[week 9_2... in fact, week 10?] Latter half of Bimber.

Bimber is a careful person - he simply does not overreach. Though he lays out the pattern of the information revolution and other valuable breakthrough findings in the first part, he says in the latter part of the book that it won't alter significantly the level of civic participation and political knowledge of the individuals living in that society. The possibilities of a more informed participation is balanced by the disengagement and disinterest. Information technology enables individualization, which is good in the making one's voice heard but disables the common experience that is crucial for the public-ness.

But to look deeper, it is not simply individualization (disguised as the rather positive-sounding term 'personalization') in itself that is the concern. It is the gap between the social system of modern democracy that needs some forms of common public-ness to function and the consuming desire that wants to put on sophisticated / differentiated identities. Because of this gap, people are constantly confused on which level of collectiveness they should put their values on. Can this gap be bridged? At least not by mere information technology per se, for sure.