I will start working on my talking points for me talk at the 21st Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, Dec 27/28/29, 2004. I am speaking from 6PM-7PM on December 28. The title is The State of Emergent Democracy.
^^^Links
^^^What I said I would talk about
Outline of my talk - What I'm really going to talk about
- Obligatory humble remarks about my anti-techno-utopian critics
- Over-optimistic vision of Cyberspace, the bubble, walled gardens, blogs and wikis...
- History leading up to Emergent Democracy movement
- Summary of Paper
- "By direct democracy, we don’t mean simple majority rule, but a system that evolves away from the broadcast style of managed consensus to a democratic style of collective consensus derived from “many-to-many” conversations."
- "A functional democracy is governed by the majority while protecting the rights of minorities. To achieve this balance, a democracy relies on a competition of ideas, which, in turn, requires freedom of speech and the ability to criticize those in power without fear of retribution. In an effective representative democracy power must also be distributed to several points of authority to enable checks and balances and reconcile competing interests"
- "Competition of ideas - First Amendment - the freedoms of speech, of the press, and of peaceable assembly"
- DRM, Patriot Act, corporate mass media, privacy, copyright, control of the open Internet
- Fair use of news footage in documentaries
- "Whether a system is democratic or otherwise, people or groups with power or wealth often see no benefit in keeping the general population well informed, truly educated, their privacy ensured or their discourse uninhibited. Those are the very things that power and wealth fear most. Old forms of government have every reason to operate in secret, while denying just that privilege to subjects. The people are minutely scrutinized while the powerful are exempt from scrutiny." - Dee Hock
- "One of the fundamental contrasts between free democratic societies and totalitarian systems is that the totalitarian government (or other totalitarian organization) relies on secrecy for the regime but high surveillance and disclosure for all other groups, whereas in the civic culture of liberal democracy, the position is approximately the reverse." - Professor Geoffrey de Q Walker
- The limits of the Republic and representative democracy
- Political machines and the amplification of the extremes
- The weakened middle class and moderates
- Professor James S. Fishkin, Director of Stanford University’s Center for Deliberative Democracy
- Emergence and Emergent Systems
- Ants (Steven Johnson), Neurons (William Calvin), In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jane Jacobs)
- Blogs and feedback systems
- Emergent leadership
- Reflection of US Election
- Dean Campaign
- Dean Campaign became a place - emergent leadership
- fundraising was successful
- Created and active movement which has spun off into a variety of active groups
- Ultimately failed to influence mass media and lost to "the machine"
- Kerry campaign
- Used traditional campaign of message and control and was uable/unwilling to support bottom-up
- emergence, open systems, virality and bridge building across media
- What do we do?
- Provide tools - blogs, wikis, feedback systems
- Protect the commons - Creative Commons
- Protect the open Internet - ICANN, IETF, et al
- Provide Voices and Freedom of Speech - Global Voices
^^^^^Global Voices Covenant 0.2
We believe in free speech: in protecting the right to speak -- and the right to listen. We believe in universal access to the tools of speech.
To that end, we want to enable everyone who wants to speak to have the means to speak -- and everyone who wants to hear that speech, the means to listen to it.
Thanks to new tools, speech need no longer be controlled by those who own the means of publishing and distribution, or by governments that would restrict thought and communication. Now, anyone can wield the power of the press. Everyone can tell their stories to the world.
We want to build bridges across the gulfs of culture and language that divide people, so as to understand each other more fully. We want to work together more effectively, and act more powerfully.
We believe in the power of direct connection. The bond between individuals from different worlds is personal, political and powerful. We believe conversation across boundaries is essential to a future that is free, fair, prosperous and sustainable - for all citizens of this planet.
While we continue to work and speak as individuals, we also want to identify and promote our shared interests and goals. We pledge to respect, assist, teach, learn from, and listen to one other.
We are Global Voices.
- Tactically?
- Reach and empower the middle class
- build bridges across languages and media
- Tune feedback, aggregation, filtering and reputation systems
- Work with and integrate with traditional systems of media, governance, action
- Build alternative global network of trust between individuals
- Tie in to CCC mission and discuss with floor