Digital Democracy: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

As the Middle-Aged White Guys in Suits dig in in D.C. for what is hopefully their last stand, the idea of Digital Democracy never looked better. If it's a good idea (and it is) to empower individuals by teaching them how to master their own technology via movements like OS and free software, isn't it past time to use the technology of the Net and the Web to reverse the flow of power, away from the entrenched and increasingly lunatic journalists and politicians in Washington and back to the individuals staring from a distance in shock and horror and what they're seeing on their TV screens? Forget Wag the Dog. Joseph Conrad, Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppla (maybe Fellini, too) have seized the capitol. Only we can't leave the theater.

Never mind the silly allusions to "Wag the Dog." Somehow, Joseph Conrad, Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola (maybe Fellini, too) got together to take over the government and play out their own visions of our political life. The American capitol is now the Heart of Darkness, fusing the darkest and most paranoid visions of "JFK" with the spectacularly represented lunacy of "Apocalypse Now."

The movies have somehow become real life, but we can't leave the theater and go home. The horror never ends. Whenever we turn on the TV, they're all still there, shouting, posturing, spinning.

More and more, it seems clear that they're never going to go away. Each one will have to be dragged out kicking and screaming, the last zealot in Congress, the last self-righteous reporter, the last screaming pundit on cable.

It's time to start thinking about Digital Democracy. We have to be able to do better than them.

If the goals of OS and the free software movement are, in part, the free and democratic sharing of technology, why not stretch the notion farther and put it into the context of our increasingly surreal, even mad, political times?

The natural extension of the booming OS and free software movements are into politics and democracy, especially the radical new ways in which digital democracy could once again empower individuals instead of politicians and journalists, and reform the obviously broken and outdated way in which we resolve political issues.

America was founded as a Republic, not really as a representative democracy. For one thing, Americans were scattered far from one another and couldn't make their feelings known quickly. So elected representatives were elected to gather and make decisions on their behalf.

The authors of the Constitution didn't have all that much regard for the judgements of the average citizen, any more than their successors seem to. The structure was tilted towards a deliberative, rather than simply representative system so that educated and affluent landowners could screen the passions of the rabble and have the final say.

The early pundits and cyber-gurus of the Internet's first generation spouted on quite a bit about the impact of networked computing on democratic institutions like Congress and journalism. These institutions, they predicted, would increasingly become ineffective and irrelevant, swept away by the power of digital technology to reverse the flow of power.

This cyber-rhetoric seemed - was - heavy-handed, Utopian and overblown. It evoked the table-thumping Marxists more than the architects of a new, civil order. But this week, it looks more better by the hour.

If you take the OS idea and daydream about it for a bit - millions of individuals taking control of their own technology and shaping the information they access and share, doesn't this idea have even greater application for politics? And could it possibly be more timely? If would could express ourselves politically - and have our expressions count - isn't it at least conceivable that the U.S. Congress might be talking about something that matters today, and for the last year?

Digital democracy is no longer a pipedream, not in the year of the online dumping of the Starr report and the impeachment proceedings. It's no longer difficult to imagine every American having a computer in the next few years, or having easy access to one in schools, libraries and public buildings. People could vote online now as easily as they vote by ballot or booth - more easily really. Each citizen could be assigned a digital voting number and use it to vote from home or the school or library down the road, where computers already exist or could easily be set up. Fraud would be easier to spot and guard against, thanks to advances in both encryption and programming. And this wouldn't even raise fresh privacy issues, as voters have to register now.

This week, the country is confronted with the bizarre spectacle of a runaway political entity - Republicans in the House of Representatives - deciding, correctly or not, that no interest is more important than impeaching President Clinton - not public sentiment, military action, education, health care, the economy or any other civic or social agenda. Even if they're right, lots of people are uneasy about this willful disregard of public will. Most Americans don't want this to be happening, and have said so for months. The politicians have said that it doesn't really matter, the next election is two years away. By then, nobody will remember this strange time. That's a good argument for some form of Digital Democracy.

Digital voting made possible by the Internet would make a spectacle like the impeachment proceedings impossible. Everything shouldn't necessarily be subject to popular vote, but the impeachment of the President should be, and the Net and the Web could make it possible even now.

Watching music lovers challenge the primacy of the music industry through digital technology like MP3's and the Rio raises the question of whether we really need a middleman institution like Congress to decide issues like this for us. After the year long Lewinsky/Clinton media barrage and the dumping of reams of material, pornographic and otherwise on the Internet, we know as much about the charges against the President as they do. We are able and equipped to make up our own minds and express our own wishes. And perhaps even see our wishes carried out.

Do we need to be bound to completely by their agenda, when we can now set our own?

Unlike Colonial Americans, we aren't disconnected and remote. We can make our feelings known instantly. We have the technology to gather in communities and clusters to debate and consider as much or more information as members of Congress.

Many politicians and journalists have feared, even loathed, the Internet, since its inception. Increasingly, it becomes clear why. It really does threaten them. It really does provide the means to take power away from them - and their co-produced spectacles like impeachment proceedings and presidential nominating processes - and distribute it more broadly. This week marks the perfect time to begin consider the possibilities of Digital Democracy. To broaden the notion of empowering individuals begin by the designers of the Internet, advanced by hackers, geeks, nerds, developers and designers and being played out on sites like this one today. From the moment the Internet began to grow, power and information began to leach away from entrenched institutions like government, the press and academe and towards hundreds of thousands, then millions of individual citizens. The impeachment proceedings are a powerful argument for the idea that it's time to take that idea farther.

Digital technology doesn't mean that democratic decisions would have to be rushed or impulsive. They could be as deliberative as we wished. Digital voting could be spread over time, perhaps requiring several votes. A broad range of issues and decisions - appointments, foreign policy decisions, criminal matters - would be inappropriate for online voting.

