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 © 2008 by the Personal Democracy Press

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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
 Con t en ts

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

t his project began as so many good things do, over a cup of

coffee. Our conversation wandered to talking about new social
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.
The 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 officials accustomed to shutting cit-
izens out of governance when she responded to a question from a


 n PReFACe

reporter earlier this year about the Iraq war by saying, “You had input.
The 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 fit, 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 Office,
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. The 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 officials 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 affect governance and policy development, who runs
for office and how, the communications between elected officials and
citizens beyond elections, and the loosening of the death grip of mon-
eyed, interests on politics and policies.
This jarring juxtaposition of our political reality against the poten-
PReFACe 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
different 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.
The essays are naturally as varied as the participants. They 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. These essays
confirmed 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 off) 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.
 n PReFACe

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 first.

—Allison Fine
—Micah L. Sifry
—Andrew Rasiej
—Josh Levy
 F oRe WoRD

Esther Dyson

i n 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “If a nation expects to be igno-

rant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was
and never will be.” Those words have never been more salient or
important than they are today. We have pressing public policy prob-
lems, adults who should be leaders yet instead lead willfully sheltered
lives of comfort and ignorance, a citizenry increasingly active in elec-
tions yet alienated from governance, an amazing array of new digital
tools and platforms that have the potential to inform and empower us
and let us self-organize in astonishing and effective ways. The stage is
ready and the sunlight of the Internet is shining on us: It can provide
light and energy for a fertile, thousand-flowers-blooming garden, or it
can ignite the whole thing into flames and burn it out.
This anthology of essays is intended to shine light, to spark conver-
sations among citizens, and between voters and elected officials, about
how we can engage more people in public problem solving and com-
munity building. Just as the Net created new business models, so can
it foster new governance models.
The essayists, an array of creative, innovative thinkers, were invited
to contribute short essays on the following topic:


 n FoRe WoRD

When the Framers met in Philadelphia in 1787, they bravely

conjured a new form of self-government. But they couldn’t
have imagined a mass society with instantaneous, many-to-
many communications or many of the other innovations of
modernity. So, replacing that quill pen with a mouse, imagine
that you have to power to redesign American democracy for
the Internet Age. What would you do?

Each of the essays has a unique central idea. There are common
themes of citizen participation and empowerment, but within those
broad brushstrokes are interesting areas of convergence and divergence.
David Weinberger discusses the critical importance of echo chambers
to the conversation among citizens that powers our democracy. danah
boyd points out the need to break through these silos to broaden the
conversation about community life, but also cautions about the poten-
tial of today’s social networking sites to produce big changes in political
behavior. Glenn Harlan Reynolds discusses the fallacy of trying to protect
people’s privacy in the Internet Age, arguing that we should instead focus
on fostering greater transparency around (and through) government
institutions. Martin Kearns argues the opposite, that more protections
of individual privacy and data are needed to provide people with a sense
of personal security in order to engage civically either online or offline.
Some essayists focused on lessons from the past (Julie Barko Ger-
many, Harry Boyte), others zeroed in on improving the present (Steven
Clift, Newt Gingrich), and a few gave us a view from the future (Ellen
Miller, Zack Exley). Several essayists proposed a radical restructuring of
our entire system of government (Aaron Swartz, Nicco Mele and Jan
Frel, and Douglas Rushkoff) and others dwelt on the need for individu-
als to act outside government to propel change (Scott Heiferman, Susan
Crawford). And, of course, the radical libertarians call for the radical
restraint of government (Avery Knapp and Tennyson McCalla)!
Esther Dyson n 

Our society is relentlessly focused on short-term news and results:

On Wall Street you have intraday stock movements and an obsession
with quarterly earnings and weekly sales figures; in government, poli-
ticians pander to the polls using sound bites rather than engaging in
reasoned debates (e.g., the gas-tax tomfoolery of the recent presidential
campaign). And in private life, you have daily weigh-ins and snack bars
full of foodiness in place of plain old healthy living.
Rebooting America is a look at the long term—the past that could
have been and the future that still could be. It’s ironic that it’s a book,
but consider it a mere seed containing DNA seeking complementary
strands of life in an online conversation with other Americans about
how to “reboot” our country.
Please take a moment to explore the ideas and approaches in this
anthology. Share them with others and argue—constructively and
deeply—about them. Make them into something more than just a
book by extending them and giving them life.
—Esther Dyson
New York City
April 30, 2008

About the Author

Esther Dyson does business as EDventure Holdings. She spends most of
her time fostering new companies, new technologies and new markets.
In the Nineties she wrote a book about the impact of the Internet on
individuals’ lives (“Release 2.0”) and a seminal article for WIRED Magazine
about the impact of the Net on intellectual property. This decade, she
is focused not just on the Internet, but also on the privatization of
space exploration and the use of information technology in health care,
including the mapping of individuals’ genomes. She sits on a variety of
boards, most notably (in this context) that of the Sunlight Foundation.
 ACK noW L eDGeMen t s

i t’s one thing to have an idea, and quite another to have the where-
withal to bring it to fruition. We are enormously grateful to the
Schumann Center for Media & Democracy for their financial
support for this project.
Of course, without our essayists, our volume wouldn’t be very
voluminous. Their enthusiastic willingness to share their creative ideas
without remuneration and on an impossible deadline was enormously
gratifying. And this gratitude extends to our online essay entrants who
courageously shared their ideas with the world; we wish we could have
selected more of them for inclusion in this first volume of essays. We
hope we have done justice to all of the contributors and their ideas and
are delighted that we will have the opportunity to share them widely.
We birthed this entire project in just a few months’ time, a ges-
tation period that usually spans several years. This was only possible
with team members who were extraordinarily flexible, enthusiastic,
and talented. We feel so fortunate to have been introduced to Julie
Trelstad and her team at Plain White Publishing. Julie is pioneering
the iTunes paradigm for publishing and we’re delighted to be along
for the ride. Her colleague Russ McIntosh of Studio McIntosh showed


