ABSTRACT
Just as life in the Athenian agora with its participatory democracy had depended on the invisible but material base of slavery, so technology would be the new slave, freeing more time for involvement in a democracy driven by participation, not consumption. Decisions made in the next decade, as microelectronic technology is applied to an ever widening range of uses, will determine whether the technology fosters a new set of political and social relations as significant as the development of liberal democracy. Nonetheless, the relationship between technology and democracy is not simply confined to its impact on the political and social processes inherent in modern democratic societies. The idea that recent and expected advances in computer technology and telecommunications will make it possible to achieve direct democracy at the required million-fold level is attractive not only to technologists, but also to social theorists and political philosophers.
