado Springs an opportunity to realize
some of the supposed advantages of smaller communities. But in the
global village, he contends, government officials must relearn some
lost skills.
Hackett is continuing his own education in governance by visiting
Pueblo Indian tribes in northern New Mexico. "Dialogue seems to be
essential to their whole system of government," he says. Certain
tribal officials, such as the war chief, spend much of their time
seeking to stimulate discussion, bringing up issues, going out among
the tribe and nudging people to express themselves. Out of the ensuing
dialogue comes consensus, or at least greater acceptance of tribal
decisions, Hackett believes. "It's one of the most powerful tools they
have," he says.