Citizenship 2.0

[Commentary] We've finally reached something of a left-right equilibrium in the dramatic restructuring of the public sphere that has been underway for the past decade. Against this background, on Nov. 4 the Obama campaign sent an e-mail to supporters from the president-elect signaling aspirations to convert the campaign's success with social networking technologies into a tool not merely for winning but for good governance. Such a conversion would require transcending the factional patterns that currently define Internet-based political communication. It would demand a category shift: to remake the tools of factional organization as instruments of broad, cross-partisan and respectful public engagement. Can this be done? If not, the Obama team's digital network could well become nothing more than an outsized, 21st-century version of a ward machine. If it can be done, it could restore a richer experience of citizenship.

(Allen is the UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.)