0 n A C K n o W L e D Ge M e n t s

great patience and creativity in his designs. Mira Lieman-Sifry jumped

on board and became our excellent and adept lexicographer. Finally,
our good fortune extended to working with two outstanding editors,
Christina Baker Kline and Melissa Seeley, who worked very quickly
and with great aplomb. Our thanks and appreciation to all!
 In t RoDUC t Ion

o ur greatest risk, we felt, when we began this project was

that all our essayists might somehow respond to our chal-
lenge with exactly the same answer. Much to our relief, and
hopefully your enjoyment, the answers are enormously and uniquely
diverse and interesting. The essays in Rebooting America reflect an array
of experiences and political perspectives; they also reflect the themes,
concerns and hopes of our Founding Fathers. We decided, therefore,
to organize the essays around these themes.
We begin with a quote from Tom Paine, “When we are planning
for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” Zack
Exley embraces this idea in his very entertaining essay, a memo written
to Personal Democracy Forum editor Micah L. Sifry from the future
that suggests that what we need most to reinvent America is selfless
leadership.
We then move to our desperate need for an informed and edu-
cated citizenry, or as put so elegantly by John Adams, “Let us tenderly
and kindly cherish, therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to
read, think, speak, and write.” Julie Barko Germany gracefully retraces
the roots of our democracy from the philosophical underpinnings of


 n In t R o D U C t I o n

the Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century. David Weinberger fol-

lows with a thoughtful and surprising essay on the importance of echo
chambers to support the conversations between like-minded people
that are the backbone of democracy. Michael Turk closes out this sec-
tion by lamenting that too much information and not enough curiosity
is depressing participation, but that the Internet makes an informed
citizenry and direct democracy possible.
Benjamin Franklin, prescient as always, recognized our current
dilemma of citizens shut out of government decision-making when he
wrote, “Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do
not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into
execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom
adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.” How-
ever, even Franklin could not have imagined the new digital tools that
enable large groups to co-create magnificent new resources like Wiki-
pedia. But our essayists could and do imagine such great things. Yochai
Benkler, Newt Gingrich, and Andrew Rasiej strenuously, surely and
convincingly imagine our government remade by, in Gingrich’s words,
the “vast collective creativity of the American people” that supersedes
the narrow expertise and interests of government bureaucrats.
As previously mentioned, citizens need to be knowledgeable and
curious about their government. However, our government also needs
to easily, openly and energetically share information with us. Thomas
Jefferson wrote, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be
trusted with their own government.” Ellen Miller writes to us from
the year 2015 after the Freedom of Information Act has mercifully
passed away and a new era of complete government transparency has
emerged. Richard Harwood and Howard Rheingold describe the need
and opportunity to engage our citizenry in local efforts through virtual
commons that will force our government to open up and inform the
public. Brad Templeton closes this section with a forceful argument
In t R o D U C t Io n n 

for the need to wean the political system from the teat of big money
and big media, with an intriguing proposal to expand the use of free
e-mail communications from candidates to voters to better inform and
engage the public.
In their own time, the Founders pressed for the equality of man
with a passion and commitment never before seen (although their
vision was largely limited to land-owning men). Our essayists Marie
Wilson and Josh Levy expand this dream of equality and write com-
pelling essays on the opportunity to involve more Americans across
gender, race and income divides in government and policy making in
the Internet Age.
The power of individual people to catalyze and lead great soci-
etal improvements was never far from the thoughts of the Founders.
Thomas Jefferson’s words echo many of his compatriots, “When the
people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government
fears the people, there is liberty.” Nicco Mele and Jan Frel argue that
the American system of government needs to be radically altered to
become more distributed and democratic, noting that we are long way
from the days of face-to-face democracy and relatively small numbers
of constituents per representative. Conversely, Susan Crawford argues,
“We should not discount the power of minor, visible, short-lived
action to have a great impact.” Aaron Swartz writes a fascinating piece
on the need to completely revamp our structure of government with
the introduction of a cascade of councils that would reach from the
neighborhood level all the way to the top of the federal government.
Finally, Steven Clift, a pioneer of e-democracy, provides a blueprint for
myriad ways to engage and activate citizens in local government using
new digital tools.
The Founders constantly feared the seeping intrusion of govern-
ment on the lives of the people. “I believe there are more instances
of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent
 n In t R o D U C t I o n

encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpa-

tions,” wrote James Madison. In four very different approaches to this
topic, Glenn Reynolds argues for the need for government transpar-
ency rather than waging the quixotic fight for privacy in the Internet
Age. danah boyd writes that, “Rather than fantasizing about how social
network sites will be a cultural and democratic panacea, perhaps we
need to focus on the causes of alienation and disillusionment that stop
people from participating in communal and civic life.” In a unique
challenge to conventional wisdom, Martin Kearns argues for more, not
fewer, politicians, more “churn,” as he puts it, or turnover, in leadership
positions, more participation that will only happen when we ensure
greater preservation of our privacy, rather than more rules or govern-
ment agencies. Finally, Morra Aarons declares that there is no more “off
season” for citizenship. We need to transport the grassroots communi-
ties that are powering political campaigns to the capital after Election
Day, she argues, to help develop policy and govern the nation.
“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it
must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.” This statement
holds as true today as it did when James Madison said it in 1829.
Zephyr Teachout details the long history of corruption in government,
aided by technological developments like gerrymandering and central-
ized media. She also provides specific suggestions of the ways that our
Founders would have altered the Constitution to avert these threats.
John Bonifaz shares the concern about corruption eating away at the
foundations of our government by systematically detailing the threat
to our election system from private ownership of the machinery of
elections. On a more hopeful note, Craig Newmark describes the boon
to our system of checks and balances of new databases and citizen jour-
nalism tools like blogs that hold government and government officials
more accountable for their actions.
In a full circle of thought and commitment, the Internet revolution
In t R o D U C t Io n n 

