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Introduction
The fundamental problem of democracy today is quite simply the survival of agency in this increasingly technocratic universe. (Feenberg, 1999, p. 101)
The idea of "the public space"... designates a theater in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk. It is the space in which citizens deliberate about their common affairs. (Fraser, 1992, p. 110)
The statements above set the stage for this article in which I trace philosophical positions concerning the promise and perils of technology, the kind of thinking that accompanies it, and their relationship to democratic discussion and action. Using the example of two experiments in coastal community renewal--one completed and another in its early stages of implementation--I argue that both the dystopic view of technology put forward by past and present detractors, and the utopian perspective of technology's apologists, offer important insights to planners and educators who seek balance among scientific, communicative, and aesthetic ways of knowing. The first experiment, although short-lived, involved five communities in an exchange of ideas and some cooperative action through one-way "narrowcasting" (E. Harris, 1992) and several complementary media. The goal of the current experiment, now entering the second of a 4-year implementation, is intended to serve educators, health care providers, and businesses by linking five coastal sites to one another and to the outside world by two-way Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
My basic point in this theoretical and site-based study is that technology, if it is to benefit coastal or any other communities, must enhance rather than erase the public space in which people discuss, in an ethical manner, matters of communal interest. My assumption is that such a humanly created space, although supportive of people's political intent and economic interests, ideally remains apart from both the state and the market. That is, it ought to provide a theatre in which citizens can safely criticize state policy and action, and the undue determinism of globalizing forces, including that of a "knowledge society."
Empirical discussions of technology here concern two Newfoundland communities-in-crisis, where the traditional means of livelihood, the fishery, has collapsed, and the most urgent and collective need is for the creation of new jobs. Unfortunately, economic diversification demands personal initiative, imagination, and risk-taking--ingredients not commonly...