Sunday, June 29, 2003
I'm a little late joining the Emergent Democracy conversation but here's my starter for 10.
Phil Jones raises the question of disenfranchisement. How is it possible that millions marched to stop a war we all knew was being prosecuted for reasons other than those given to us by our elected representatives, yet the war went ahead? More importantly, how does emergent democracy, whether via weblogs or other means, help us with this problem? Isn't it just all talk, he implicitly asks.
Phil raises the same question as that raised by Joi Ito - how do these new modes of social interaction engage with the traditional levers of power? He talks about reputation management of political candidates as one way. My answer is: experiment.
I think we should try lots of new ways of interacting with power, including spontaneously creating it for ourselves. A couple of years ago I wrote an article on Runtime about virtual countries. This expressed (badly, reading it back) the idea I'd had that nation states were tied to geography, while the web wasn't. Maybe this opened up the possibility of creating alternative societies not organised on geographic lines. In some ways this is banal, we know many such societies exist on the web. But I was thinking about more than just social networks - why not organise economies, education, healthcare, transport - even defence in the virtual sphere? And if you could do this, you might be able to create an ecology of societies or virtual republics that could compete for citizens (since you can't coerce someone to stay in a virtual state) according to the benefits they bring. Libertarians v. Keynesians, Communists v. Poujadists - let's see what works.
So far so grandiose and easy-to-dismiss. But I'm wondering whether variations on this idea can be used to close the gap between citizens and power (indeed, whether this isn't already beginning to happen). For example, what if you set up an alternative or parallel local council in your town? Could be as simple as using the net to provide direct voting on all issues before the council. Come to think of it you could do the same for central government without too much hassle. How about a slight alternative - instead of direct democracy virtual citizens juries chosen at random for a particular period. Getting too expensive? Ask for donations from participants. Getting too big? Form a political party around the idea of direct or deliberative democracy and roll it out into real-world elections. I'm sure there are millions of other ideas as well - point is we should start trying some of them out and report back on which seem to be working and which don't. Less talk more action.
Anyone want to help?
Phil Jones raises the question of disenfranchisement. How is it possible that millions marched to stop a war we all knew was being prosecuted for reasons other than those given to us by our elected representatives, yet the war went ahead? More importantly, how does emergent democracy, whether via weblogs or other means, help us with this problem? Isn't it just all talk, he implicitly asks.
Phil raises the same question as that raised by Joi Ito - how do these new modes of social interaction engage with the traditional levers of power? He talks about reputation management of political candidates as one way. My answer is: experiment.
I think we should try lots of new ways of interacting with power, including spontaneously creating it for ourselves. A couple of years ago I wrote an article on Runtime about virtual countries. This expressed (badly, reading it back) the idea I'd had that nation states were tied to geography, while the web wasn't. Maybe this opened up the possibility of creating alternative societies not organised on geographic lines. In some ways this is banal, we know many such societies exist on the web. But I was thinking about more than just social networks - why not organise economies, education, healthcare, transport - even defence in the virtual sphere? And if you could do this, you might be able to create an ecology of societies or virtual republics that could compete for citizens (since you can't coerce someone to stay in a virtual state) according to the benefits they bring. Libertarians v. Keynesians, Communists v. Poujadists - let's see what works.
So far so grandiose and easy-to-dismiss. But I'm wondering whether variations on this idea can be used to close the gap between citizens and power (indeed, whether this isn't already beginning to happen). For example, what if you set up an alternative or parallel local council in your town? Could be as simple as using the net to provide direct voting on all issues before the council. Come to think of it you could do the same for central government without too much hassle. How about a slight alternative - instead of direct democracy virtual citizens juries chosen at random for a particular period. Getting too expensive? Ask for donations from participants. Getting too big? Form a political party around the idea of direct or deliberative democracy and roll it out into real-world elections. I'm sure there are millions of other ideas as well - point is we should start trying some of them out and report back on which seem to be working and which don't. Less talk more action.
Anyone want to help?
