Government in democracies is always thoughtful to enable better and free elections
to every citizen. Why should not the internet be used in order to reach this goal?
Voting online could make it easier for voters to express their personal opinion in some countries were free speech is not given. No one would be able to know for example who the face behind the voting paper was. Personal manipulation would be almost impossible since no one would hand in his voting paper to an official canvasser. Not to fear the actual voting process, would reduce the pressure that can be opposed by parties on their voters and in the same way the force of corruption could be decreased. Voters could know with a certainty that it is almost impossible to reconstruct their identity after using a public computer for example.
Nowadays still a lot of countries in the world apply to the problems of oppressed elections. In Syria for example dissidents become jailed for their political engagement. Only because everyone has the right to vote, that does not mean there is a right for actual free expression of thoughts. According to an article published by BBC on the 22 April 2007 Syrian citizens seemed not strongly interested in the outcome of the elections in 2007 and former political prisoners were stripped of their civil rights and could not stand in the elections or vote.1 This power policy in Syria dominated by only one party leads to pressure in the population. If voting could be more anonymous, face to face or state to citizen pressure would be abandoned by online voting, maybe the political picture in Syria would undergo a surprisingly strongly and fast change.
An additional important point for the improvement in free elections is the flow of different information ensured by the World Wide Web. The information an individual can have excess to, is taken nowadays out of a much wider pool than newspapers and TV news were ever able to transmit. The Syrians, like all other citizens on the world would be able, under the requirements that they have the ability to read, to choose their source of information on their own and it might be much more difficult for a one party government or a dictator to limit the flow of information. Out of this base of free excess to all kind of information combined with anonymous online voting the outcome of elections should be much more likely to represent the real proportion of citizen opinion. According to the article by Jair Amichai Hamburger “E-empowerment: Empowerment by the Internet“, one of the first E-voting experiments brought surprisingly high success rates. “In the first binding political vote in Arizona in March, 2000, there was a 676% increase in voter turnout. Since then, many governments have considered the possibility of conducting national elections through E-voting. “2(Hamburger, p.4784)
Online voting would be a new step forward into the interconnection between reality and Internet, as well as a hopefully helpful tactic to improve democratic political systems.
1. BBC. (2007). Retrieved 24. 5. 2009 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6580517.stm
2. Yair Amichai-Hamburger, Katelyn Y Mckenna, Samuel-Azran Tal. empowerment: Empowerment by the Internet. Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 24, No. 5. (September 2008), pp. 1776-1789.
Sonntag, 24. Mai 2009
Dienstag, 12. Mai 2009
Loosing our knowledge
Like argued in our lecture in the age of television and internet the ability to develop knowledge is decreasing in our society. The TV, as well as the internet supplies its users with short messages and insufficient background knowledge. The goal of education through media seems to disappear and entertainment becomes central in its stead. Where will this lead us?
An example that came to my mind was that shows for children on the TV got increasingly limited in their educational massage and complexity. Twenty years ago there were shows on TV explaining to children the space, how they make milk and how Pasta becomes Pasta. Today my sister is watching shows on Television with animated pictures, imitating reality. The main characters talk in words that do not exist in the vocabulary of the mother tongue. They watch much more TV than children 10 years ago, today in average a 8-10 year old child spend 3:17 hours per day in front of the TV. (Retrieved at April 4, 2009 from: http://www.tvsmarter.com/documents/stats-kids.html) Children get to watch TV before they are even able to talk and learn from what they see on TV, from fast changing pictures, short, unconnected massages. One intensive discussed show in Europe was the Teletubbies, for many an example for the “stupidity” of the way how TV is teaching children. Parents started to criticize the show, as their children started to adopt the blurred pronunciation of the Teletubbies, instead of spelling words clearly. (You tube, Retrieved at April 4, 2009 from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiaLOzP1lCA) This real life example gives evidence to the argument of the lecture, that society suffers a decrease in education by TV.
