Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
in which each one accepts their social position corresponding to a natural order 1 .
Aristotle also defended a strongly hierarchized society, wherein the citizens should
fulfill a series of conditions to be free and exercise their political rights: they should
be male and not depend on salary to live, which would supposedly ensure independence
of thought and action. Slaves would also, by nature, be inferior beings that
would allow — by performing the heavy works of human labor — men dedicated
to theorist and political life to fully exercise their citizenship.
Maybe the reader is asking, in this moment, what is the relevance of outlining
old doctrines on citizenship foundation. The explanation is very simple. This appeal
of men’s nature to the nature of the political rights and of the very concept of
citizenship is present, in fact, in almost the entire western political thought. Investigating
what is citizenship would, therefore, suppose a movement of getting deeper
into human nature and into the natural order that must be respected in order for
harmony to reign as the base element of coexistence among men.
Seeking the roots of citizenship in human nature is the expression of another
more current version of the noble lie, according to which knowledge would also
be well defined and compartmentalized between political problems, with political
solutions; and technical problems, with technical solutions. This is an expression
of the dichotomic thought that perpetuates the separation between the humanistic
and the technical cultures. However, uniting citizenship and digital networks in the
same context shows the importance of the ICT (Information and Communication
Technologies) environment to redefine, from a multidisciplinary perspective, some
of the basic concepts of political philosophy. These networks are not limited to being
an instrument of social control, nor a tool to increase the efficacy of the communication
forms that characterize the Industrial Society. In fact, digital networks
are the battlefield wherein some of the most significant fights for human rights take
place. One cannot talk about freedom of speech or right to information if the possibilities
that those networks offer to the less favored citizens are not considered. The
noble lie is reproduced once again in the classic communicational environments.
The mass communication media is characterized by their deeply asymmetric nature:
one speaks, many listen. One appears, many contemplate. Knowledge flows hierarchically,
from the center to the periphery. Countries are divided into audiovisual
1. Plato, Dialogues, p. 198.
14