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
are a component of the formal ones.
The use of the Internet in Barack Obama’s campaign was a very interesting phenomenon,
but its power was overestimated. After military interventions, financial
crises, Hurricane Katrina and other political and social disasters, one must admit
that being the opposite candidate to Bush was not the most difficult electoral scenario
in that North-American political context. In fact, the hubbub on the streets
and over the Internet sustained the big political changes.
Any major political change in a democratic regime — no matter how emblematic
it may be or how much it may draw the attention of the media — only occurs
after a long cultural sedimentation of everyday movements, silent questionings that
reorganize the social fabric like in a filigree. A radical option for fostering communication
gives strength to those “anonymous heroes of everyday life” who reinvent
the places created by telecommunication infrastructures, media groups and communication
policies at all levels of government (CERTEAU, 1990). The idea is to
strengthen the “art of the weak.”
Valuing formal and informal political means of participation through a radical
defense of communication in the cities means using all the creativity and technical
expertise available to ensure the best conditions of access to the media, with the best
possible conditions for emission and reception. The objective is always to ensure
the greatest “commerce of senses” (admirabile commercium) around the city, to
use the words of St. Augustine. It’s about “deepening the contradictions” (which is
another expression from Freire) among different perceptions of the world, hoping
to create a more critical consciousness about the urban space. Equally important as
(or more important than) fighting for more social representation on the governance
of large media corporations is founding the city on the basis of an open, free and
recombinant communicational structure, that radically encourages the proliferation
of senses through all the media.
The municipal government and the URBEtic technologies
What is at stake is the understanding of how urban digital information and
communication technologies, which I call URBEtic, are contributing to build a
more human, civic, participatory and sustainable city. From the material point of
view, URBEtic are the same as in other social segments. What makes them different
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