---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Robert Steele <robert.david.steele.vivas@gmail.com>Date:
Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 1:10 AM
Subject: Review of Extreme Democracy -
Underlies & Enhances #OWS
To:
Robert.David.Steele.Vivas@gmail.comI
bought this book in October 2010 because I was getting to know both
Mitch Ratcliff and Jon Lebkowsky better, but at first pass through it
did not really draw me in. Then OccupyWallStreet happened. I read the
book on the flight from the US to Spain where I am talking about
commercial intelligence and integrity in the messed up new world, and
this time around, the book GRABS ME.
Because #OWS has brought to
life the ideas the co-editors and various contributing authors
understood well before 2004 and articulated in 2004, now I can absorb
this book as much more meaningful and inspirational. Anyone associated
with OccupyWallStreet in any way from direct to indirect, should read
this book. I am donating my copy to the George Mason University Library
as I do all my new books (they took over my entire library when I joined
the UN back in 2010).
QUOTE 6): "Politics is always changing as a
society incorporates new technology for disseminating information and
connecting people."
QUOTE (11): "The whole history of democracy
and technology has set the stage for what happens next."
In the
first contribution Joichi Ito (now head of the MIT Media Lab) suggests
that emergent democracy is an open process melding social software into
democracy. I observe that no one now elected to office is serious about
using social software to properly understand any issue or harness the
collective intelligence of their constituency on any
issue.
Weblogs are digital grass roots
equivalents.
Helpful to remind ourselves that democracy is
defined by having the supreme power vested in the people and exercised
directly--NOT what we have today in the USA's inverted totalitarian
democracy, see
Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter
of Inverted Totalitarianism (New in Paper).
Democracy NEEDS
the competition ideas that in turn demand free speech. Rule by Secrecy
is anti-democratic (and also enormously wasteful). See
Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most
Audacious Power Grab in American History and
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the
Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great
Pyramids.
All of the authors share concerns with creemping
restraints on the information commons and all of the authors are
optimistic about the emergence of extreme democracy. For the latest book
along these lines, see Peggy Holman's
Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into
Opportunity.
From Gary Johnson and so totally relevant to
#OWS it is scary good:
QUOTE (25): "In complex systems the role
of the leader is not about determining direction and controlling
followers. The leader maintains integrity, mediates the will of the
many, influencing and communicating with peers and other leaders. The
leader becomes more of a facilitator (or hub), and custodian of the
process, than a power figure."
The entire book is rich with
footnotes and most of them provide URLs.
Three types of network
emergence: creative (smallest), social (middling), and political
(largest). I myself am frustrated by #OWS spinning in circles over
demands and grievances while failing to move aggressively on what US Day
of Rage correctly (in my view) calls for as the singular demand:
Electoral Reform. I like to say there is nothing wrong with America the
Beautiful that cannot be set right immediately by restoring the
integrity of our electoral process and hence our governance and hence
putting corporations back into the box (they hold commissions from the
public). Everything else is down in the weeds, in my view, but of course
necessary to the process.
QUOTE (32): "Weblogs create a positive
feedback systems, and with tools for analysis lke Technorati, we can
identify the importance of information at the political level by
tracking its movement across the weak ties between networks and network
levels."
TRUST is a critical aspect--one governments no longer
enjoy in most artificial nation-states--and the book as a whole is huge
on both the process of creating public trust, and the means by which the
public can carry out counter-surveillance on the government as well as
corporations.
QUOTE (38): "We can bootstrap emergent democracy
using existing and evolving tools and create concrete examples of
emergent democracy, such as intentional blog communities, ad hoc
advocacy coalitions, and activist networks."
Mitch Ratcliff
articulates a deep confidence in people that I share (search for 2010
HUMINT Trilogy also Reflections on Integrity).
QUOTE (60):
Extreme democracy, taking a cue from the recent evolution of software
development, 'extreme programming,' anticipates a politics based on
lowered friction in communication that increases the diversity of ideas
and opinions that can be brought to bear on the development of public
policy."
In other words, as I articulated in 1995 in a Government
Information Quarterly article, we can create a Smart Nation that
harnesses the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth. NOT what the
two-party tyranny wants to hear.
QUOTE (76): "Emergence, to a
great degree, is simply what we don't plan. How to arrive at the best
possible unplanned outcome is what emergent democracy is
about."
I had to read that several times to appreciate the depth.
It drives directly to the point that top-down hierarchies are not
democratic, and that indigenous bottom-up consensus processes are. I
have a note to the effect that extreme democracy crosses all boundaries
and takes place in real time. In other words, it is the opposite of
bureaucratic stove-pipes and special interest earmarks, and restores
holistic analytics and long-term thinking.
QUOTE (89): "A
political philosophy must incorporate more than the experience of
participation. An analysis of power, define ideas about the role of the
citizen and the government, and the principles society will embrace
about the value of the individual are required as well. See
The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That
Define and Inspire Our Country and also
What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and
the Epic Struggle to Create a United States.
