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
tors, activists, and other citizens, to visit the ruins of the city, dominated by different
technical rationalities, so as to articulate the liberating possibilities that lie there.
Valuing informal and formal
The central thesis on this article, which aims at municipal administrators, researchers
and, in particular, citizens, is the following: it is necessary to make a radical
choice for communication in urban spaces. The immediate offshoot of this choice is
the radical option for some fundamental elements of democracy, regardless of political
parties and economic or technological models.
Making a choice on these terms is not an argument that depoliticizes the debate
about technique. The radical choice for fostering communication in the city intends
rather to support and draw attention of everyone for the “human condition of plurality:”
“the fact that men, not Man (sic), live on the earth and inhabit the world”
(ARENDT, 2000, 11). It is about taking conscience that to be is to be with others;
that subjectivity is, in fact, intersubjectivity, and that each other being questions the
individual perceptions that I have about the world (MERLEAU-PONTY, 1975).
The goal here is to found the city on an open dialectic, one that does not have
the universal project supposedly guided by a sense of History as Hegel wanted. I bet
on the strengthening of formal and informal communicational flows and, therefore,
on the critical perception of local reality. The goal is to ensure minimum veracity for
individual and collective action in the world.
That is why the choice for communication needs to be a radical choice, in the
sense that was proposed by Paulo Freire: “The radical man does not deny to others
the right to choose,” and this is why one should reject sectarian activism. “The
sectarian person, either from right or left, sees themselves as the sole maker of History,”
writes Freire. The radical person, on the other hand, knows that “as a subject,
with other subjects,” they should “help and accelerate the transformations, as they
acknowledge reality so as to be able to interfere” (FREIRE, 1985, 51-52).
If the thesis on a radical choice for communication in the urban spaces is correct,
what is at stake is not an allegedly networked public sphere that nurtures dreams of
direct participation on plebiscitary decisions, or anything like that. Strictly, there is
nothing more deceptive than assuming that the network is a stage for actors to act in
a situation of equality. The conditions of participation of the so called “nodes” of the
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