How Social Software Can Improve Democracy

Geek Satire writes "Politics breeds cynicism; politicians seem to pander to contradictory focus groups to get elected, then break their promises to everyone. Mass mailings and faxings overwhelm their staffs, and who knows if you can tell your representatives what you really think? Experienced techie and political consultant Silona Bonewald (creator of the Transparent Federal Budget) believes that simple software solutions can fix these problems and more. O'Reilly News recently discussed with her how social software can improve democracy and leadership."

Comments

I wish

[$RANDOMLUSER]

If we could use all this technology to make a real direct democracy, we could get rid of this two-party representative democracy. Imagine, government of the people, in real time.

Re:I wish

[Aerynvala]

But then we'd need to have a BuSab and I just don't see that happening in reality.

Re:I wish

[kdemetter]

You underestimate how easy people can be influenced by the media.

This direct democracy would only work if everyone was very politically involved , which is just not the case.

Also , pure direct democracy , if everyone would really from their own opninion , would slow everything done , because there is always someone who disagrees with it , resulting in endless discussions and debates , and no real solutions.

As a goverment type , i think a good idea to try might be technocracy : decisions are made according to what the best solution the problem is , based on scientifical approach and simulation models , that can veryfied by everyone.

Sure , this isn't completely flawless either , i'm sure , but it may solve some of todays problems ( for instance , by solving the problem of global warming rather than endlessly debating it )

Re:I wish

[secondhand_Buddah]

In fact, in a direct democracy, doing "more to address global warming" would pass with a veto-proof majority: 68% [time.com].

The answer to this is of course, that in a direct democracy, we would have more influence (votes) in the areas of our specialization. I would have a much greater say in IT, especially software, than would say for instance a doctor. This would enable the focused expertise of the general populace to be utilized in making informed decisions.
This is obviously a very simplified example. There would need to be layers of voting and decision makers. These layers would ideally be based upon levels of experience in the world. With this approach we could get back to a situation where the wise are making the important decisions
The democracy of old was conceived to work in much smaller groups of people. where participation was possible. Today, voting once every 4 years for some individual to represent you, is an insult to the spirit of democracy. We have been fooled into thinking that we live in democracies, when in fact we no longer do in the spirit of the concept

Having said that I do believe that technology can re-enliven democracy in its truest sense. With networks and uniquely identifiable devices we can openly and continuously vote on issues that effect our every day lives.
For example, in the case of open document standards: do you think for one moment that we would not have decided 10 years ago that all public records would have to be stored in an open format? Instead we have this public circus that we continually discuss on Slashdot, while microsoft bribes its standards into existence while we stand around and watch helplessly (for the most part). This is one simple example, but extrapolate this by 10 000 times and you can begin to get a feeling for the scope of the magnitude of the problem facing us today. More importantly there are those who would seek to stop true democracy from happening, and they are the ones who would be willing to sacrifice (your) freedom for personal gain. these people are the real enemy, and they are amoung us

Nice to see someone thinking along these lines...

[azgard]

..as I have been thinking about such system too.

I wanted to map laws that are passed in Czech parliament to simple statements (such as "increases taxes", "limits freedom of speech") and then anybody could create their own profile and test this profile against all the laws that have been passed, and this would be connected to parliament voting data to select which party he should vote for. And all the data would be publicly available (except for the personal profiles, of course), so anyone could reproduce the result.

Also, I have been thinking about social networking. It would be cool if we could get past the reputation systems that just have a reputation as a single number, and we could also measure reputation depending on how the reputation is connected among people; so it would be impossible for an isolated group of people (connected to single entity) gain high reputation by giving high reputation to each other.

I like what these people are doing, and I applaud them for trying to make the system more democratic.

Should a statesman lead or follow?

[Mandrel]

The article has a definition of statesman I like:

It's also an important function of government to be a statesman and that's one of the things I think that's lacking in modern government these days is very rarely do you ever see a politician actually being a statesman anymore, being the middle ground that several different groups come to when they're diverging on topics to find a middle ground. One of the things I've been working on is tools to help enable that.

Often strong leadership is identified with a politician forcing through what they think is best, despite opposition. However in a democracy I see the role leadership as arguing strongly for you believe in, but then letting the people have the final say.

I'm actually in favour of having each (lower-house) representative run regular referenda within their electorates to determine their vote in the legislature. In each referendum the representative is given one proxy vote for each constituent who didn't cast a ballot, preventing control by a vocal minority.

To allow constituents to debate and be informed about issues, without the information overload talked about in the article, a system like my Make the Case site could be used to build and preserve a closely-argued community memory on important topics.

Re:Nice to see someone thinking along these lines.

[Yetihehe]

Also, I have been thinking about social networking. It would be cool if we could get past the reputation systems that just have a reputation as a single number, and we could also measure reputation depending on how the reputation is connected among people; so it would be impossible for an isolated group of people (connected to single entity) gain high reputation by giving high reputation to each other.

I think Meta Government is good answer. It's not too advanced yet, but worth mentioning.

Re:Improve, not fix

[azgard]

In practice, this is not a problem for several reasons:

1. If you are not interested in the issue, you just don't vote - it's as simple as that.

2. If you are interested, you are going to get the information. And there are simple solutions to this problem too - for example, in Switzerland, every voter receives a summary which contains details and debate points about the legislation they are voting about.

3. If someone is completely ignorant, then he votes randomly, and effect of such people in voting will cancel out.

4. If someone is manipulated (so he votes against his interests but not randomly, as in point 3), then there exists a manipulator. This manipulator thus can be exposed, and, moreover, to manipulate large amount of individual people, albeit stupid, requires more resources than to manipulate individual politicians. So even in this case, direct democracy is superior.

Re:Improve the Republic .. not the democracy

[sigzero]

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:

"From bondage to spiritual faith;
  from spiritual faith to great courage;
  from courage to liberty;
  from liberty to abundance;
  from abundance to selfishness;
  from selfishness to apathy;
  from apathy to dependence;
  from dependency back again into bondage."