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 )

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.