p22 meta-democracy IV

Local Data Banks

By John Taylor; 2008 March 16, 15 Ala, 164 BE

Yesterday we discussed the meta-democratic profession of the journalist-teacher. These specialists will manage the media under a world government. Today, let us speculate on what the institutional structure of this new world media might be like.

 By some estimates we spend on average a third of our waking lives immersed in media such as films, videos, reading books and newspapers, listening to music, surfing the net, including a whopping fifteen years of just watching television. (Introducing Media Studies, Ziauddin Sardar, Icon Books, Cambridge, 2006, p. 8) This huge portion of our limited lifespan cannot be left to the whim of the moment. If we are to survive and thrive as a species, every citizen needs to plan and optimize his or her involvement with the information media. Our precious time spent there should be as participatory, interactive, efficient and constructive as possible. Our journalist-teachers would be trained to assist citizens optimize and plan this central aspect of life.

 However, qualified and concerned as journalists may be, they cannot supply all of the content of this flood of media content. Rather, they will collaborate with other guiding professions, including most notably doctors, and collectively act as a rudder to a massive supertanker of data. Media content will be nurtured locally by amateur productions. The most outstanding of whose young members will be systematically culled -- again by meta-democratic elections -- to supply the professional artists, artisans and other content providers who produce regional level media.

 In today's stunted world order, the mass media are frighteningly over-centralized and unaccountable. Too little is produced locally and too much comes out of a few giant media centers, notably New York and Hollywood. In economic terms, funds are siphoned out of neighborhoods that could go into local employment and revitalization projects. This dislocation stifles creativity in smaller communities and encourages a passive approach to data, as indicated by that fifteen years spent as couch potatoes. A vital culture has the lion's share of its media generated and consumed on the local level. What is more, local groups, the most immediate and important being the family, have the permanent advantages of proximity and instant feedback.

 As always, a moderate balance needs to be struck by wise administrators. The floodgates of outside data should not be opened so wide as to drown the delicate culture of homes and neighborhoods. On the other hand, shutting off the outside information flow to a trickle would parch local culture, making growth sparse and inhabitants ignorant, inward-looking and provincial.

 Leading institutions will learn judiciously to apply factors like Jane Jacobs' two principles of subsidiarity, government as close as possible to those it serves, and fiscal accountability, budgetary transparency. Another principle is diversity; as many groups as possible can be encouraged to compete in serving the information needs of citizens nearby. Tax advantages, grants and other privileges can be held out as inducements to encourage local businesses, charities, faith and service organizations to serve the needs of the whole neighborhood for entertainment and edification.

 Accordingly, information flow in and out of the locality can be traced and charted on a three dimensional display for all to see who visit city hall. The price of outside data (prices of theater and cinema tickets, cable television rates, and so forth) is raised and lowered here in order to keep the data flow at a healthy balance, in a similar way to how a nation's central bank (in the US, the federal reserve) tweaks an economy's money supply by raising or lowering interest rates. Unlike central bankers, though, this rate would be set by an open, meta-democratic committee representing every part of the community.