Presentation/2008-10-18
From Metagovernment - Government of, by, and for all the people
This is the archived version of the Metagovernment presentation as it was presented by Ed Pastore at the Web 2.0 Expo in Prague, October 18, 2008.
Contents |
Success of Web 2.0
- Openness and collaboration bring strength
- Success has been surprising to many
- Increased participation = better quality
- This is just the beginning
Web 2.0 Is Expanding to Governance
- Experimentation stage
- Usually inject Web 2.0 into existing political processes
- Campaigns using blogs, MySpace, YouTube, SecondLife, etc.
- Organizations using websites to interact with elected officials: access2democracy, USA Votes, many others
Beginning of “Mixdemocracy”
- Using Web 2.0 to enable direct citizen input into the decisions of elected officials.
- Sweden: Demoex (Democratic Experiment)
- Australia: Senator On-Line
- United States: lowercase-d, FreeGovernment, GovIt, and others.
- Others: Look up “related projects” on Metagovernment.org
Why Stop There?
- Why use new technology with old politics?
- What use are politicians?
- Not just in governments, but in every governance process
Metagovernment
- A replacement for existing governance structures (through peaceful, lawful means)
- Completely open; completely global
- Targeted at all forms of governance: everywhere there is a representative democracy
- Not a simple direct democracy: no voting, no majority rule
Basic Principles
- Government of, by, and for the people
- Openness in everything
- Without consensus, there is no law
- Consensus through synthesis
Definitions
- Community — any group of people with a common interest
- Government — the organizing principle of a community
- Consensus — the lack of significant dissent
How It Works
- Each community runs an instance of governance software (Metascore)
- Anyone on the internet may:
- Create proposals
- Comment on proposals (or other comments)
- Score proposals and comments
- Possibly score other users
Scoring Proposals
- Basic score — mathematical calculation of positive and negative scores for a proposal
- Synthesis score — how well a proposal synthesizes two or more other proposals
- Consensus score — calculation of the above scores. Above a very high threshold, something becomes law.
- Every score a user applies is weighted by their own score (if we have user-scores)
Expected Results
- Eliminates corruption, bribery, secrecy, back-room deals, etc.
- Synthesis actively builds consensus
- Better idea creation: great solutions aren’t repressed by a cumbersome bureaucracy
- Transforms citizenship: government is no longer something that just happens to you
Mesh of Communities
- Each community runs an instance of Metascore
- Hierarchies of communities will form
- Self-limiting: people will self-select into communities they care about
- Replaces levels of government, parts of government, political parties, interest groups, coalitions, etc.
Some Key Unknowns
- Should we implement user scoring?
- What is a consensus?
- Who administers the software?
- How do we prevent hacking, traffic shaping, etc.?
- Most of these will be solved by scaled adoption, experimentation, and distribution
Software Branches
- Server application
- Django/python web interface
- Concepts are related through tagging
- Each tag has a score
- Distributed Version Control System
- DemocracyLab — Sister project
How You Can Help
- Adhocracy — Contribute as you please
- Explore metagovernment.org
- Join list server, read the archives
- Everyone is welcome, but for startup phase we need more programmers
- Tell a friend
