Can Tech Strengthen Civil Society Now?

Why aren’t there more Wikipedia-scale successes online?

The NY Public Library Manhattan main branch, inside Planet Minecraft

On Monday night, I participated in a class session of Technology, Media & Democracy, a partnership of five academic institutions in New York City, co-taught by

Justin Hendrix

, combining two classes he runs at NYU and Cornell Tech,

David Carroll

at The New School,

Douglas Rushkoff

at CUNY Queens College, and Emily Bell at Columbia Journalism. Alongside me as speakers were

Rebecca MacKinnon

of the Wikimedia Foundation and

Eli Pariser

of New_ Public.

Rushkoff sent us some questions in advance, which got me thinking. In essence, he asked us to consider the challenges facing democracy today, to weigh how much tech has contributed to those challenges (as opposed to simply reflecting the complexities and crises already present in society), and to offer thoughts on how to strengthen the public sphere and knowledge-building institutions going forward. In particular, since the students taking this course are all considering careers in civic tech, he asked, “We had 10+ years of designing better ‘public tech’ and public spheres, from Planetary to gobo.social to Diaspora to consider.it. Yet, we have not seen anything break through apart from Wikipedia — is that the case, what might be the key challenge, and are you still optimistic? What promising emerging platforms are you…