As I write this, we are in the final hours of another election cycle. Soon, we will be talking about the role of technology in the Obama campaign. The campaign has made tremendous use of social technology to raise money, get its message out and motivate volunteers. The extent of the impact is likely to be argued extensively over the coming days. Yet there is a larger question, what affect has all of this had on the basic fabric of democracy and of our daily lives?
I must admit, I have not been as intimately involved with the Obama campaign as I was with the Dean campaign, so it may be that what I haven’t seen in this election cycle was there and I just missed it, but it seems like there were a few things that were missing that worry me.
The first is what I like to call the invitation to innovate. There was not the same imperative to innovate for the Obama campaign as there was for the Dean campaign. Many of the social network tools that we sought to create five years ago are done much better with off the shelf tools of today. I would go so far as to suggest that the use of social media far surpassed what we dreamt of five years ago. This time, the innovators have gotten lost in the crowd of early adopters and the early majority.
The second thing that I missed in this election cycle was the breathless theoreticians. Perhaps somewhere, someone was talking about whether or not the Obama campaign can bring about a Habermasian Public Sphere. A few different groups talked about publicly drafting policy, but like similar discussions in 2003 and 2004, this hasn’t seemed to get very far.
Now, grassroots organizations are talking about retooling, about how they can keep everyone that got energized by the Obama campaign involved. Will we see a real move towards a more open government? Will we see progress in eGovernance? Will we learn from those who came before us, and use technology, not only for fundraising and volunteer recruitment, but also to create a new Public Sphere?
Will we use technology to build a bridge to 18th Century Democracy?
]]>Click here to join.
]]>Framework for Extreme Democracy
Overview and History of Development of Extreme Democracy (interview)
Emergence, Emergent Democracy & the Emerging Second Super Power (no guide)
Extreme democracy (interview)
Networks
Politics and Networks
Strategy and Political Process
DeanSpace
6.4 Billion Points of Light (interview)
Activist Technology
Political Tools
Future of Democracy
The question I raised during the discussion was how do the tools and processes of extreme democracy map into this matrix?
]]>Power law
N = c/n
What factors control the rank?
When is the power law important?
When is the power law not important?
Traditional democracy does not scale well from small to large groups.
Networked society is not constrained by geography.
Extreme democracy takes place in real time.
“Failure to scale is evident when people feel disenfranchised, when they no longer have sufficient contact or interaction with their government to see their wishes reflected in its actions.”
Mitch Ratcliffe
Politicians express this disconnect by seeing only their own well being, sacrificing the common good for their own benefit at the expense of others.”
“Rule of 150”
“Mohandas K. Gandhi said, ‘One cannot unite a community without newspaper or journal of some kind.’ These separate trends of individual expression through blogs, an egalitarian journalism, and organized online activism are waking unrecognized communities of interest that will confound a political system designed for representation geographic constituencies. A concerted effort by the peoples of the world can transform the perception of the means and ends of government. Meanwhile, politics, the art of participation in social decision-making and a practice closely related to being "polite," which leans to achieve refinement, continues to function essentially as it has throughout history, through debate and compromise among people.”
Mitch Ratcliffe
“An answer to the continuing debate about political process will be based the integration of many, though not all, threads in recent human development into an expanded concept of the individual as the basis for the concept of sovereignty and the redefinition of the role of government institutions in order to revitalize political processes. A political philosophy must incorporate more than the experience of participation. An analysis of power, definite ideas about the role of the citizen and the government, and the principles society will embrace about the value of the individual are required, as well. Extreme democracy seeks to provide these foundational ideas to place the thrill of emergent organizations into socio-political context.”
Mitch Ratcliffe
Our republic and the founder’s distrust of the people has been documented. What do you mean by deep trust in the people?
It’s been my observation that it takes at least two of the major driving forces for change to be acting in order for a movement to be widespread – social, political, environmental, technological, demographic. Extreme democracy certainly has the technological driving force. What other major force is driving the acceptance of extreme democracy?
Do you see the change brought on by extreme democracy to be revolutionary or evolutionary?
Is our political system broken?