Additionally many argue than an increase in passivity on the side of the learning by using the TV as main educator is observable. A study, represented in the „Science Daily“, Journal, “indicates exposure to language via television is insufficient for teaching language to very young children. To learn new words, children must be actively engaged in the process with responsive language teachers." (Science Daily (July 2007), Retrieved at April 4, 2009 from: http://www.news-medical.net/?id=24816) With the TV children learn passive, they may start to imitate and copy, like the Telletubbies phenomenon but they are not actively involved, or challenged to use their brain actively or even their body to reach a usable result. They are missing to reflect what they know and to evaluate, if what they know is write, usable or not. So kids get used to learning with no effort on their part, in other words watching TV is actually training their brain to be lazy. Then when it's time to start school, learning takes effort and is quite boring compared to TV and may be experienced as overstraining.
According to Einstein, passive learning is not enough; it needs involvement and imagination to use knowledge. The understanding of how to use knowledge is essential for the progress of our society; it needs imagination rather than only to possess knowledge. When we loose our ability to criticize and judge, we easily become dependent on others and believers in everything we see, dependent on the things we might have become used to and a passive auditorium. We become unable to use the full abilities of our brain and lack the desire and imagination to find progress. “Imagination is more important than knowledge, for while knowledge points to all there is, imagination points to all there will be.“(Einstein)
To sum up our society needs to wake up and to start to work active against watching TV as main activity or using it as the main educator, in order to stop the lose of our activity, imagination and set an end to the decrease in gaining usable, applicable knowledge. In order to reach this and to change our future parents should play an active role in leading their children away from watching TV, imitating and physical as well as mental passivity to more activity, creativity and self-thinking.
An example that came to my mind was that shows for children on the TV got increasingly limited in their educational massage and complexity. Twenty years ago there were shows on TV explaining to children the space, how they make milk and how Pasta becomes Pasta. Today my sister is watching shows on Television with animated pictures, imitating reality. The main characters talk in words that do not exist in the vocabulary of the mother tongue. They watch much more TV than children 10 years ago, today in average a 8-10 year old child spend 3:17 hours per day in front of the TV. (Retrieved at April 4, 2009 from: http://www.tvsmarter.com/documents/stats-kids.html) Children get to watch TV before they are even able to talk and learn from what they see on TV, from fast changing pictures, short, unconnected massages. One intensive discussed show in Europe was the Teletubbies, for many an example for the “stupidity” of the way how TV is teaching children. Parents started to criticize the show, as their children started to adopt the blurred pronunciation of the Teletubbies, instead of spelling words clearly. (You tube, Retrieved at April 4, 2009 from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiaLOzP1lCA) This real life example gives evidence to the argument of the lecture, that society suffers a decrease in education by TV.
Additionally many argue than an increase in passivity on the side of the learning by using the TV as main educator is observable. A study, represented in the „Science Daily“, Journal, “indicates exposure to language via television is insufficient for teaching language to very young children. To learn new words, children must be actively engaged in the process with responsive language teachers." (Science Daily (July 2007), Retrieved at April 4, 2009 from: http://www.news-medical.net/?id=24816) With the TV children learn passive, they may start to imitate and copy, like the Telletubbies phenomenon but they are not actively involved, or challenged to use their brain actively or even their body to reach a usable result. They are missing to reflect what they know and to evaluate, if what they know is write, usable or not. So kids get used to learning with no effort on their part, in other words watching TV is actually training their brain to be lazy. Then when it's time to start school, learning takes effort and is quite boring compared to TV and may be experienced as overstraining.
According to Einstein, passive learning is not enough; it needs involvement and imagination to use knowledge. The understanding of how to use knowledge is essential for the progress of our society; it needs imagination rather than only to possess knowledge. When we loose our ability to criticize and judge, we easily become dependent on others and believers in everything we see, dependent on the things we might have become used to and a passive auditorium. We become unable to use the full abilities of our brain and lack the desire and imagination to find progress. “Imagination is more important than knowledge, for while knowledge points to all there is, imagination points to all there will be.“(Einstein)
To sum up our society needs to wake up and to start to work active against watching TV as main activity or using it as the main educator, in order to stop the lose of our activity, imagination and set an end to the decrease in gaining usable, applicable knowledge. In order to reach this and to change our future parents should play an active role in leading their children away from watching TV, imitating and physical as well as mental passivity to more activity, creativity and self-thinking.
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