Recently, I have begun posting the following to a few discussion groups I have been reading recently:
I wish to expand on the initial page I made at http://realchange.us/the-gist-of-it-all/almost a year ago that describes , in part, how a beneficial change can be made for all. To better understand the words below, I ask the reader to read the web page first, as the words below builds upon that.
I am an ancient Usenet Junkie., but don’t have pity on me. Having first signed onto Usenet long before Endless September began, I feel privileged to have seen and participated in the beginnings of a direct democracy in action. Broken up into hierarchical groups and sub-groups, they began evolving, fighting, arguing, flaming, backstabbing, and copious amounts of trolling as it was, I believe it qualifies for the term democracy. To me, it seems Usenet etiquette was a forming democratic process. It was much like a large, lumbering elephant. Like an elephant, it left great piles of dung wherever it went, but when it moved it was a sight to behold. The level of collaboration Usenet achieved enhanced the lives and understanding of almost everyone involved. Humanity, as a whole, prospered. Sadly, Sporge or spam forgeries, currently renders Usenet challenging but not impossible to use.
Much like our modern media, sporge simply crapifies and manipulates the democratic process within Usenet with half truths, libelous statements, forgeries, etc. which are designed to socially engineer the reader into a targeted opinion or thought process. But wait, all is not lost. There are actually anti spam volunteers policing the newsgroups for spam messages. Though imperfect, a way was found to control sporge in a system that never thought it needed the help.
Corruption, stealing, murder, jealousy, these are the dark side of humanity. Anyone is capable of these actions at any time for any reason. There has never been, and never will be, a way to prevent 100% of all occurrences of human evil. Let the reader examine there own heart for all the needed proof. We think these thoughts every waking moment, and often dream of things we will never speak to anyone about. We are Human. And whatever political solution must involved this concept and take it into account. I mention these things because even politicians are human. Time and again, we all have seen bright people rise with honorable intentions only to succumb to the temptations of power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. We have seen it all before and we will see it all again, unless we can break the cycle.
But you may ask “How can we break the cycle?” The answer begins at http://realchange.us/the-gist-of-it-all which describes an idea I have involving the formation of a securable forum available only to the registered voters and the politicians that serve them. Consisting of free, open source software, All manner of deliberations can occur on this forum anonymously, free from corporate interests, lobbyists, media pundits, and anyone else not in that political district. Just the voters and the serving politician. From the bottom up vantage point of the voter, the voter would be able to anonymously interact with the other voters of the same political district. From the view of the top down, the serving politician would only be able to see and interact with the anonymous constituents they serve. This can be used to effectively micromanage the serving politician Implementing this design can easily begin by a politician “pledging” to support this fully and voluntarily. Some, such as Jeremy Hanson of Vermont and Phil Dodds of Florida, have already tried to run similar campaigns, and so far failed. So, how can this system be built?
On June 1 – 2 2013, there is a nationwide civic hacking campaign called Hack for Change. Located at http://hackforchange.org , it is billed as a nationwide civic hacking gathering where coders, activists, and other people from all over get together and brainstorm various applications and software products that take advantage of public databases. I am intending to lead a development team to design the software infrastructure to attempt to bring this whole idea to fruition. If anyone here is interested in directly participating, please contact me directly. You can also join our working chat room at irc.freenode.net in the room #realchange. I’ll be the one with the loose screw.