In the Wisdom of Crowds, and other recent books, as well as First Democracy, the need for and the power of judgment has been shown to be important for a democracy:
5. Citizen Wisdom: “In First Democracy, ordinary people were asked to use their wisdom to pass judgment on their leaders.” Woodruff concludes, “…the heart of democracy is the idea that ordinary people have the wisdom to govern themselves.”
6. Reasoning Without Knowledge: “Reasoning without knowledge is essential in government,” he writes. “Doing it well requires open debate. Doing it poorly is the fault of leaders who silence opposition, conceal the basis of their reasoning, or pretend to an authority that does not belong to them.”
What do we need to do to develop judgment in the people?
What do you see are the necessary conditions to enable the widespread application of extreme democracy? Principles, goals, systems & tools, and applications?
What are some examples of recent applications of extreme democracy?
What’s the future of extreme democracy?
In rich societies, what really affects happiness is the quality of personal relationships. Always at the top comes the quality of family life or other close personal relationships. Then comes work-having it (if you want it) and enjoying the meaning and comradeship it can bring. And then comes relationships with friends and strangers in the street.
Some societies are much happier than others, and Scandinavian countries always come out near the top. This is largely because people trust each other more there than in other places. In Britain and the United States, the number of people who believe that "most other people can be trusted" has halved in the last 50 years, and this reflects the growth of an individualism that makes personal success more important than almost anything else.
These facts call for a revolution in how we think about ourselves and about how the government can help us to flourish. It becomes clear that faster economic growth is not the most important objective for a society. We should not sacrifice human relationships nor peace of mind for the sake of higher living standards, which will be growing anyway.
This insight should affect all areas of public policy. I cannot argue each proposal here, though they are argued in my book on Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. Let me just set down a few proposals rather boldly.
• The most important thing we can affect is the values that our children acquire. Schools should teach children systematically that the secret of a happy life is in giving to other people.
Evidence-based programs exist for doing this and should become a part of the core curriculum.
• The least happy people in our society are people with a record of mental illness. Three-quarters of people with depression or hyper-anxiety receive no treatment, although psychological therapies exist that can cure over half of these terrible cases. Such therapies should be available for free.
• Advertising makes people feel they need more and thus makes them less happy with what they have. One policy model is in Sweden, which bans advertising aimed at children under 12.
• We should stop apologizing about taxes: They discourage us from working even harder and sacrificing further our relationships with family and friends. We should also persist with income redistribution, since an extra pound or dollar gives more happiness to poor people than to the rich. That argument also implies redistribution to the Third World.
We are in a new situation for mankind, where further wealth creation is now unnecessary for survival. If we want to become still happier, we need a new strategy from the one pursued over the last 50 years - we need to put human relationships first.
About the Author
Richard Layard is one of Britain's best-known economists, a member of the House of Lords, and author of Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (Penguin, 2005), which may be ordered from www.wfs.org/bkshelf.htm.
From The Futurist, July - August 2007
We have in our definition of our American democracy – of, by and for the people. While I’ve said this many times, I’m still not quite sure what it means. But, it seems to be related to the goals. And, the three goals I see for extreme democracy are:
1. Democracy: Participative, deliberative, grass roots, collaborative, one to one, open democracy, or many other descriptive terms for a broader involvement of the people.
2. Partisan: Political campaigns for people to represent us (by the people)
3. Advocacy: Activism, issues related goals (for the people)
These three sets of goals are vastly different.
Extreme democracy then has to have systems and tools to satisfy those goals. The tools are all the social software programs in use and being developed to foster the applications - communications, collaboration, conversation, deliberation, attraction, affinity, documentation, research, etc.
For me, if I can gain understanding of this three dimensional matrix, then I can begin to develop strategies and plans for the dissemination of the parts.
And, of course, it needs a set of principles to guide everything.
I’d really like to hear for you. What do you think of the structure? What are some more of the elements? How can we begin to complete the matrix?
Abraham Lincoln’s famous 1858 speech emphasized "a house divided against itself cannot stand” – words that also come to mind as I was pondering the excess divisiveness so prevalent in my country today. We are presently building silos of ideologies, isolating ourselves into factions and preaching to our choirs about the faults and defects of “the other.” Each silo is suffering from “groupthink” – reinforcing its own dogma and avoiding any feedback that disagrees with the party line. This simply builds the walls dividing us higher and higher, making reconciliation more difficult.