has enabled us to rediscover our passion for broad public participation

in government and governance. Mark Murphy, one of the winners of
our online essay contest, forecasts the next “killer app” that will engage
millions of Americans, probably through their existing online social
networks, in conversations about their government. Joe Trippi, in his
trademark candid and forward-thinking way, bears witness to the death
of top-down political campaigns. Micah L. Sifry shares a creative series
of ideas to make our vote more meaningful and communicative than
an “X” in a box. Finally, the people who know best about citizenship,
Nancy Tate and Mary Wilson of the League of Women Voters, describe
the opportunity for greater and more significant citizen involvement in
the Internet Age. These essayists have taken to heart Thomas Jefferson’s
warning, “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of
the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.”
We often despair of our inability to shape government to meet
our needs. It is helpful to be reminded that this isn’t a new lament.
Over two hundred years ago, John Adams wrote, “While all other sci-
ences have advanced, that of government is at a standstill—little better
understood, little better practiced now than three or four thousand
years ago.” Matt Stoller has his own personal “Obviousmeter” that tells
us when government rules, like no YouTube postings on government
websites, reach critical levels of absurdity. Matthew Burton, another of
our essay contest winners, proposes a “Delegation for the Future” as
an addition to the House of Representatives that will solely focus on
future concerns that our federal government routinely ignores. Douglas
Rushkoff is an enthusiastic proponent of using new gaming techniques
to rethink the structure and approach of government. Finally, Allison
Fine challenges us to recognize that the obvious answer to remedy the
awful 8-track tape voting machinery and greatly expand voting partici-
pation, particularly by young people, is voting online.
Back to the power of the people to control, instruct, and guide
 n In t R o D U C t I o n

government. George Mason wrote, “In all our associations; in all our
agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim—that
all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from,
the people.” Tara Hunt takes this maxim to heart and questions why
we need elected officials at all. The radical libertarians Avery Knapp
and Tennyson McCalla go even further and question the fundamen-
tal value of government to society. Kaliya Hamlin brings us back to
earth with a thoughtful examination of the different ways that citi-
zens can deliberately examine public issues in person aided by new
media tools.
We are left to explore the many ways that citizens can participate
in governance and policy development without becoming a profes-
sional member of the governing class. Thomas Jefferson weighs in, “I
have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be
trusted to govern themselves without a master.” Beth Noveck describes
the specific ways that citizens, particularly those with technical exper-
tise, can successfully add value to policy and procedure development
using wiki-style processes, for example the very successful Peer-to-Pat-
ent open review process. Scott Heiferman, the founder of Meetup.
com, passionately defends the need for civic associations that advocate
for better or different government policies. Pablo del Real, the third of
our contest winners, imagines a civil society where citizens can weigh
in on every bill and resolution on the floor of the House of Representa-
tives. Clay Shirky longs for a new mechanism that will enable citizens
to more easily form groups with long-term political goals. And finally,
Harry Boyte, the dean of democracy observers and writers, elegantly
discusses the possibility of recapturing the transformative public spirit
of the 1960s civil rights movement by reimagining the pubic commons
using Internet technology.
We are, of course, not just a nation of citizens but also a nation of
laws. However, what happens when laws are created with the express
In t R o D U C t Io n n 

purpose of shutting citizens out of our own government? Jeff Jarvis

demands a new ethic of openness in government; transparency ought
to be our governmental default setting, he writes. Gene Koo provides a
compelling illustration of the Orwellian dangers of code law, “software
that assumes a particular interpretation of an ambiguous law, and in so
doing, essentially makes law.” In the words of Madison, ““It will be of
little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own
choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so
incoherent that they cannot be understood.”
We end our anthology on a hopeful note about the opportunity
that every successive generation has to improve upon our model of
government. Again, Thomas Jefferson: “We may consider each genera-
tion as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind
themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the
inhabitants of another country.” Lance Bennett affirms this view with
a description of a new style of citizenship practiced by young people,
the so-called Millennials, that he calls self-actualizing. We close our
volume with an essay by a Millennial, David B. Smith, and his hope-
ful message of the ways that young people of his generation are using
Internet tools to reshape our country into Democracy 2.0.
The reader should feel free to sample the essays by particular
authors or themes, or to read the book from cover to cover. Any way
this anthology is sampled, the reader will quickly come to see that our
essays call for the people of this country to slice open our government,
turn it upside down and inside out, and reimagine it and us in new
ways.
 to : MIC A H L . sIF R Y, PeRson A L
DeMoCR AC Y F oRUM 2 0 0 8

Zack Exley

“ Therefore, more than anything we will try to

build the ethic of true leadership not only into the American

”
political system, but into the American spirit.

