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
Albert Meijer (2009) wrote about the intense debate about transparency and information
and communication technologies, which, according to him, does not happen
under a deeper perspective of the cultural trends of society. He quotes Oliver (2004)
among the “proponents” of transparency, who believe it to be an essential ingredient
in the success of politics, business and even the personal spheres of life, building more
democratic societies. He also quotes O’Neill (2002) among the “opponents” of transparency:
Those who are not against transparency, but doubt that it will bring contributions
to the society, since an overload of unselected and erroneous information shall
lead to more uncertainty (O’NEILL, 2002:73, quoted by MEIJER, 2009:257).
According to Meijer, the approach of the proponents of transparency is modern.
They consider computer-mediated transparency to yield better information to
the people and to contribute for rationalization of society. The approach of the
opponents of transparency is pre-modern for understanding that technologies have
perverse effects, and that democracy brings more benefits when based on the traditional
modes of producing trust. Meijer also notices one absence in the debate:
That of a post-modern analysis of transparency, which would review this concept
from the point of view of the new realities produced by the information. Anyway,
the author clarifies that these three points of view — pre-modern, modern and postmodern
— can be considered to co-exist in today’s society. In the case described
by him, about the publication of the assessments of North-American schools, the
proponents (modern) of transparency argue that parents have the right of receiving
information to make decisions on their children’s education, which is aided by
the publication of the assessments, while the opponents (pre-modern) believe that
school quality cannot be measured by numbers, and that the publications encourage
a culture of “education in favor of tests.” The post-moderns would say, according to
Meijer, that the information published on the assessment of the schools produce an
image of the school that is not connected to its reality, but rather, constructs a new
reality, with more ambiguity of senses.
The solution to the conflict can be in the understanding, by the pre-moderns,
that information and communication technologies are different from mass communication
media, and that they may generate new trust relations due to the bidirectionality
of the communicational flows. The author also reminds us, quoting
Postman (1998), of the ambivalence of the technologies, and the fact that they
are produced by people, i.e., “we should debate what forms of computer-mediated
transparency we wish to create” (MEIJER, 2009: 264; 266).
132