On Aug 18, 2008, at 9:32 PM, charlesarmstrong wrote: > when i try to imagine an emergent > democratic system operating in practice i still see 95% of people > taking only occasional interest in decision-making. but there does > seem to be a certain proportion of the citizenry who are motivated to > take on more responsibility than the current system permits them. for > me the key thing is not how many people are involved in decision- > making, but how easy it is for someone who decides they want to get > involved to start doing so, and the way they are able to start > exerting influence.
Hello. I am new to this list, but this looks like an opportune place to introduce myself. I work with the Metagovernment project, and we are working on implementing exactly what you describe above, for any community (from chess clubs to large governments). I welcome you to investigate our project, and consider helping out, if you can: http://www.metagovernment.org/ Our home page is a little out of sync with the ideas developing internally, but anyone is welcome to join our startup committee or read its archives: http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Startup Also, since it may be of interest for your meeting, I'd like to point you to a list we have been compiling of significant projects working toward some form of direct democracy through Web 2.0 technologies: http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Related_projects Our project has been in touch with several of these other organizations, and we are beginning to explore (or at least wonder) how we can work together. Some of these projects have very different approaches and/or scopes, so we may just have to see what the general marketplace does with our "competing" systems. Ed Pastore http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Ed_Pastore _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