In my mind, there is no doubt that we are well along the way of irreparably dividing ourselves here in the U.S. I get emails every week, from liberal friends and conservative friends, some calling themselves libertarians, some progressives, that shock me with their vitriol, the mean-spirited nature of their commentaries or, in lieu of their own compositions, the texts they are forwarding which contain such sarcasm and dismissive characterizations of people with whom they disagree. It is as if many people, friends of mine included, are sacrificing relationships in order to be right, subordinating community to their righteousness and, in some cases, putting their opinions ahead of friendships and family. Technology is allowing us to go beyond the limits of common decency because we don’t have “the other” facing us; we can hide behind the shield of technology and hurl our insults from the safety of our computers.
We are taking our opinions far too seriously when we put our prejudices and ideologies ahead of people. There is nothing wrong or unhealthy with contention, debate and even argument as long as it is in the context of respect and relationship with the other person. Successful people realize the benefits of contentiousness and debate. It often improves the outcome as both sides sometimes see value in the other’s position and, usually, a better result emerges. George Washington saw this in our nation’s founding. A strong advocate of opposing sides on issues engaging in debate, he recognized how this could lead to optimal outcomes. However, he was also wary of partisanship that could lead to concretized positions and less than optimum results, often a compromise to the lowest common denominator.
Healthy differences of opinion have helped America grow and prosper. Respectful contentiousness comes with citizenship in a democracy! The diversity of ideas and cultures has proven incredibly valuable in our nation’s history. After the contentiousness the opposing players can laugh together, have a beer and leave with good natured feelings for all concerned. But vitriolic, cruel and dismissive sarcasm and meanness leads to rifts that may prove permanently damaging to others – people, perhaps even friends and family members. Like war without explosions, it leads to deep wounds that cannot be healed with a beer or a laugh.
What effect does this “dissing” (disrespectful and dismissive behavior) of each other have in the rest of the world? How many culture wars are going on, above the surface and below, where the opposing parties harbor hate and disrespect for the other side. America, once a model for the power of a diverse democracy, has now become a model of separation, “us versus them” which reflects in our domestic politics (which is reported around the world every day) and our hegemonious foreign policy. The world is becoming more divided in stark contrast to the 1945 U.S.-sponsored vision for a united world (the United Nations). The United States is now engaged in a new “civil war;” instead of blue versus grey it is red versus blue..
We are creating a “divisble” nation and a “divisble” world. Can the nation still stand if it is divided? Was Lincoln wrong? Or will it fall apart as ideological factions take precedence over relationships with fellow citizens?
Borders on maps are human constructs which are artificial anyway so the world won’t really be divided – only the people will. States and nations are also artificial so they may go extinct but not the continents on which they once stood. The planet will survive our divisiveness but will our civilizations?
Do you know the story of the collapse of the Easter Island civilization? They could build 80-ton statues 33 feet high which remain there today as evidence of their civilization. And they could drag them 12 miles where they arranged them in a pattern, a seemingly impossible task given their lack of technology. They could navigate the Pacific Ocean, reaching the most remote islands in the world. However, to do this they could also cut down their rich rain forest, ultimately dooming themselves to extinction. With no trees left for fishing canoes, the Easter Islanders turned to finding more and more reasons to hate one another, eventually resorting to cannibalism and devouring each other. The population fell by 90% in a few years and neither the society nor the island ecology have recovered in the 300 years since.
How can people be so dumb, you might ask? Evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond says that sometimes it's a failure to perceive a problem, especially if it comes on very slowly, like climate change. Often it's a matter of conflicting interests with no resolution at a higher level than the interests --- warring clans, greedy industries. Or there may be a failure to examine and understand the past.
Unless more people start insisting on respectful communications about their ideologies – their “interests” - and encourage dialogue rather than war as a means of reconciling their different interests, our species will continue to divide and fragmentize. Will our incivility toward one another degenerate into some modern version of cannibalism? Unless we cease this warring – domestically with each other and internationally through our foreign policy – we just might continue to perceive the problem until it is too late.
