‘Everything that happens will happen today 
& nothing has changed, but nothing's the same 
and ev'ry tomorrow could be yesterday 
& and ev'rything that happens will happen today'

David Byrne & Brian Eno, ‘Everything that Happens will happen today’.

It can be easy to lapse into two ways of thinking about how the Internet has changed politics: everything has changed or nothing is different. The trick, however is to understand what is new and what isn’t.

There should be no sense of inevitability when it comes to the Internet and politics:  we should be working to make it into what we want it to be.  There are negative effects of the internet on politics. Many states wield too much power over their people, many are jailed, and decision-making power is still too concentrated. So it hasn’t flattened all power before it.  

But the internet has also made it much easier for people to communicate and organise, meaning that there are genuinely exciting new resources for people looking to resist oppression or reclaim power for themselves.

This dual role is why there has been so much debate about the role of technology in the recent Iranian context. It helped dissidents organise protests and resistance and feel connected to a wider movement of unrest. But it also made it easier for the state to clamp down and punish those involved. As I’ve written elsewhere, there is also no guarantee that such a seeming transparency and openness will make the world less opaque or any easier to understand.

So will it have an impact? Yes. It will be a very important factor in how politics happens. But this impact doesn’t mean it will necessarily be positive. What we do with it is the crucial factor.

Tonight Demos hosts an event featuring panelists who have done much to think through the implications of these technologies on how ‘politics’ works, and help us understand what this environment might look like. Evgeny Morozov, in particular, has examined why the internet politics we presume favour the dispossessed, the protestors and the powerless can just as easily be tools for their oppressors.

The promise for those keen on a politics driven by principles of self-rule and self-determination remains.  But at the same time, we need to understand that in reality, the internet does not in itself get us there. The answers aren't technological but political.

Perhaps we need commitments from businesses that exist online that they will pursue the twin aims of commercial success and an international democratic politics. We'll certainly need a domestic politics that reconciles these new forms of participation and direct representation with established forms of democratic decision making. This politics must commit to look for how technology can involve more people in the decision-making that affects them.

Lots of new challenges for the same old problem: the struggle between the powerful and the powerless. So we'll probably end up somewhere in between the two 'sides'. Tomorrow’s problems may well be the same as yesterday’s. But with technology used in the right way, maybe we can let ourselves be a bit more optimistic about the outcome.

Read Clay Shirkey writing about the issues Pete has been discussing at:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/12/the-net-advantage/

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