TO: Micah L. Sifry, Personal Democracy Forum 2008

FROM: Micah L. Sifry, Personal Democracy Forum 2058
SUBJECT: Leadership

Dear Micah,
This e-mail has been delivered to your inbox via Google Time
Machine from the year 2058. I’m writing to share the results of an
incredible experiment, inspired by your Rebooting Democracy proj-
ect and carried out on its 50th anniversary. It is extremely important
that you recover from the shock of receiving this e-mail and act on
my recommendations as quickly as you can. As it turns out, you and
your Personal Democracy Forum buddies are better positioned to save
American democracy than even the Founding Fathers.
So, I have some good news for you and some bad news. First the


0 n t o : M I C A H s I F R Y, P e R s o n A L D e M o C R A C Y F o R U M 2 0 0 8

good news: In the biotech revolution of the 2020s, you and your Personal
Democracy Forum (PDF) business partner Andrew Rasiej invent the
“Bionet,” a network of wireless brain implants that connects all of human-
ity in one continuous, decentralized and unmediated conversation.
The Bionet began as a gimmick at the Personal Democracy
Forum of 2022. You were only trying to give people an enhanced
way of making snarky comments behind panelists’ backs instead of
the on-screen back channel chats that had become too linear and
uninteresting. But conference goers refused to give up their Bionet
headsets, and found infinite uses for this new “mental telepathy”
in the wider world. You and Andrew became fantastically wealthy.
But I’m pleased to report that before anyone even had the chance to
grumble about a proprietary network of human consciousness, you
made the Bionet protocol an open standard—from the data abstrac-
tion layer all the way down to the headset specs.
Today, most people around the world have their Bionets implanted
at birth, along with other biological enhancements. Market penetra-
tion is effectively 100% because the benefits to businesses of providing
implants to workers and farmers to monitor their brain activities and
thoughts far outweigh the cost of subsidies for the poor.
I wish I had time to explain all the political upheaval, wars and eco-
nomic chaos of the past five decades. But I’ll have to stick to the changes
brought by the Bionet. Basically, it’s turned the whole world into one
giant “Personal Democracy Forum,” in the truest sense of that phrase.
As you and many of our friends predicted, in a hyper-networked
world, the state has become less and less necessary. The Bionet made
instant secret ballot voting as easy as daydreaming. In 2032, the Bionet
re-vote resolved the surreal election debacle between Karenna Gore and
George P. Bush. It was only a matter of time before “mind voting” was
used for every social decision great and small. A mind vote cost noth-
ing, and took only a few seconds to conduct. Rudimentary artificial
Zack E xley n 

intelligence even made it possible to enable the Bionet to vote for you
automatically on most issues. Any time politicians were making unpop-
ular decisions, pressure would build for mind votes. And because mind
voting was so easy, it was difficult to argue against conducting one.
Naturally, there were problems. In fact, our nascent system of
instant, continuous mind voting in the United States helped to cause
World War III. Just a matter of growing pains, we thought. And so,
Lawrence Lessig’s first action as prime minister of the post-war World
Parliament (long story!) was passing the “Personal Democracy Act of
2042.” The law abolished politicians and delegated all policy making
to direct, instant “Personal Democracy.”
In that same year, Thomas Friedman published his bestselling
book “The World is a Point,” arguing that the Bionet had effectively
eliminated distance, personal space, and any useful personal bound-
aries. He argued that the problem was not that there was too much
instantaneous, decentralized decision-making, but not enough. He
urged the have-nots of the world to metaphorically wear what he called
“the cellophane business suit” (a follow up to his concept from the old
Globalization Debate of the “Golden Straight Jacket” wherein, accord-
ing to Friedman, all nations had to accept the new rules of a global
economy including fair trade and transparency).
The Personal Democracy Act did not have the intended results.
In the press, a lot of the problems were blamed on the fact that such
a high proportion of us in government were long past our “expiration
date.” But trust me, we’re all sharper now than we ever were with our
old biological brains. Though it’s true, some of us did give them reason
to wonder. Press Secretary Joe Trippi’s immortal words, “Don’t worry,
this will fix everything!” became the slogan for just how out of touch
we Americans were with reality. Minister of Industry Yochai Benkler,
with his slogan,”All Power to the Network!” became more and more
dogmatic against any sort of industrial or agricultural planning. The
 n t o : M I C A H s I F R Y, P e R s o n A L D e M o C R A C Y F o R U M 2 0 0 8

results were immediate, dramatic and disastrous. First, there were the
mass famines and ecological catastrophe of the “Great Leap Inward.”
Benkler’s unfortunate televised comment, “Let them figure it out for
themselves!” joined “Let them eat cake!” on the short list of historic
phrases that sparked full-blown revolutions.
However, because government had virtually withered away, the
revolutionary mobs in the street found that they had no one to rebel
against but themselves. Mind vote followed mind vote on thousands
of different economic policies and schemes to no end. We found it was
very easy to vote against pollution, but impossible to vote a replacement
non-polluting industry into being. We found it was easy to vote against
exploitative trade, but much more difficult to vote for a means of mak-
ing a living for poor countries when we stopped trading with them.
I can’t even bring myself to write down the figures associated with
the economic, agricultural and ecological failures of the past 15 years.
I’ll just say that it made the carnage of Mao’s Great Leap Forward look
like a minor hiccup.
In reaction, an overly authoritarian camp rose up in politics (or
rather, what was left of politics). David Weinberger, after a transfor-
mation reminiscent of Mussolini’s turn from socialism to fascism,
became its intellectual leader. Zack Exley served as iron-fisted party
leader. But we kept our faith that “too much democracy” could not
be the problem.
Facing the failure of our efforts at Personal Democracy, we laid
blame on the doorstep of history. The ability to “figure it out for them-
selves,” we decided, had been stolen from humanity by the centuries
during which people were forced to live without the liberating effects
of Personal Democracy.
And so we hatched an idea. We would bring the Framers of the 1787
Constitution to the present day and show them the disastrous results of
their old-fashioned, “top-down” democracy. We would then send them
Zack E xley n 