But the Net is becoming a medium already well set-up for civic discussions. The Internet could host hundreds, even thousands of public online forums for debate and discussion - via message boards, chat rooms and websites that could be designed for towns, counties, states or regions. Politicians, agencies and advocates could disseminate information and arguments via national websites, mailing lists and e-mail.

These forums would have to consider new kinds of rules for debate and discussion, an online issue long in need of attention. Posters would have to identify themselves and take responsibility for their words. Discussion would center on issues, not personalities. Presidents and legislators could bring information and decisions directly to the American public. If the Starr report was worthy of being dumped on line, why not the House Judiciary report on impeachment? Voters could read it online, debate it, decide to pass it along for further action or stop the process right there.

If digital democracy were in place, this issue would have been resolved nearly a year ago. Tens of millions of dollars would have been better spent. Many more important issues would have considered, accepted and rejected. Clinton would either be doing his job or long gone. Instead of feeling cheated and ignored, the public would feel enfranchised and involved. Democracy wouldn't be a remote circus practiced far away by alien cultures, but something as close as a desk or living room.

We are no longer a country of merchants and mostly illiterate farmers. Paine and Jefferson, the fathers of media, couldn't quite have imagined the Internet, but there seems little doubt that they have loved its communicative and democratic possibilities. Those of us with access to computers and modems have access to all of the information and opinions in the world, thus the means to consider issues and express ourselves. In fact, there are thousands of people who've been online for years and who are experienced at creating digital communities, monitoring conversations and developing the software and hardware to run them efficiently and accurately.

No system involving Digital Democracy could work or even be seriously considered until and unless all Americans were guaranteed access to computers. A few years ago, online users were a tiny, techno-elite. That's no longer true. Computers are increasingly ubiquitous, at schools, businesses, and at home. Personal computers are already being mass-marketed that cost well below $1,000, and public agencies like schools, libraries and municipal office buildings are increasingly wired. They could offer online voting to non-computer users in much the way they offer voting booths and make them available. Many more Americans own computers than voting booths.

There are now, reports Yahoo! 84,000,000 Internet users in America, and 70,900,000 Web users. This is more than twice as many people as traditionally vote in Presidential elections. New information technologies like the Internet wouldn't displace democracy, they could re-invigorate it, re-connecting millions of disenchanted Americans to a political system that they could literally participate in through devices at their fingertips.

A majority of Americans already go online all the time to play, work, and communicate. Does anybody doubt that many more would get involved in democracy if technology made it easier and more relevant?

Anyone who writes online receives a continuous stream of disheartening e-mail messages from mostly younger people who wouldn't dream of paying attention to the World News Tonight or the bizarre stories reported there from Washington. "What does this have to do with me?" e-mailed Jason last week, in a typical message. "These people [in Washington] are out to lunch. They have their own agenda, and I don't even know what it is, except it isn't mine. I won't dignify it by paying any attention to it. I'm having fun and doing real work."

Online communities, messaging boards and systems are intensely democratic, if sometimes chaotic. They are much freer and more inclusive than Washington journalism or Washington politics. There is already a tradition of open discussion online, as well as a reverence for freedom and diverse points of view.

If political movements like OS and free software are taking control of technology, business, information, and the Internet is liberating an expensive, corporate-controlled culture like music, why not consider re-taking control of what is supposed to be our most elemental right: the political right to control our own lives and government?

My own notions of contemporary democracy are simple and easy to define. Narrow, rigid dogmas like Conservatism and Liberalism don't work anymore. They are blind and irrational, and without credibility. Online, we have access to many more points-of-view.

The majority rules, and everybody has to live with its decision, like it or not. Issues like impeachment or abortion and gun control don't have to be abrasive, eternally combative quagmires. They can be resolved, especially when the middle layer of bureaucrats, lobbyists, special interests and ideologues are pushed aside. And when the majority has the chance to consider and deliberate about an issue, as they have on impeachment for many months.

Polls and surveys are dismissed as non-deliberative, especially by reporters and politicians who like keeping control of issues themselves. Fears are raised of an impulsive, government-by-the-moment, ruled electronically by an unruly herd. But this is a shallow and unthinking response to the impact of new technologies like the Internet.

Polls are a new but perfectly valid expression of the public will. If they aren't infallible, they are, in general, reliable. They are refined, scientific, credible expressions of the public will, even if their use and interpretation suggests caution. The idea of widespread public expression of the kind the Net makes possible wasn't built into the Constitution because nobody dreamed it was possible, not because there is anything inherently wrong with it. And there's no reason for this kind of democratic expression to be hurried or chaotic. Nobody has to vote every hour of every day on every issue.

Journalism and politicians in Washington have been ignoring the public all year, suggesting that the voters are too greedy to care about the President's behavior (their paychecks are too fat); too apathetic (they don't pay attention to politics anymore); or too immoral (they see dirty pictures on the Internet all day, pausing only to see violent or vulgar TV or Hollywood movies and listen to obscene music lyrics). But if we're mad as hell, we don't have to take it anymore. We do have a means of fighting back, and it's both non-violent and intensely powerful and political.

The people in charge of covering, maintaining and implementing democracy are turning it into a nightmare. The journalists and politicians who have co-produced this civic horror and brought the country to a completely unnecessary and unwanted constitutional crisis are losing moral authority as well as credibility. By their behavior, they invoke the powerful argument that it's time to consider other means of broadening democracy and making it more civil, responsive and relevant. And we may have have just the means, in front of our noses and at our fingertips.

The notion of empowering individuals through control of technology is not only an idea whose time has really come, but perhaps a bigger and more urgent one than most of us ever quite imagined.

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