Page 247 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Information, Equality, and Integration
those most likely to be active in democratic processes in earlier informa-
tion regimes are those engaged with the new organizational structures of
the emergent information regime. Perhaps more clearly and directly than
historical developments, contemporary technologies reveal the psycho-
logical phenomena that accompany organizational adaptations to new
information conditions. These are highly contingent and biased learning
and knowledge acquisition and a tendency for the best-informed to learn
even more as information grows more accessible.
In the emergent postbureaucratic pluralism of the contemporary pe-
riod, the number of elites and potentially viable mobilizers appears to
be increasing, and competition for political attention growing more ag-
gressive, against a background of largely unchanged habits of political
knowledge and learning. This means that the terms and structures of col-
lective action are more sensitive than ever before to the flow of events and
informationandarelessreflectiveofthetraditionalorganizationofinter-
ests. The developments of this information revolution are therefore not
wholly new, since elements of postbureaucratic political organization –
as well as information abundance – extend well back into American
political history. Without a doubt, though, rapid technological innova-
tionsofthelastdecadeorsoaredramaticallybroadeningandaccelerating
these changes.
Howfarthesedevelopmentswillgocannotbeknownyet,certainlynot
fromtheassessmentsofthesechapters.Whattheinformationregimethat
eventually emerges will look like must therefore remain something of a
mystery. From today’s perspective, at what is likely not even the midpoint
ofthefourthinformationrevolution,itispossibleonlytoidentifylimiting
factors, conditions that make postbureaucratic pluralism maladaptive to
aspects of the exercise of power. Some of these involve structure and pro-
cess, such as the largely unaltered face of state institutions themselves and
the electoral and policy-making processes associated with them. Others
involve human needs and limits, including the social nature of political
influence and trust and the cognitive capacities of humans to deal with
information and communication, all of which are unchanged by new
technology or new characteristics of communication and information.
Thefourthinformationrevolution,alongwithitspredecessors,illumi-
nates important pathways by which information influences democracy.
It shows that the information citizens choose to learn is often less impor-
tantthantheinformationdirectedtothembyelitesandorganizers.Atthe
same time, it suggests that elites and organizations are themselves defined
and constituted in large part by the information they possess and are able

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