Joi Ito in Tokyo have posted the paper he was working on, on Emergent Democracy. Our online meeting happening was leading up to this, as was inspired discussions over e-mail the last couple of days, which I unfortunately didn't get around to participating in. But it is good stuff, which Joi hopes to make more perfect later on."...[T]he tools and protocols of the Internet have not yet developed the necessary features to allow emergence to create a higher-level order. These tools are being developed and we are on the verge of an awakening of the Internet. This awakening will facilitate the anticipated political model enabled by technology to support some of the basic attributes of democracy, which have eroded as power has become concentrated within corporations and governments. It is possible that new technologies may enable a higher-level order through emergent properties, which will enable a form of emergent direct democracy capable of managing complex issues more effectively than the current form of representative democracy." He gives a fine overview of various principles, models, trends and technologies, and points to how the weblog community shows much better hope for emergence to take place than traditional webpages do. In part because there's a feedback loop taking place. And the current breed of tool builders are quite likely to come up with key pieces that might make all the difference in taking it further. And here's a conclusion I most certainly can stand behind as well:"The world needs emergent democracy more than ever. The issues are too complex for representative governments to understand. Representatives of sovereign nations negotiating with each other in global dialog are also very limited in their ability to solve global issues. The monolithic media and their increasingly simplistic representation of the world can not provide the competition of ideas necessary to reach consensus. Emergent democracy has the potential to solve many of the problems we face in the exceedingly complex world at both the national and global scale. The community of toolmakers will build the tools necessary for an emergent democracy if the people support the effort and resist those who try to stifle this effort and destroy the commons."
[ Organization | 2003-02-17 23:59 | | PermaLink ] More >
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Some news about Highlift Systems who are planning on building elevators to geostationary orbit. They may have found a second location for the anchor of their space elevator - Perth, Western Australia, which apparently has the calm waters and international airport needed. The whole project has apparently gotten more momentum after the shuttle disaster. And with a startup cost of 7-10 billion, it will need a lot more support.
Boeing are doing successful tests of planes with broadband Internet connections. 20-Mbit/second satellite connection for each plane, with ethernet by each seat. Still just a test, but they hope to install it more widely in 2004.
