Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais
Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais
Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais
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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<br />
here are the possibilities of being used for the consoli<strong>da</strong>tion of the public sphere,<br />
democracy and local development. They must necessarily articulate civil society (in<br />
organized groups or not), market and government; they are the ICT being thought<br />
for the reinvention of the town and its social relationships, in a way in which the<br />
concept of URBEtic incorporates the human and material dimensions of the current<br />
technical period.<br />
The scenario for the reinvention of political participation is highly promising.<br />
The rise of “ubiquitous computing” and of the “Internet of things” (WEISER and<br />
BROWN, 1996), with less intrusive interfaces, opens unimaginable possibilities of<br />
increasing communication flows. However, the dream announced by technological<br />
advances will be insufficient if the necessary political decisions are not taken (BEN-<br />
KLER, 2006). So it is, above all, an ethical question.<br />
The municipal government, in partnership with the market and with civil society<br />
organizations, can be the major catalyst for urban communication flows. Its action<br />
may be directed to three fun<strong>da</strong>mental and indissociable dimensions: the human<br />
being in the first place, but also the connections and the content.<br />
The conditions of human communicability depend on all the other social conditions<br />
of survival. This is not the proper space to extend the discussion over the obvious<br />
need for health, employment, education and other basic issues. However, in the<br />
particular case of an urban communicational environment based on distributed digital<br />
communication networks, it is worth highlighting the need for technical and critical<br />
training of citizens from an early age, so that they are able to act in this environment.<br />
Thinking of training citizens involves promoting critical awareness about the<br />
limits, the possibilities, the risks, and the opportunities that come for those who<br />
participate on the network communicational flows. More than that, it is necessary to<br />
feed the desire for citizens’ participation in urban communicational processes, which<br />
are vital for democratic life and for the construction of the city. Being critical to the<br />
media and knowing how to use it may not be enough to cheer the local communication.<br />
Thus, thinking of the human being at the communicational process is going<br />
beyond training them for a more critical use of computers and the Internet; it is also<br />
convincing the human being of the need to participate (RHEINGOLD, 2008).<br />
The radical choice for communication in the city is also based on ensuring access<br />
to media, particularly to computers and to broadband Internet connections.<br />
However, the solutions are more complicated than simply distributing computers<br />
and providing access. Some principles established by the Brazilian Internet Steer-<br />
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