back with millions of Bionet headsets so that they could “reboot democ-
racy” and jump start progress toward a Personal Democracy utopia.
We knew that changing the past would erase our present, but with
billions of people starving and war waging all around the world, we
believed it was worth the sacrifice.
With the whole world watching through their Bionet mind’s eye,
Constitution Hall was teleported to the present with all of the Found-
ers inside. If you think you were shocked by the arrival of this e-mail,
just imagine how those guys felt at their arrival in a fantastic world of
the future.
It took a while, but they finally got over their shock and accepted
the new reality that had been presented to them. After caucusing alone,
their appointed leader George Washington told us that the group
wanted a chance to read up on the events of our history (and their
future). We told them that they could take as long as they liked and
we would transport them back to the very same instant from which we
plucked them when we were done.
During their study, they kept their deliberations secret from our
world in the same way that they had kept their constitutional delibera-
tions secret from their world. We were impatient, but no one was going
to argue when George Washington told us, “Remove yourselves from
our premises!”
Two months passed. Then America’s Founding Fathers presented
the world, via the Bionet, with their findings. The group chose Alex-
ander Hamilton as their spokesperson, because he had mastered the
terminology and the ways of the modern world better and faster than
anyone else in the group. More brains, in more languages, tuned in to
Hamilton’s speech than to any other event in the history of the Bionet
(save for the unveiling of Madonna’s new body in 2051).
“Dear Sirs,” he said (showing he hadn’t mastered every aspect of
21 century culture), “On behalf of my colleagues of the 1787 Con-
st
 n t o : M I C A H s I F R Y, P e R s o n A L D e M o C R A C Y F o R U M 2 0 0 8

stitutional Convention, I thank you for giving us this opportunity to

study our future—your past—toward the aim of improving it.
“We now understand that the stakes of our enterprise were higher
than any of us imagined: Our United States of America will go on
to have a greater impact on the world than any other nation during
these three centuries. And yet, in our time it does not even call itself
one nation. We do see that we made many errors as we laid down the
foundation for this new country.
“But we do not accept your conclusion that this ‘personal democ-
racy’ is any solution for our age...or yours. First of all, we do not hold
democracy to be a panacea or an end in itself. We set out to create a
republic based on the non-negotiable principles of ‘Life, Liberty and
the Pursuit of Happiness.’ We believed that democracy was the best
means to that end.
“We knew it was a gamble. We knew that private interests would
descend upon our president and Congress as they had upon the Crown
and Parliament. That is why we attempted to base our democracy on
the hope that a democratically elected aristocracy of merit could replace
the old aristocracy of birthright.
“We now see that was folly. We were naïve to think that our compli-
cated system of ‘electors’ could replace the necessity of every generation
to find its own leaders, and empower them—’from the bottom up’ as
you love to say—to do what must be done. We were looking for a way
to make good leadership automatic. But we were wrong to believe we
could relieve future generations from that responsibility. We were treat-
ing our political system as if it were a mousetrap that merely needed
fine-tuning. You have brought us here in the hopes that we would go
back and commit that very same folly, but this time with your own
ingenious new system instead of ours.
“Today, you have reduced the concept of democracy to the ‘per-
sonal’ quest for happiness of twenty billion people, all rushing in
Zack E xley n 

different and often opposing directions. But democracy can never be

‘personal’—it is communal. Democracy is not a way to take care of
oneself, but a way to take care of others.
“We risked our lives for that kind of ‘democracy for others.’ But too
many of you are not even willing to risk your next promotion or grant.
“In our study of history, we have seen how our children and grand-
children immediately swept away our hopes for disinterested, selfless
leadership. Almost instantly they organized into petty political parties
that pandered to short-term private interests rather than the long-term
common good.
“We have not come up with any answers about what a different
system would have done better. After you send us back to Philadelphia,
we will consider that issue. But we have drawn one conclusion: We took
for granted that our example of selfless leadership would speak for itself
and be emulated by future generations. It didn’t. Therefore, more than
anything we will try to build the ethic of true leadership not only into
the American political system, but into the American spirit. Please wish
us luck, just as we will wish you great good fortune and fortitude.”
As we look back through history, we see a precipitous decline in
the quality of leadership right at the moment when mass media and
the Internet created the greatest opportunities for good leadership.
So, my dear younger self, and all others who are reading this, it is
up to us in every generation not just to build a better system in which
leadership can function better; it is up to us, above all, to be better
leaders. Therefore, you who are living at the dawn of the Networked
Age have the greatest responsibility not to abdicate humanity’s right to
conscious action to an abstract notion of ‘network,’ but instead to use
the powerful networks available to you as good leaders.
Good luck!
Yours in great hope,
Micah
 n t o : M I C A H s I F R Y, P e R s o n A L D e M o C R A C Y F o R U M 2 0 0 8

About the Author

Zack Exley is a strategic consultant with ThoughtWorks, Inc., where he
advises organizations on communications, organizing and technology.
He is also a co-founder and president of the New Organizing Institute.
He directed the online campaign for the British Labor Party’s 2005
re-election, was Director of Online Organizing and Communications at
Kerry-Edwards 2004 and served as national organizing director at
MoveOn.org.
 21s t Cen t UR Y
neo-enL IGH t enMen t

Julie Barko Germany

“ Digital citizens should not be afraid to know

or to act, but we need a leadership willing to listen and
participate–not on platforms or pedestals, but on egalitarian

”
footing with their constituents.

