For Madison, it mattered that information, and particularly the information used by social movements, traveled slowly, so that a movement that arises in one part of the country would have difficulty spreading to other parts. He regarded this as a necessary condition for the success of republican government. If the Madison were alive today, he would probably regard the Internet with horror. The idea of direct democracy is also deeply embedded in cyberculture, that is, the cultural construction of the Internet by technologists. Yet the idea of direct democracy makes little sense.
Information technology does facilitate the distribution of political information.
But many things happen in the political process that nobody knows how to automate. Examples include legislative analysis, research, agenda formation, and coalition building. These are, not coincidentally, the primary functions of political intermediaries such as interest groups and political parties, not to mention legislative staffs. The Internet may be able to redistribute these activities geographically, but it will not eliminate them. Few things are more clearly impossible.