The Future of Teledemocracy. By Ted Becker and Christa Daryl Slaton. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. 248p. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Extract

As Ted Becker and Christa Slaton affirm in their introduction to The Future of Teledemocracy, this is not “just another book” of scholarly reflection but, rather, an account of “a way of life” (p. xii) in which they have played a central role. Consequently, instead of a detached, critical investigation of the dynamic encounter among technology, communication, and democratic politics, or even a dispassionate appraisal of the implications of a particular aspect of this encounter, what we receive in this book is an intimate digest of Becker and Slaton's 23-year “odyssey” on behalf of their own vision of teledemocracy—complete with “true blue allies” and powerful enemies “who opposed our ideology and had the means to halt our experiments” (p. xi)—framed by a futurist manifesto that unfortunately diminishes the contribution made by the chronicle of the authors' crusade.