We are better than this! We can do much better in getting along with one another. So let’s use technology to bring us closer together, not further separate us. Let’s stand for a higher road in reconciling our differences. If we insist on perpetuating this divisiveness, humans could be added to the endangered species list.
Recorded history has been consistent regarding the lifecycle of empires. All the ones with which we are familiar – Mongolian, Spanish, Portuguese, Roman, British, Soviet and Ottoman to name a few – have not been overturned by another power. All of them have imploded, weighted down by their own hubris, much like Easter Island. Let us walk a different path and cease this divisiveness before we ruin this great country. Let us start the essential self-reflection we have so stalwartly avoided.
Join me in ending the cycles of incivility, negativity, disrespect and sarcasm. Take a stand by refusing to engage in conversations or email exchanges that perpetuate these cycles that take us all down to lower and lower levels of human relationship. Stop listening to it; stop repeating it; stop encouraging this pattern of divisiveness. Instead of opposing what we don’t like, let’s start proposing what we do want. Instead of spouting our opinions and preaching to those in our silo, let’s reach out to those who have different viewpoints. Nothing will change unless we do.
John Renesch
Future Shapers Monthly, #108, July 2007
www.renesch.com
The written work included here is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial 2.5 License.
This is a call to more involvement in the democratic process. It’s a vindication to deliberative approaches to democracy.
The problems are too big, too complex to be left to anyone but the people.
Whether this is true or not, it reminded of a game I played as a manager in IBM many years ago.
A group of managers were randomly given a set of colored chips. The chips had different values. The rules of the game were to trade them. While I’ve forgotten the rules of the game. It became clear that the outcome dependent not upon your skill at using the rules of the game to win, but what you were given at the games beginning.
I was very competitive at that time and I wanted to win every game I played – sports, cards or business. I still remember how badly I felt, and how frustrated I was. It was not pleasant. And, it was only a simple game…
Let’s see, what was that old saying? Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach them how to fish, and…
The question selected was, “What strategies would you support to aid low-income families in improving themselves financially? What factors are important to you in supporting a strategy?” The question was too complex for the people to get their minds around.
The group started off on an issue not related to the fundamental aspect of the question. The conversation started with consideration of low income people have gotten in debt.
“Not getting them off the hook, but teaching them personal responsibility”, suggested one participant.
“No it’s not responsibility”, responded another. “It’s financial literacy. Responsibility is an emotional issue. It implies that the poor have no responsibility.”
“Poor that do not exhibit responsibility get locked up. I believe that responsibility goes up as wealth goes up. Financial planning is not necessarily the solution.”
“Financial literacy is different than planning. Without literacy you can’t plan. No money is no money. You can’t pay debts without resources.”
Another voice chimed in. “I see it differently. We have an ethic in the country now: we purchase things we can’t afford.”
“Y and if you have some money you can get credit. It’s not just the poor that get into debt. How many people with college education have gotten themselves into debt?”
“Unfortunately in this culture you are measured by what you have not who you are.”
“The ethic should be: If you can’t afford it, you can’t buy it.”
A quiet moment.
“What do you do if you need the basics?”
A suggestion, “Low interest loans at the lower end of the scale.”
“No, responsibility is not the right way to go.”
Another voice, “It’s important to differentiate between responsibility and literacy.”
One of the participants linked back to an earlier thread, “There is tremendous pressure to buy. Our whole purpose is to be consumers.”
Another jump to an earlier thread. “We give low interest loans to foreign countries. Why not give low interest loans to back the development of the poor.”
“Yes. Skills. Education.”
“Make that a low or non interest loan.”
“You know not just the poor need financial literacy”, suggested one. “It should be part of school. You know, basic financial concepts. The people who are in poverty don’t have basics. What we’ve been talking about is way above poverty.”
“For the poor, they are asked: Why are you poor? Why do you stay poor?”
“The people in poverty must learn that ‘It’s not your fault that you are poor’. We have to Change our view about poverty. We have to shift to how get every body employed – housing – health care etc.’
“Maybe it’s basic education…”