Vision of a CyberState…

Posted on April 3, 2007
Filed Under Deep Thought, Politics, Rants, Reccommended Reading, Web 2.0 stuff

Democracy and the Web

The web is the ultimate democracy. If no-one likes your site, or what you’re selling, you won’t get any visitors or customers. It is also a forum where anyone can voice their opinion on any subject, and others can voice opposing opinions. It is already changing the face of journalism beyond recognition. Where you used to have very few sources of news and information (know in the blogosphere as the Mainstream Medi, or MsM) you now have many. Whether any of them are true or not is a matter of debate, but there have already been cases where the MsM has been shown to have given misleading or biased reports and called them fact (the Reuters Photoshop debacle is just one example). We are becoming more and more aware of spin and propaganda on the part of our news providers, and a veritable army of amateur journalists are out there seeking the truth and reporting it. Imagine a system of government in which everyone had a say, everyone’s voice could be heard, and everyone’s vote actually meant something.

Participation Vs Apathy.

Over the last few years we, in Britain at least, have seen turnout at elections fall quite dramatically. The current government retained office with the votes of a minority of the population because of this. They may have recieved a majority of the votes cast but they are actually a minority government if their share of the votes are taken as a proportion of the voting population. This is an effect of voter apath, however and not a cause. The major cause of voter apathy is that people don’t feel that their vote counts, they fell that they effectively have no say. MP’s tend not to worry too much about their constituents opinions on the larger issues and toe the party line. Politicians are seen as being detached from them, separate and aloof. Their constituents feel unrepresented and disenfranchised, it seems to us that the politicians think that because we voted for them, we trust them to make the right decisions on our behalf, when in fact the opposite is true. Government is also overly complex, with a layer of management between the people and those who are ostensibly their servants (thats what civil service means after all). As it is we have to approach the various bureaucrats through our MP’s who, as has already been seen, we don’t think listen to us anyway. If there was a way to cut out the middle man, let the voter feel like their opinions make a difference, and cut public spending all at the same time we would be stupid not to take it. The more a voter feels that their participation matters and makes a difference, the more they will participate.

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