<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>There's a constant debate within ows about whether electoral politics are relevant. General consensus seems to me to be that the electoral process has some relevance, but not enough to engage the movement to organize for political ends. People would prefer to organize their local communities and rebuild civil society from the ground up, not reform political society from the top down. The people organizing Ows (in NYC at least) appear to have very strong anarchist instinct but many don't understand that term or take it seriously so there's a modest lack of philosophical continuity; but that's being offset by the emergence of an open source 'do-ocracy' where people who 'advance' in the informal meta-organization are those who work well with others and get shit done. It's beautiful.</div><div><br></div><div>If anyone wants to advance something in the #occupy movement such as electoral reform, I suggest writing up your plan, passing it through your local ga, implement locally, promoting it on the occupation's website (rss is more important than social media) then do the same with your regional ga's, and continue promoting it until you achieve the result that you seek. </div><div><br></div><div>If you're not tirelessly advocating your position and advancing your projects within the ows framework you're not engaging in the do-ocracy. If you're not engaging, don't be surprised when your ideas aren't implemented.</div><div><br></div><div>DWB</div><div><br>On Nov 23, 2011, at 1:41 PM, Michel Bauwens <<a href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net">michel@p2pfoundation.net</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Robert Steele</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:robert.david.steele.vivas@gmail.com"><a href="mailto:robert.david.steele.vivas@gmail.com">robert.david.steele.vivas@gmail.com</a></a>></span><br>
Date: Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 1:10 AM<br>Subject: Review of Extreme Democracy - Underlies & Enhances #OWS<br>To: <a href="mailto:Robert.David.Steele.Vivas@gmail.com"><a href="mailto:Robert.David.Steele.Vivas@gmail.com">Robert.David.Steele.Vivas@gmail.com</a></a><br><br><br><br>
I 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.<br><br>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).<br><br>QUOTE 6): "Politics is always
changing as a society incorporates new technology for disseminating
information and connecting people."<br><br>QUOTE (11): "The whole history of democracy and technology has set the stage for what happens next."<br><br>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.<br><br>Weblogs are digital grass roots equivalents.<br><br>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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069114589X/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (New in Paper)</a>.<br>
<br>Democracy
NEEDS the competition ideas that in turn demand free speech. Rule by
Secrecy is anti-democratic (and also enormously wasteful). See <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385529961/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060931841/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids</a>.<br>
<br>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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1605095214/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity</a>.<br><br>From Gary Johnson and so totally relevant to #OWS it is scary good:<br>
<br>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."<br><br>The entire book is rich with footnotes and most of them provide URLs.<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>Mitch Ratcliff
articulates a deep confidence in people that I share (search for 2010
HUMINT Trilogy also Reflections on Integrity).<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812976355/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country</a> and also <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684848716/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States</a>.<br>
<br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>QUOTE (100): "Influencing elections and legislation is the sene qua non of effectiveness."<br><br>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.<br><br>Ken White makes the very important point that reform is not redesign. See <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0020926308/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804747946/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">Redesigning Society (Stanford Business Books)</a>.<br>
<br>Valdis Krebs focuses on our biggest challenge right now: the atomized voter. He shows three levels of voting engagement:<br><br>01 The atomized voter<br><br>02 The demographic voter<br><br>03 The social voter<br>
<br>
He makes the point that strangers do not influence social voeters, and:<br><br>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."<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>Ross Mayfield gets into online communities, flash mobs and flash fund-raising, flash lobbying, participatory politics.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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."<br><br>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.<br><br>Roger Wood is phenomenal in his focus on the FACT that all
political, social, and economic structures boil down to the individual.<br><br>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."<br><br>Adina Levin discusses specific tools and functions:<br><br>01
Dialog and deliberation (this is what the National Council for Dialog
and Deliberation does, but their tools are non-existent)<br><br>02 Researching policies and strategies (this is the core of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and public intelligence<br><br>03 Educating public and the media (not well developed today)<br>
<br>04 Identifying supporters (#OWS has done that -- 99%)<br><br>05 Gathering and motivating supporters (this is where #OWS lacks a strategy, vision, funding plan, and political plan)<br><br>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).<br><br>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.<br><br>See Also:<br><br><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591095204/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">The Tao of Democracy: Using co-intelligence to create a world that works for all</a>
<br><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1577310160/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk" target="_blank">Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential</a><br><br>- - - - - - -<br><br><i><b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R3J8Z2NQKKP6DQ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm" target="_blank">Review Permalink to Vote and/or Comment</a></b></i><br>
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