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SNA doesn't kill democracy, people kill .... etc
-----Original Message-----
From: Social Networks Discussion Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Bienenstock Elisa
Sent: Friday, 19 May 2006 10:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: SNA as a threat to democracy
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Maybe some of you will think I have been drinking the Kool Aid, but I think
SNA will do more to restore than threaten democracy. Some of the discussion
seeks to elevate the right to privacy or the right to assembly to a right to
anonymity, which the constitution does not guarantee. On the one hand the
literature on social capital has everyone worrying about the collapse of
civic society, due to anonymity, and on the other we are concerned about
surveillance of our PUBLIC activities.
In the "good" old days, when communities were small and "strangers" were
recognizable, SNA was done heuristically. SNA only tracks associations, and
only those that are made "public" in some way. Of course as citizens of the
world we must be more and more conscious of which of our activities are
public and which are private, as that is changing. Our attention should be
focused on those question: Is using a telephone to speak across boarders
public? Is participating in a virtual discussion on troop deployments on the
internet public? Nonetheless, tracking associations to uncover patterns
dangerous to the community will allow us to be more not less free to safely
engage in the type of relationships that can strengthen democracy. Can SNA
be misused for nefarious purposes? Of course! Every technology has a
downside. So? The problem is not the tool, it is the use or the user of the
tool. Focusing on the tool misses the point completely.
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