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" Democracy is the gold standard for good governance in modernity. Modern democracy is also fantastically expensive. After all, you only have to write a constitution, establish legislative, judicial and executive branches in permanent opposition to each other, ensure that they have enough assistance to understand the issues they're dealing with, build a civil service so that actual work can get done, regulate that civil service so it can't take over, establish a market sector to deal with everything the government shouldn't do, regulate the market sector so it can't take over, build a media infrastructure to ensure the people in whose stead you govern understand what you're doing, hire more government aides to talk to the media, regulate the lobbyists who talk to the media, hire more aides to talk to the lobbyists… "

"Online platforms for participatory democracy are flourishing in Italy and they are being initiated by civil society and local governments alike. Some of these tools are limited to 'social reporting,' where citizens are asked to recount problems and disruptions; others strive for empowering people with some sort of liquid democracy that allows people to debate and even propose legislation. But all of these platforms grew out of a deep dissatisfaction toward Italian politics and politicians, as shown by the high level of abstention in the 2013 national elections as well as the contemporary success of the Five Star Movement, an anti-establishment party that suddenly became the second most popular in the parliament's lower house. In the last few years, the economic crisis, the corruption scandals and the governments' inability to make structural reforms - such as changing the current electoral law, which establishes a proportional voting system that does not allow citizens to vote directly for individual candidates - fueled anger as well as political will among the public to demand that government give them a say on all levels of decision-making. "

"I left Istanbul in mid-June to join a 10-week program in Silicon Valley to solve global grand challenges through technology. On the first day, futurist and director of engineering at Google, Ray Kurzweil, and futurist and CEO of X PRIZE foundation, Peter Diamandis, laid out our mission at Singularity University: Create a positive impact on a billion people in a decade and create disruptive innovation. The first thing that came to my mind were the demonstrations and police crackdowns I had just left behind in Turkey, and whether there was a way to disrupt this failed system of governance. + "

" This week, Beth Noveck kicked off her talk at the Personal Democracy Forum conference by reflecting on the the MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S), Italy's 5 Star Movement, and their use of Liquid Feedback (LQFB), a software for policymaking and political discussion. After its initial deployment by the German Pirate Party, the software has gained a lot of popularity over the past few years, and most recently it has been adopted by several M5S groups in regions such as Lombardy, Lazio and Sicily. True to their principles of participatory democracy and free access to the internet and information (and in response to criticism about how they run their business), it is no surprise that these two parties have been searching for a platform to engage their members more directly. But is Liquid Feedback the answer?"

"UPDATE: At Cameron's Probable Cause hearing, the prosecution was apparently not prepared, and was unaware of the previous ruling in Superior court where Cam's bail was denied. They said they weren't ready to move forward with the Probable Cause hearing. Cameron's attorney argued that the prosecution had plenty of time to prepare, since he has been in jail for over a month and still has not been indicted. While the judge chastised the prosecution, the judge pushed the court date back to June 27th. Cameron will sit in jail for nearly a month before the government even has to prove that they have reason to charge him."

"Vast Internet surveillance. A cross-border network of state-sponsored digital snoopery. Governments shrugging their shoulders at widespread protest against the omnipresence of Big Brother. The NSA spying scandal has taught us a lot in recent weeks. One lesson in Germany, however, has gone largely unnoticed. The Pirate Party, hailed only recently as a new kind of political activism, is dead."

"The Commons Connection Around early 2000, when the name "liquid democracy" was first coined, questions about the maintenance of civil infrastructure swirled with especially fearsome intensity. I found myself thinking about commons (please ignore the stuff near the bottom of that page - it's quite obsolete) as a wider conceptual framework in which to include civil infrastructure. I started wondering if all tasks traditionally relegated to government could be thought of in terms of commons maintenance. So, I wondered... Could we not think of this fast, decentralized, collaborative decision making system as a means to ensure that the things we all hold in common - like civil infrastructure - stay properly maintained... By small, stealthy, distributed teams of anarchist kung-fu badasses, if need be... Even in the face of radical technological change...? For that too-grandiose purpose, Liquid Democracy was designed."

reinventing democracy