f our years ago, in the middle of the 2004 primaries, the online
political community heralded the rise of the political blogo-
sphere as an evolution in—and improvement upon—the printing
press. Political bloggers became the new pamphleteers, and more than
one journalist compared online political discussion groups, blogging
communities, and listservs to coffee houses, where people go to get
their daily fix of information.
It is not a coincidence that we embraced the metaphors of the
printing press, which once led Western Europe to question the tradi-
tions established by religious and political authorities, and coffeehouse,
where so many connections were made, business transactions were
conducted, and ideas were debated during the Enlightenment—the


8 n 2 1s t C e n t U R Y n e o - e n L I GH t e n M e n t

era that birthed many of the ideas upon which our Declaration of
Independence and Constitution are based.
Thus, I cannot divorce a discussion about democracy in the
Internet Age without reference to the ideals and innovations of the
past. During the first century BC, the Latin poet Horace wrote, “To
have begun is to be half done; dare to know; start!” Immanuel Kant
adopted the later part of this line, the phrase sapere aude, as the motto
of the Enlightenment in an essay titled “What is Enlightenment?” He
translated it to mean “have courage to learn” or “dare to be wise.”
When I read this translation, I feel a sense of movement, a belief
that through humanity’s reasoning faculties, we can envision new
forms of government, build new societies and—to quote (rather
anachronistically) Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem Ulysses—“to strive,
to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Or, to use a phrase popularized by
presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, Enlightenment-
era thinkers (including many of the Founders of our country) pos-
sessed the audacity to hope that through knowledge, reason, and
wisdom, men—and indeed, they meant men—could govern them-
selves without an intercession of a king, ruler, or tyrant. With reason,
wisdom, and knowledge, humanity and government could achieve
perfection.
Another Enlightenment thinker, and contemporary of our nation’s
Founders, French political scientist and philosopher Antoine-Nicholas
de Condorcet, outlined this belief in his Sketch for an Historical Picture
of the Progress of the Human Mind (1795). Educated citizens, he said,

will be able to govern themselves according to their own

knowledge; they will no longer be limited to a mechanical
knowledge of the procedures of the arts or of professional
routine; they will no longer depend for every trivial piece
Julie Barko Germany n 

of business, every insignificant matter of instruction on

clever men who rule over them in virtue of their necessary
superiority; and so they will attain a real equality, since
differences in enlightenment or talent can no longer raise a
barrier between men who understand each other’s feelings,
ideas and language, some of whom may wish to be taught by
others but, to do so, will have no need to be controlled by
them, or who may wish to confide the care of government to
the ablest of their number but will not be compelled to yield
them absolute power in a spirit of blind confidence.

This concept remains fresh in 2008, during the early years of our
new era—an era in which citizen journalism challenges mainstream
media gatekeepers, regular voters track the fundraising and spending of
political candidates, and elected officials use blogs and wikis to ask for
public input about pending legislation. The wisdom of the (informed)
many may, in fact, govern as well as an elite few. This was the spirit of
the age and ideals that swirled throughout the early years of our nation,
and that echo in our founding documents. It is this ideological tradi-
tion that makes 21st-century democracy so vital.
Though technology, we are able to access information at rates that
would have seemed impossible to Condorcet, not to mention Thomas
Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and the rest. This same
technology enables us to harness the wisdom of many to accomplish
everything from tracking congressional spending, to writing an ency-
clopedia, to the process of translation. And yet neither access to infinite
information, nor the ability to collaborate with fellow citizens instantly,
regardless of physical location, produce wisdom.
In order to progress towards this lofty and rather Utopian ideal,
democracy in the 21st century requires a few adjustments.
0 n 2 1s t C e n t U R Y n e o - e n L I GH t e n M e n t

1. A system of education that enables the population to

possess more than just a functional literacy. We need an
education that teaches technological literacy and fosters
innovation system.
2. Increased, affordable access to the Internet, including
civic Wi-Fi, cybercafés and Internet stations in
economically disadvantages areas, and broadband
networks in rural communities.
3. A spirit of public leadership that understands and
values technology, and a belief that some buzzwords
of the Digital age—such as “increased openness,”
“collaboration,” and “transparency”—are imperatives for
public office, not clichés.
4. Additional guarantees of free speech and privacy, despite
the temptations that ubiquitous computing will pose to
more closely monitor citizens and restrict speech.
5. Finally, a lack of fear about and exploration of the
potential of technology to make voting more accessible
and more direct.

I agree with Lee Siegel, who wrote, in Against the Machine: Being
Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob (you can ascertain from the
title that Siegel is criticizing the Internet), that “Web culture is the final
stage in the long, slow assimilation of subversive values to conventional
society.” But only if one believes, as I do, that those “subversive values”
include the belief that technology, knowledge, innovation, and civic
engagement can produce a nation of leaders and thinkers able to work
collectively and create a new era of enlightenment in American democ-
racy, governance, and civil society.
Dare to think for yourself!
Julie Barko Germany n 

About the Author

Julie Barko Germany serves as the director of the Institute for Politics,
Democracy & the Internet at The George Washington University’s
Graduate School of Political Management. Julie is the principal author
and editor of several publications, including Constituent Relationship
Management: The New Little Black Book of Politics; Person-to-Person-to-
Person: Harnessing the Political Power of Online Social Networks and
User-Generated Content; and The Politics-to-Go-Handbook: A Guide to
Using Mobile Technology in Politics.
 eCHo CH A MBeRs = DeMoCR AC Y

David Weinberger

“ A democracy needs such “echo chambers,” even

though their discussions inevitably appear like nothing but a

”
bunch of homogenous supporters rah-rah-ing each other.

