Sarah Wong
@sarahwong
@sarahwong
democracy cannot survive in stasis. Alexis de Tocqueville’s canonical view of “democratic revolution,” a gradual progression toward ever more deeply democratic institutions, refuses to deify any particular institutional form.
centuries-old institutions are increasingly inadequate for confronting ascendant authoritarians. Merely defending a certain sort of democracy is no way to help democracy as an ideal.
Agre reject the ultimate exit of Californian ambitions: the departure from bodily limits and social constraints.
Agre was inverting it at MIT, calling for technology that invites people into developing skills through everyday politics.
“Technology is not central; what is central are the choices that we make, each of us, in laying claim to the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in our own lives.”47
“The issue lattice is sufficiently complex,” Agre writes, “that it will never emerge without high levels of political skill diffused throughout the society.”