Robin Good launches a debate on this important topic.
Here’s the introduction:
“Web 2.0 has revolutionized the panorama of the information society: users have become information producers and the new web platforms have become relationship venues where new knowledge and ideas emerge. Also the new tools of social networking, social tagging, wikis and blogs enable new forms of social interaction, participation and cooperation. But…
* Is this participation really democratic?
* Or is this a democracy paradox, where everyone can interact but the decision making places are all outside the net?
* Is the horizontal leveling of internet communications really an instrument of democracy?
* How would it be possible to transform these emotional and communication-oriented extensions in a real space connected with the physical world of true participation to decision-making?
I have gone out and asked to four people whose intellectual integrity and life vision I respect the above questions: Howard Rheingold, John Blossom, Michel Bauwens, Sepp Hasslberger answer the above questions from four diverse individual viewpoints.
Here’s the gist of my reply:
“The first level is expression, and it is clear that in this context, the Web 2.0 is a resounding success.
And it’s importance should not be underestimated since historically, we can see that people with power have always tried to limit and control expression, so we should not be cynical about it.
I think that Web 2.0 generally goes beyond expression, and has also become an efficient tool for mobilization and collective action
But expression is not deliberation. Most Web 2.0 platforms are not very well suited for the kind of complex deliberation that would be needed to create a context for decision-making. I think these kinds of tools, which can integrate complexity, adequately filter for quality, and have a value conscious design approach that insure that a diversity of views are taking into account, are still too far between, but quite a few groups are working on it
The key in politics is not expression, nor expressing discontent or resistance, but actually transforming things. Collective action can change things, but still implies a separation between the ‘people’ and ‘representative institutions’. It implies ‘we’ are asking ‘them’, to change their ways.
So I think the real revolution of peer to peer technologies is that it allows people not just expression, but actually a redesign of social processes.
For example, free software communities successfully embed their values in software, and so do the emerging open design communities that are now starting to tackle physical production itself. This is the next great frontier of peer production communities.
But equally crucial, and this is why I believe Lessig made the right decision in moving from Creative Commons to Open Politics, is that we actually start redesigning politics itself.
If you see sites like worldchanging.org, or p2pfoundation.net for that matter, it is rather easy to come to the conclusion that most solutions for contemporary problems already exist, but they are scattered in marginal groups.
At the same time, the current political and economic system seems almost completely oblivious to it, and so these crucial solutions do not seem to be able to scale. This is a sign of a profound disease and insufficiency of current democratic and representative regimes, that are in the hands of privileged elites, who hide their power through a lack of openness.
The big fight now is openness and transparency.
And as we create our own P2P alternatives, we still have to tackle the mainstream system, and since a direct approach seems impossible (simply changing one party by another with very similar standard policies), what we need is to redesign, reprogram the political process itself.
That’s the crucial task right now, and Web 2.0 is not sufficient for this, it’s merely a first step.”
The other contributions are of course of great interest, so go to the original article for all four contributions.