… We are optimistic about the utility of Google searches, which is not quite the same as being optimistic about the Internet generally. The classic complaint about direct democracy, stretching back to Plato, is that an always up-to-date, well-informed public was impossible. So, it was suggested that we need a buffer against mass ignorance to administer the state. Well, Google now provides the impossible — instantaneous access to nearly the entirety of human knowledge — to billions of users, and scholars and intellectuals have not fully grasped the amazing ramifications of that for democratic theory. CONT.
Sean Richey & J. Benjamin Taylor, Monkey Cage