t alking together is the fundamental political act. While the

Internet is certainly providing new features and new forums
for talk, it is not transforming the near-genetic basics of how
human conversation works. In this case (despite the overall premise of
this anthology), the technology isn’t changing the nature of democ-
racy so much as clarifying our understanding of democracy. And that
may be no less important.
Our confusion about the role of conversation in democracy is mani-
fested in the persistence of the question whether the Net is enhancing or
dismantling the political conversations we think essential to democracy.
Rather than opening us up to a wider range of opinion, is the Internet
barricading the doors of belief? Will we use the fact that we have more
control online to hang out exclusively with people like ourselves, or will


David Weinberger n 

we use the frictionlessness of web connectivity to engage with people

from different walks of life? Will the Internet become an enhanced pub-
lic forum or a set of “echo chambers?”
We’ve been unable to resolve these questions for three reasons.
First, the Net is too young and is not yet what it will be. We don’t
know what effect it will have once its first generation of users has grown
up with it as a ubiquitous part of civic life.
Second, the empirical research that exists is extraordinarily hard to
interpret. Do we look at the patterns of links between websites? That
doesn’t necessarily tell us how the information flows. Do results vary
based on topic? Over time? By demographic? Perhaps we form echo
chambers around political candidates but not cultural topics. Around
TV shows but not movies. Around reality TV shows but not sitcoms?
When we link to people with whom we disagree, are we cursing insen-
sibly at them or engaging in a rational back-and-forth?
Third, even if we knew which vectors to follow, we would still
have the enormously difficult task of comparing the results to the state
of openness in the real world. As Yochai Benkler, the author of The
Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and
Freedom, says, the question is not whether the Net will make our politi-
cal discourse perfect, but will it make it better. The law professor Cass
Sunstein reports that only low double digit percentages of links point
to opposing viewpoints, and Benkler is right in responding that he
doesn’t know whether that’s a cause for rejoicing or despair. To what
could we compare such statistics? To the percentage of space newspa-
pers give over to views that oppose their editorial positions? Typically,
that’s a few Op-Ed columns and some percentage of the half-page of
Letters-to-the-Editor that papers run. How often do people read the
columnists they disagree with? How much time in the day do you
spend talking rationally and calmly about matters of state with people
 n eCHo CHA MBeRs = DeMoCR ACY

with whom you disagree? How deep does the disagreement have to go
before you are too angry to talk, or simply see no point in pursuing the
discussion? Have you ever actually sat down for a long, respectful con-
versation with a neo-Nazi or an out-of-the-closet racist, a conversation
in which you’re open to having your ideas changed?
Me neither.
The question, therefore, is not whether the Internet is closing us
down or opening us up, but rather what assumptions make the persis-
tence of online echo chambers—the same kinds of cliquish gatherings
that have always existed on land—seem simultaneously so urgent and
so hard to resolve.
This urgency is undergirded by our belief that democracy is a
conversational form of governance. It’s not enough (we believe) that
everyone gets to vote. Everyone also has to be able to talk about her
beliefs in public so that those beliefs can be well informed and well
reasoned. Yet when we look out across the Net, rather than seeing peo-
ple engaged in deep conversation, we see clusters of people saying the
most godawful things and, in so doing, giving permission to others to
say even godawfuller things. There’s no denying the despair we all feel
when turning over certain rocks on the Net. Hearing sentiments that
are forbidden from the real world public sphere uttered in the perceived
privacy of the Internet legitimates those sentiments. This is worse than
an echo chamber: It is a room full of people egging each other on to the
most extreme and vile opinions. “You think you hate her? Here’s how
much I hate her...” is not a helpful trope in a democracy.
It would be foolish to argue that this never happens. But how
much does it happen? How important are such echo chambers? What
influence do they have on our democracy? And why have so many
people focused on them as the example of the Net’s effect on democ-
racy? After all, we could look at hateful real-world groups and despair
for our democracy, but we recognize that such groups are the evil we
David Weinberger n 

have to live with in order to get the benefits of our freedom to assemble
and to speak.
Echo chambers loom large in our thinking about the Web, not just
in our thinking about democracy. In part it’s because some of the echo
chambers appear on highly popular sites. Thus, they are not equivalent
to marginalized extremist groups such as the KKK or the Stormfront
White Nationalist Community. Yet not all echo chambers are born
equal. Shouldn’t supporters of a candidate have a spot on the Web
where they can be supporters together? Is a site an echo chamber if
it fails to rigorously challenge its participants’ every view, including a
supporter’s most basic commitment to his or her candidate?
Further, the most prominent political sites—other than candidates’
sites—are not all the hatefests they’re often portrayed as by the media.
Yes, participants encourage one another in their beliefs, but not all of
them are devoted to ever-tightening spirals of hatred. At the progres-
sive site HuffingtonPost.com, reasonable disagreements are common.
Present a calm argument against the progressive viewpoint of an arti-
cle, and you’re likely to find just the sort of vigorous debate we want
for a healthy democracy, although it may be more rough and tumble
than we’d imagined. Trolls and hand-grenade throwers are ignored,
flamed, or moderated out, because, by definition, they’re not looking
for a genuine discussion. Likewise, at the conservative Redstate.com,
reasonable discussion is the norm. (You can find plenty of examples of
awful interchanges, but you can find plenty examples of everything on
the Net.)
Our picture of the Net as a set of hateful echo chambers is encour-
aged, too, by the premise that the only sites that matter are those with
hundreds of thousands of readers. That’s how the mainstream media
works. But the Web is characterized by a “long tail” of sites with rela-
tively few readers. The echo chamber dynamic is facilitated by sites so
large that the commenters are functionally unknown to one another,
 n eCHo CHA MBeRs = DeMoCR ACY