Several of the
authors focus on the Howard Dean campaign and Joe Trippi's brilliance in
the first cut of a political web that actually engaged people. The
conclusions are generally negative--the first cut, while brilliant,
clustered like-minded people but did not cope with actual issues. The
web effort could also not overcome Dean's inherent problems with himself
and others. The bottom line: the web aspect must help the totality
(human-centered) address new challenges in a visibly effective manner.
Rah rah and hand-holding are not enough. Real information, real issues,
real people, real outcomes are essential.
Steve Johnson focused
on technology amplified collective action as the next big thing. He also
hits hard on my biggest concern with #OWS, as shown below.
QUOTE
(100): "Influencing elections and legislation is the sene qua non of
effectiveness."
It is driving me mad that #OWS is mumbling about
going after 2014 and 2016 seats when an Electoral Act of 2012 is online
now, could be demanded on 6 November, and if not implemented by 15
February 2012, used to create a General Strike that flushes the US
Congress down the toilet, and the two-party tyranny with it.
Ken
White makes the very important point that reform is not redesign. See
Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical
Disclosure and
Redesigning Society (Stanford Business
Books).
Valdis Krebs focuses on our biggest challenge right
now: the atomized voter. He shows three levels of voting
engagement:
01 The atomized voter
02 The demographic
voter
03 The social voter
He makes the point that
strangers do not influence social voeters, and:
QUOTE (124):
"Instead of having strangers call voters, or knock on doors, the
campaign should find well-connnected supporters and have them go out
into their clusters."
QUOTE (126): "The network strategy does not
require a large war chest of political contributions. It does require
time and energy and understanding of the social dynamics."
I have
a note: 100 million voters times $10 each is US$1 billion. 2012 is a
do-able do if #OWS will integrate, adapt, and MOVE.
Ross Mayfield
gets into online communities, flash mobs and flash fund-raising, flash
lobbying, participatory politics.
Danah Boyd focuses on engaging
people and engendering community. There are so many local to national
design opportunities inherent in the economic crash (Wall Street can
ignore reality, but reality will not ignore Wall Street) that I am
actually positive about the near future. We are about to become "sane"
as a nation and stop doing the wrong things at greater
expense.
Adam Greenfield contributes a chapter, "Democracy for
the Rest of Us: the Minimal Compact and Open-Source Government" that I
consider worthy of stand-alone circulation. He talks about portable
citizenship and the open source world being flexible, adaptive,
extensible, infinitely reproducible (#OWS!!), non-local, interoperable
and mutual, and highly robust.
QUOTE (211): "Whatever else it
[extreme democracy] achieves, if anything, I hope you take from it the
essential recognition it shares with open-source development: that we
can teach ourselves what we need to learn, share whatever knowledge we
glean, build on the insights of the others engaged in the same efforts.
Just as the novice programmer is invited to "hack" open-source software,
the minimal compact invites us to demystify and reengineer government at
the most intimate and immediate level." We can hack
democracy."
Ethan Zuckerman offers some very important wisdom on
the need to recognize the rest of the world - the five billion poor - as
imminent beneficiaries of any tools, processes, and success that we
enjoy, and I especially like his recognition that smart phones are not
going anywhere fast in the extreme poverty world. There it is dumb
phones and talk radio. I really really like his emphasis on how we
should design tools (and networks) for all the world, not just the 1st
world.
Roger Wood is phenomenal in his focus on the FACT that all
political, social, and economic structures boil down to the
individual.
QUOTE (248): "All initiatives are born, all decisions
are made and all actions are taken by individuals. The individual human,
uniquely endowed with the capacity for thought and reasoning, is the
source of all political action. Power, as the ability to cause action in
society, comes only from people."
Adina Levin discusses specific
tools and functions:
01 Dialog and deliberation (this is what the
National Council for Dialog and Deliberation does, but their tools are
non-existent)
02 Researching policies and strategies (this is the
core of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and public
intelligence
03 Educating public and the media (not well
developed today)
04 Identifying supporters (#OWS has done that --
99%)
05 Gathering and motivating supporters (this is where #OWS
lacks a strategy, vision, funding plan, and political plan)
06
Raising money, mobilization (early days yet, I am certain we can raise
$1 billion a year as a democracy subscription in the USA, much more once
this migrates to the rest of the world).
I put the book down with
huge admiration and respect for all of the contributing authors and the
two editors especially. I believe that the Arab Spring and the
demonstrable Hypocrisy (search for Jon Lebkowsky Hypocrisy Video) of the
current Administration were seed crystals for #OWS, and #OWS is a seed
crystal for something much much larger that ultimates engages 300
million US voters and then billions of global voters. It is a rare
privilege to be alive today and in association with Extreme
Democracy.
See Also:
The Tao of Democracy: Using co-intelligence to create a
world that works for all Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social
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