ABSTRACT
The design of a public language, then, is a serious task, one pregnant with consequences and thus laden with extraordinary responsibility. (Weizenbaum 1976,102)
True participatory democracy in which the town meeting concept is extended via the ubiquitous computer networks to embrace whole nations, and even perhaps the world (Godfrey & Parkhill 1980,70-71)
How can alternative procedures of communication be suggested? By whom? Where and how could transformations of the classical, liberalist episteme arise? First of all we have attempted to show that the ways in which technology and society have been spoken and conceptualized are highly determinate of the types of social and technological intervention that are possible and/or implemented.
