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rebooting america PDF

256 Pages·2008·1.39 MB·English
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© 2008 by the Personal Democracy Press http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us Rebooting Democracy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. ISBN: 978-0-9817509-0-3 Printed in the United States of America C o n t e n t s Preface 1 Foreword 5 Esther Dyson Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 11 to: Micah L sifry, Personal Democracy Forum 2008 19 Zack Exley 21st Century neo-enlightenment 27 Julie Barko Germany echo Chambers = Democracy 32 David Weinberger Participatory Democracy Demands Participation 38 Michael Turk Winning the Future in the Personal Democracy Age 43 Newt Gingrich Participation As sustainable Cooperation In Pursuit of Public Goals 48 Yochai Benkler By the People, For the People 54 Andrew Rasiej the Merciful Death of the Freedom of Information Act and the Birth of true Government transparency: A short History 59 Ellen Miller the Void We Must Fill 64 Richard C. Harwood smartmobbing Democracy 70 Howard Rheingold Weaning Campaigns from old Media’s teat 75 Brad Templeton the Power of Inclusion 79 Marie Wilson In the Beginning there Were Wikis 83 Joshua Levy saving America from Its 18th Century Political system 87 Jan Frel and Nicco Mele small “d” Democracy 92 Susan Crawford Professional Politicians Beware! 95 Aaron Swartz sidewalks for Democracy online 101 Steven L. Clift Privacy in the Internet Age: time to Go? 108 Glenn Harlan Reynolds Can social network sites enable Political Action? 112 danah boyd In skypeoogletubeapedia We trust 117 Martin Kearns Grassroots Activism is More than a Campaign 122 Morra Aarons-Mele Corruption, technology and Constitutional Design 126 Zephyr Teachout our Voting Re-Public 133 John C. Bonifaz Checks and Balances Reinvigorated 139 Craig Newmark the “Killer App” of Public Participation 142 Mark Murphy Citizen 2 0 147 Nancy E. Tate and Mary G. Wilson the Last top-Down Campaign 151 Joe Trippi tangled signals of Democracy 155 Micah L. Sifry Finding Your obviousmeter 161 Matt Stoller Congress Reloaded 165 Matthew Burton Beyond WarGames 168 Douglas Rushkoff the obvious Answer: online Voting 171 Allison H. Fine Who needs elected officials? 177 Tara Hunt new Gadgets Do not new Humanity Make 181 Avery Knapp and Tennyson McCalla Deliberative Democracy in theory and Practice 185 Kaliya Hamlin Government by the People 192 Beth Simone Noveck self-organized self-Government 198 Scott Heiferman the Digital Will of the People 201 Pablo del Real Political Collaborative Production 204 Clay Shirky Community Information Commons 209 Harry C. Boyte the ethics of openness 215 Jeff Jarvis Creating Humane Codelaw 221 Gene Koo Digital natives as self-Actualizing Citizens 225 W. Lance Bennett A Millennial Upgrade for American Democracy 231 David B. Smith Glossary 237 About the Editors 243 About Personal Democracy Forum 247 PReFACe his project began as so many good things do, over a cup of cofee. Our conversation wandered to talking about new social t media tools like blogs and social networking sites and their important role in fostering an explosion of public participation in and around the national political campaigns. We started wondering when we might see the rise of similar public energies and optimism about government and governing. For it’s clear we’re living in a new age, where millions of people can participate directly in governance and policy making, not just in ratifying the results on Election Day. Te Internet is putting individual voters, and networks of activ- ists, in positions that used to be the sole reserve of professionals. Today anyone can be a reporter, a fundraiser or a community organizer; all it takes is an Internet connection and a compelling message. And so we wondered: as the Internet revolution hits the institutions of American democracy, how might it change things for the better? Dana Perino, the White House Press Secretary, summed up the typical response of government ofcials accustomed to shutting cit- izens out of governance when she responded to a question from a P R e FA C e reporter earlier this year about the Iraq war by saying, “You had input. Te American people have input every four years, and that’s the way our system is set up.” In other words, the people had their say at the election booth (a vote that may or may not have been recorded and counted accurately, by the way) and now it’s our turn to run the coun- try as we see ft, away from the watchful, interfering eye of citizens. As we have seen, this kind of thinking and behavior is dangerous for Americans and for American democracy. On January 21, 2009, a new tenant will occupy the Oval Ofce, and that person will be wise to continue to build on the public input and participation that helped to put them there. Returning to business as usual will be an enormous missed opportunity for both the new president and the American public. America’s wonderful, messy experiment with a republican form of democracy is a work in progress, an unfolding story of astonishing possibilities and periodic disappointment. Te storyline of this new century is the yawning chasm between the passion that Americans, particularly young people, have for a fair and just society, with the real- ity of near permanent incumbency for elected ofcials and a gridlocked political system. Voting is our most visible political activity; it’s easy to see and mea- sure, but it’s only a small part of the spectrum of political activities that form the backbone of our democracy. Political campaigns have begun to use an array of social media tools to connect with potential voters, but there are far greater uses for these tools beyond campaigns and elections. Social media and broad, enthusiastic participation together can profoundly afect governance and policy development, who runs for ofce and how, the communications between elected ofcials and citizens beyond elections, and the loosening of the death grip of mon- eyed, interests on politics and policies. Tis jarring juxtaposition of our political reality against the poten- n P R e FA C e n tial for great political change is vividly revealed in the awful uses of technology (e.g., touch-screen voting machines or microtargeting of voters by what beer they buy) versus wonderful uses of technology (e.g., cell phones used to mobilize voters or live-blogging of politi- cal events that engage thousands of people in direct conversation with candidates). Rebooting America is dedicated to understanding these dif- ferences and providing a vision of how we can realize our collective hope for a better future. We invited a variety of interesting, creative thinkers spanning the political spectrum and the generational divide, and from a variety of diferent professional perspectives, to write essays for this anthology. We also posted a general call for essays at the Personal Democracy Forum website, and three of those submissions are included in this volume. Te essays are naturally as varied as the participants. Tey range from revisiting the need for checks and balances within government and between the government and its citizenry, to a radical reinter- pretation of the public’s “right to know,” to the exponential power of many-to-many deliberation to shape public policy. Tese essays confrmed our optimistic sense that the political system is due for substantive changes. Undoubtedly there are many more voices and thinkers whom we failed to engage, and we apologize for those over- sights. It is our hope that Rebooting America will continue as a living document online, and to that end we are publishing all of the essays at rebooting.personaldemocracy.com and inviting public comment on (and of) the site. We hope that, you, our readers and participants, will help to jump- start conversations about increasing citizen participation in gover- nance, opening the doors of government wider and making the walls see-through, and unleashing our collective creativity to help solve technical problems and break through long-standing entrenchments. P R e FA C e Our future does not have to be a continuation of the past or the pres- ent. We can create a new and better course—we just need to imagine it frst. —Allison Fine —Micah L. Sifry —Andrew Rasiej —Josh Levy n

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