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15 - Representative Democracy as Kitsch, and Artificial Intelligence’s Promise of Emancipation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2022

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Summary

Abstract

The chapter explores relations between modernity and the decentralization of authority, kitsch and partial centralization, the avant-garde and social media. Decentralization is identified as an important expression of modernist philosophy in current technology. As a characteristic of current directions of social progress, authority-opposing trends of modernism and post-modernism find significant support in new technology via less falsifiable decentralization based on crypto-currencies, blockchain, social media, search engines, and other products of the internet era. The scalability of classic athenian democracy to large societies is not yet accomplished by technology. Against the early modernity tendency to cheaply give the masses an almost effortless sense of participation (features associated with kitsch), the system of representative democracy promises to become more genuine through opportunities for electronic civic involvement.

Keywords: AI; democracy; post-modernism; kitsch; participation; Decentralization

As a characteristic of current directions of social progress, authorityopposing trends of modernism and post-modernism find significant support in new technology including crypto-currencies, blockchain, social media, search engines, massive open online courses, and other products of the Internet era, many of these earning their clout partly through a largely accepted assumption that their decentralization components leads to less falsifiable outcomes.

The calls to coherently address global challenges like pandemics, travel hiatuses, and economic meltdowns, without resorting to authoritarian centralized solutions that excessively restrict individual freedoms and thereby further contract the world economy, put a new focus on the sophistication in expectations and aspirations of society. In this context, an increase in digital skills brought by intensive use of online education prepares the potential for the advent and adoption of major innovations.

The organization of societies, like architecture, is an art. Whether actually older or not, the origins of the concept of democracy pass through its most famous and universally appreciated instance known as Athenian democracy, as recounted by Herodotus (Herodotus 2003; Narcisse 2012). He described a system of organization allegedly designed by a ruler called Cleisthenes and practiced in Athens between 507 and 460 bc. The system is based on the sovereign body of all available constituents, named the ekklesia (the assembly), deliberating and issuing laws through a simple majority of people attending their almost weekly meetings. These took place on the Pnyx, a hill in the western part of the city.

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Global Modernity from Coloniality to Pandemic
A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective
, pp. 349 - 370
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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