Intellectuals and new technologies

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Abstract
Critical intellectuals were traditionally those who utilized their skills of speaking and writing to denounce injustices and abuses of power, and to fight for truth, justice, progress, and other positive values. In the words of Jean-Paul Sartre (1974: 285), "the duty of the intellectual is to denounce injustice wherever it occurs. " The modern critical intellectual's field of action was what Habermas (1989) called the public sphere of democratic debate, political dialogue, and the writing and discussion of newspapers, journals, pamphlets, and books. Of course, not all intellectuals were critical or by any means progressive. With the rise of modern societies, there was a division between physical and mental labor, and intellectuals became those who specialized in mental labor, producing and distributing ideas and culture, with some opposing and some legitimating the established forms of society. Thus, intellectuals were split into those critical and oppositional individuals who opposed injustice and oppression, as contrasted to those producers of ideology who legitimated the forms of class, race, and gender domination and inequality in modern societies. In the following reflections, I want to discuss some challenges from postmodern theory to the classical conceptions of the critical intellectual and some of the ways that new technologies and new public spheres offer new possibilities for democratic discussion and intervention, which call for a redefinition of the intellectual. Consequently, I will discuss some changes in the concept of the public sphere and how new technologies and new spheres of public debate and conflict suggest some new possibilities for redefining intellectuals in the present era. The Public Sphere and the Intellectual Jurgen Habermas's concept of the public sphere described a space of institutions and practices between the private interests of those in civil society and the realm of state power. The public sphere thus mediates between the domains of the family and the workplace--where private interests prevail--and the state which often exerts arbitrary forms of power and domination. What Habermas (1989) called the "bourgeois public sphere" consisted of the realm of public assemblies, pubs and coffee houses, literary salons, and meeting halls where individuals gathered to discuss their common public affairs and to organize against arbitrary and oppressive forms of social and public power. The public sphere was nurtured by newspapers, journals, pamphlets, and books which were read and discussed in social sites like pubs and coffee houses. The bourgeois public sphere was thus the locale--alongside universities--in which intellectuals were produced and functioned. Emerging forms of democracy required forms of public discussion and debate of the issues of the day and intellectuals came to specialize in writing, speaking about, and debating those issues of common concern and importance. Bourgeois societies split, of course, across class lines and different class factions produced different political parties, organizations, and ideologies with each party attracting specialists in words and writing known as intellectuals. Oppressed groups also developed their own insurgent intellectuals, ranging from representatives of working class organizations, to women like Mary

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