Habermas Relevant to a Wired Public Sphere?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Habermas Relevant to a Wired Public Sphere?
I have never been a Habermas scholar - I differ from many commentators in this sphere in my philosophical orientation, which owes much more to Russell, Ayer, Quine, McLuhan and Wittgenstein than to continental philosophers like Heidegger, Husserl, Foucault and Habermas. But I certainly recognize the influence of Habermas - at philosophy conferences in the 80s when I was a grad student people would stop talking about him. So it's not surprising to see him surfacing here. More...