Politics in action means not elections but the daily routine of
hard work on matters of interest to the people represented.
Party affiliation aside, in the end the common good is supposed
to be maintained or improved. Legislative political work
continues a tradition that goes well beyond literacy.
Nevertheless, effective legislation became possible only within
the pragmatic framework that made literacy necessary. Once
literacy itself reached its potential, new means for the
political legislative practical experience became necessary. The
driving force is the expectation that the legislative process
should reflect practical needs emerging in a context of rapid
change over shorter patterns of recurrence. As within the entire
political practical experience, forces at work continuously
collide.
Although literacy-based perspectives and methods for political
legislation are no longer appropriate in handling issues and
concerns stemming from a pragmatics that invalidates the
literate model, politicians seem to be unwilling to realize the
need for change. They find it more useful, and easier to
defend, to legislate improved literacy- based education, for
example, instead of rethinking education in the context of its
necessity. They accept the mediating power of specialized
knowledge, the generalized network of information, use all means
for disseminating their own programs, but work within
constraints originating in the literate practice of politics. It
is hard to believe that in an age of limitless communication,
speakers, mainly in the USA, arguing for the most intricate
programs, will perform before an empty room in Congress. It is
also hard to believe that a language rooted in experiences
established a long time ago, and many times proved ineffective,
is maintained. Procedures, testifying more to the past than the
present, govern the activity of many legislative bodies (not only
in Great Britain, where this legacy translates into a dress code
as outmoded as the British monarchy). As with the executive
political experience and the infatuation of justice, symbolism
overtakes substance.
Nevertheless, under the pressure for higher efficiency, major
changes are taking place. Legislative practical experiences, as
disconnected as they are from new human practical experiences,
are less and less an exercise in convincing writing or in formal
logic. They increasingly reflect the expectations of globality
and often apply mediation, task distribution, and interactivity.
Electronic modeling is applied, simulation methods are tried
out. The new methods of accessing information free the
legislative politician from the time-consuming task of
accumulating data. Consultants and staff members make use of
powerful knowledge filters in order to involve in the political
process only information pertinent to the subject. Politicians
know that knowledge, at the right time and in the right context,
is power. Their new experience, as members of computerized
parliaments of many countries can testify, is that everyone has
the data, but only few know how to process it effectively. In
fact, political parties develop competitive processing programs
that will give politicians pursuing their goals more convincing
arguments in a public debate, or in discussions leading to
legislative vote. The transparency brought about by means in the
civilization of illiteracy ensures public access to the debate.
The competitive edge is provided by the intelligent use of data.
Power, that elusive aspect of any political activity, comes from
the ability to process, not from the amount of information
stored.
All this, kept at a minimum in this presentation, might sound
like anticipation, or dreams for the politician of the future.
It is not. The process is probably still at the beginning, but
unavoidable. It will sooner or later affect such components as
time in office-permanence of a representative reflects
literacy-based expectations- procedures for public evaluation,
candidacy, and voting. It will also require a rethinking of the
relation between politicians and constituents. Rethinking the
motivations and methods of legislation, even its legitimacy, are
goals worthy of being pursued. Increased mediation affects the
connection between facts and political action. Unless balanced
by the use of the new means of communication that allow personal
interaction with each voter, it will continue to alienate
politics from the public. Mass-media politics is already a thing
of the past-not because television is overridden by the Internet,
but because of the need to create a framework for individual
motivation for political action. Political efficiency is based
on human interaction. What counts is not the medium, as this
will continue to change, but what is accomplished through the
medium.
To create a legislative framework that reflects the new nature of
human relations and is appropriate to the pragmatic context
means to understand the nature of the processes leading to the
civilization of illiteracy. Consolidation of bureaucracy is as
counter-indicative of this understanding as is the continuation
of the monarchy and the House of Lords in Great Britain. Both
these phenomena are as convincing as the mass generation of
electoral letters that report on how the political representative
best served his or her constituency. A sense of the process, as
it involves the need to overcome models based on sequentiality,
dualism, and deterministic reaction, can be realized only when
the political process itself is synchronized with the prevalent
pragmatics.