REPUBLIC.COM. - Review - book review

Washington Monthly, Jan, 2001 by Paul M. Barrett

REPUBLIC.COM by Cass R. Sunstein Princeton University Press, $19.95

Techno-tribalists

CASS SUNSTEIN WOULD PREFER that we define the higher purposes of free speech in a digital-age republic based on the aspirations of Louis Brandeis, rather than those of Bill Gates.

The playful comparison is, of course, unfair to the Microsoft chairman, whom nobody, perhaps other than Gates himself, would consider a serious political or social thinker--let alone one on the level of Justice Brandeis. Still, the contrast helps clarify how online technology may bolster or corrode democracy. And to even the sides a bit, Sunstein suggests that Gates has an ally in Oliver Wendell Holmes, no less.

In 214 very small pages, Sunstein persuasively warns that the Internet's capacity to serve up only what users order in advance could debilitate the clash of ideas critical to informed self-government. A remarkably prolific constitutional scholar at the University of Chicago, Sunstein has made a life's work of proposing and refining pragmatic liberal policies he contends will strengthen "deliberative democracy." This book will disappoint readers hoping for fully conceived solutions to the problems he identifies in the cyberworld. But his provocative admonition to beware absolutist defenses of free speech online deserves attention, especially as the federal government continues to consider how to regulate the Internet.

To get things started, Sunstein offers several versions of the function that communication ought to play in society. Gates heralds a digital age in which the highest purpose of Internet communication is quickly satisfying consumers' customized desires. Getting exactly what you want--be it pet food, political news, video games, financial services, movies, medical information or chat room conversation--makes for a fulfilled life, according to this view. Gates dreams of a day when you can settle into the living room couch and tell your Internet-connected television, "I'm never interested in this, but I am particularly interested in that." The screen will select only the entertainment or purchasing opportunities you already know you want. Surfing channels? A waste of time. Don't even ask about newspapers or magazines. Traditional publications that offer readers a range of subject matter and opinions have no place in the Gatesian future. "For your own daily dose of news, you might subscribe to several review services and let a software agent or a human one pick and choose from them to compile your completely customized `newspaper,'" Gates wrote in 1995. "These subscription services, whether human or electronic, will gather information that conforms to a particular philosophy and set of interests."

Sunstein mourns how close we are to achieving Gates' dream. Internet services already allow millions of users to filter out all they find distracting so they can focus exclusively on their personalized slice of reality. The network-television news, the general-interest newspaper, and the weekly newsmagazine are decreasingly people's primary sources of information in the Internet era. These institutions, with all their flaws, at least created the possibility that citizens would encounter reports of unexpected views, unfamiliar events, and experiences different from their own, Sunstein argues. In place of the metaphoric news-stand, where engaged citizens have to buy bundles of varied information, he maintains, the Internet offers a virtual shopping mall, where consumers are urged to acquire only the data they know they want. Communication online promotes mere "consumer sovereignty," as opposed to popular political sovereignty, which ought to be the core value of free expression protected by the First Amendment, Sunstein asserts.

The author notes that in discussions of free speech, Bill Gates and other consumer-sovereignty advocates actually walk in the footsteps of the great Justice Holmes. In his famous dissenting opinions defending Me speech in the early part of the twentieth century, Holmes depicted expression as part of a political market. "Free trade in ideas," Holmes wrote, would allow truth to emerge.

Sunstein finds the Holmesian view lacking in its assumption that the invisible hand alone will reveal what people need to know to govern themselves. You have to go out and actively look for the truth, and sometimes you may not know what you're looking for, the professor suggests. Justice Brandeis, who often joined Holmes in defending political dissent, nevertheless spoke in quite different terms, Sunstein observes. Eschewing the marketplace metaphor, Brandeis insisted that debate of public issues is not only a right, but "a political duty"--a notion foreign to Holmes. "The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people," according to Brandeis. He saw "self-government as something dramatically different from an exercise in consumer sovereignty," Sunstein writes approvingly. "This does not mean that people have to be thinking about public affairs all or most of the time. But it does mean that each of us has rights and duties as citizens, not simply as consumers."