and the way to get attention is to be more outrageous than the previous
person. That dynamic is missing on the smaller sites that, in aggregate,
constitute the bulk of web traffic.
Nevertheless, our focus on echo chambers, our notion that they typ-
ify Net dialogue, and our taking them at their worst, tell us something:
Our image of what a democracy should sound like is misconceived.
For example, while we can map the links going into and out of
a site, and we can analyze the political positions of people who write
posts or comment on them, there is little actual data about the readers
of these sites. Perhaps the readers are diverse, even though the writers
and linkers are fairly homogeneous. Perhaps data would show that in
fact we’ve achieved the democratic ideal on the Web after all: People of
all persuasions are reading sites of every persuasion.
Pretty lame, eh? Sounds like I’m grasping at straws to defend the
Net? I agree. In fact, that’s my point. The previous paragraph is uncon-
vincing because we all agree that people generally don’t spend a lot
of time reading that with which they disagree. We know that, on- or
offline conversation simply doesn’t work that way. Never did. Never
will. Conversation finds an area of agreement and then explores the
differences. It hardly ever in our lives is an isolated exercise of pure,
unfettered rationality in which we suspend core beliefs in order to
think again about what those beliefs ought to be. Even taking that as
an ideal requires a picture of rationality that is unrealistic. Pure reason
is a better corrective than architect.
So, what good does conversation really do in a democracy? It
helps us work out differences based upon shared ground. Conversa-
tions shape our existing ideas and occasionally generate new ideas that
are in line with our existing beliefs. We can probably count the times
on one hand that conversation changes our minds about anything
important.
That doesn’t mean conversation is irrelevant or trivial. Even when
David Weinberger n 

conversation doesn’t change minds, it serves other social roles, includ-

ing binding people together so they can engage in effective political
action building trust, community and political commitment. From the
outside that may look like an echo chamber, but that is how people
come to make common cause. A democracy needs such “echo cham-
bers,” even though their discussions inevitably appear like nothing but
a bunch of homogenous supporters rah-rah-ing each other. Conversa-
tion among people who are in basic agreement builds relationships and
foments political movement. It also makes possible the rare conversion
of beliefs, and, when done in the public forum of the Net, it leaves
traces by which opposing views can understand—and thus tolerate—
one another better.
The persistence of “echo chambers” on the Net is not a failure of
democracy. Rather, their continued existence is evidence not only of
the fractures in our society, but of the gap between our ideals of democ-
racy and the mechanics of human social intercourse. We are never able
to stand fully apart from our commitments in order to evaluate them
in the cool light of rationality. If the Net does nothing but help us
accept the primacy of standpoint over reason—while leaving reason
some footholds in the wall of belief—it will have done our democracy
the valuable service of making it more realistic.

About the Author

David Weinberger is a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet
& Society. He was an adviser on Net policy to the Dean and Edwards
campaigns. He is a co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and author of
Everything Is Miscellaneous.
 PA R t ICIPAtoR Y DeMoCR AC Y
DeM A nDs PA R t ICIPAt Ion

Michael Turk

“ An electorate so easily swayed by simple

arguments and disinclined to look for more information
with easy access to voting on policy decisions or elections
is more destructive than an apathetic electorate that

”
chooses not to vote.

i t’s 8 o’clock on Wednesday night. Millions of American homes

are tuned in to the most popular TV show on the air. For 16
weeks, the contestants have been jockeying for position and it
is finally down to two. Trying to break into this business used to be
a grueling ordeal characterized by endless hours spent honing your
craft. Now an audition process vets contestants and determines who is
most qualified for the top position. Tonight’s finale will determine the
winner. Fingers are poised to speed dial all across America.
The program’s website is noticeably slower tonight than it was this
afternoon. The traffic has spiked as millions of people across the nation
express their opinions. The competition has been grueling, but it has
also been more immediate and arguably fairer than in the past. When

8
Michael Turk n 

all the votes are tallied, the winner will be announced—and someone
will be elected the next American president.
In this scenario, our political process has been reduced to merely
another offering in the crowded world of celebutainment, with our top
leaders chosen from afar by telephone calls and Internet voting. Let’s
call it politainment.
It is a vision with a certain appeal. Trading in the quadrennial dis-
play of ego and fundraising prowess in favor of a sixteen-week debate
series weeding out one competitor at a time would certainly have its sup-
porters. Imagine the possibilities of having weekly political debates on
proposed legislation, followed by 24 hours of Internet voting. True direct
democracy would be at our fingertips. But would that be a good thing?
When the Framers of our Constitution built our representative
democracy, they understood one thing: most people are not informed
on issues. In 1776, it was lack of access to education. Today it is due to
a combination of too much information and not enough curiosity.
In June of 2007, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Ameri-
can Time Use Survey. It found that Americans between the ages of
15 and 55 spend only 6 to 20 minutes a day reading.1 They spent less
than half an hour a day on educational activities, but 2.5 hours watch-
ing TV.2 In an age of always-on communications and our insatiable
need for entertainment, we, as a society, are not greatly concerned with
studying the issues.
As practitioners of Internet campaigns march toward a Utopian
vision of direct democracy and virtual town halls, there must be a
corresponding effort to educate Americans beyond our current ninth-
grade civics class level. Without an informed electorate participating

1 American Time Use Survey, US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. July 19, 2007,
Accessed 3/18/2008 at Statistics http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11.htm
2 American Time Use Survey, US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. July 19, 2007,
Accessed 3/18/2008 at Statistics http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm
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