There are no politics anymore: we've all disappeared.

Politics? What do we even mean by "politics" anymore?

"Representative Democracy" or "Electronic Republic"?

Dick Morris' "Vote.Com" or David Broder's "Democracy Derailed"?

And, if there are no "politics" anymore, how could journalism about "politics" not be radically altered as well?

Journalism also has some pretty serious issues it must face.

Last year, when Leslie Stahl moderated a panel of media and technology leaders at the Columbia School of Journalism, she asked them to comment on how the Internet would impact democracy . . . and they all gave the same answer, as if they had all been "Borg'ed" in the same boiling-batch together:

"I don't know what effect the Internet will have on democracy except that it will be dramatic, how could I know when I don't even know where all this technology is going...all I know is that we don't want any humans getting in the way."

No humans! Could that mean no journalists? Could this mean that "resistance is futile"?

The belief that journalists matter and their words have meaning and that this meaning matters in "politics" is now widely and openly challenged. Could it be that journalists (and their words and their meaning) have disappeared into the electric media environment? Swallowed whole by the Internet?

Could McLuhan be right? As Tom Wolfe asked 33 years ago?

If the medium is the message and the medium isn't human, then what right do humans have to "get in the way"? Could AOL, NBC, Bertelsman, Time-Warner and AT&T Labs all be right? (They were all on the podium with Ms. Stahl.)

There is a new sort of "machine" behind "politics" and it does not operate on human scale or at human speed. It's motto is...

"Politics is over, get the humans out of the way . . .*WE* run things now!"

Humanity stages a historic comeback: politics re-appears.

Electricity is to blame. Yes, electricity is the culprit. Electricity ended human-scale.

It was sometime in the mid-1800's that people began to notice that human action, thought, creativity and - crucially - detachment were disappearing. Up went the barricades. Spin went the printing presses. Dit-dit-da-dit went the telegraph lines. Zap went the humans.

We disappeared into our own electric media environment.

Nietzsche knew what was happening. "Thus Spake Zarathustra." From the caves of pre-electricity.

And, now, just when it seems that electricity has ultimately triumphed, when it appears that we have all become androids, cyborgs, soft-bots, meme-machines, Borg-burghers -- now -- we are presented with an historic opportunity -- re-appearing. Yes, it has been said over and over -- libraries are filled with the fractal- patterns stemming from the same seed -- that humans have abandoned humanity. Moaning. Entreating. Proposing. Programming. Worrying. Wondering. It's all the same.
And, now, science fiction is taken to be science fact. Re-engineered "people" without capacity for resistance stepping aside as technology takes over. What was once the food of the fringe is now the main-course for corporate titans.

"Get the humans out of the way!" They all say.

What delicious irony. Little do they know.

Just when journalists appear to have lost all capacity to speak (since their chosen media have been consumed, as well, by the electric environment), when words appear to have gone from a "drug" to a "drag" (since language itself is now the criminal), when everything has become "entertainment" (since the machines love to be "entertained"), a historic opportunity emerges -- re-appearance.

Will "Journalism" seize this opportunity? The opportunity to be human again. The opportunity to act on the human-scale again?

Can "Journalism" understand media?

Might "Journalism" help to put "policy" and the "polis" back into "politics"?

Mark Stahlman is President of New Media Associates, Inc., a New York-based company involved in new media-driven economic development, and a co-founder of New York New Media Association (NYNMA). Mr. Stahlman's critical commentary has appeared in his columns for Information Week, Network Computing and Computer Reseller News as well as other Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, WIRED, Inc., Upside and Red Herring. He is currently writing his first book, "The Battle for Cyberspace."