Internet Activism and the Future of Democracy

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the world has been undergoing significant technological, social, and political change. With the rise of the internet, the world is more connected than ever, allowing information to flow freely around the globe. With this increase in communications, the world has also seen an increase in grassroots political movements working outside of traditional civil institutions. In the past year, leaderless protest movements have overthrown dictators in the Middle East and challenged the moral authority of neoliberalism in America. At a time when public trust in government is perhaps at an all-time low, it seems that systemic changes in our society are both possible and desperately needed. In the years ahead, the internet will allow people worldwide to organize themselves and fight for their collective interests. With a government controlled by international corporations, America needs alternative civil institutions to allow for truly democratic debate and decision-making. Using modern communication tools, these new institutions could potentially be much more efficient than traditional democratic institutions, which use methods largely designed in the 18th century. It is difficult to imagine exactly what this new society could look like, but it is clear that the internet will play a profound role in shaping the 21st century.

The combination of democracy and the internet reveals a metaphor that offers insights into why such  a merger makes sense. The essence of democracy is the rule of law, the idea that society should be governed by rules and not by individuals. Since a government more or less controls the behavior of its citizens, the laws of a government could be described as a kind of “source code” for society. The task of government is to constantly update these laws in order to maximize the public interest, just as a software developer updates code to satisfy his users. The laws of a government include its legal framework for creating new laws, which means that it can build successive layers of complexity. For example, a government may have a set of fundamental laws (like a Constitution) which specifies a process with which to create more specific laws. This ability to create layers of complexity is analogous to the hierarchical design of software, with complex functions being composed of simpler subroutines. The metaphor could be extended even further with concepts such as modularity, having autonomous sub-components, and extensibility, having the capacity for future improvements. The idea of democracy as software development has many implications, and it stands to reason that politicians could learn a lot from programmers.

The recent decline of public trust in government, which began in the Reagan era, may be related to the lack of modern technology in the legislation process. It should be no surprise that government is perceived as inefficient when their decision-making process remains at an 18th century pace. Making democratic decisions the old-fashioned way makes an institution run at a snails pace, causing it to be much less effective than a hierarchical organization with a single leader. This could explain why non-democratic institution, especially corporations, have gained so much influence in a society that claims to value democracy above all else. The “small government” movement could then be explained as a way of outsourcing our collective decision-making to non-democratic institutions, which seem to be so much more efficiently managed. The cost of this delegation of power became apparent after the 2008 financial crisis. Our government, however efficient it may be, is no longer acting in the interests of ordinary citizens. Unless you ask the most hardcore conservatives and libertarians, who think the problem is that we haven't ceded enough of our democratic power, the influence of corporations is now the greatest threat to American prosperity. Unsurprisingly, the corporations themselves have profited tremendously from this power transfer over the past few decades. It would seem, then, that it is in the interests of these corporations to prevent our democratic institutions from performing their intended functions effectively. With that in mind, it is safe to assume that the current system of government can no longer be trusted to uphold the will of the American people.

A system of making democratic decisions over the internet would have many benefits over the traditional form of democracy. The obvious benefit is that decisions can be made without having to physically gather in one location. Storing legal documents digitally instead of in print would also allow changes to be tracked using something like version control software, as well as providing functionality like searching and hyper-linking between documents. Furthermore, such a system would be usable by any kind of group, regardless of its status as an official civil institution. It would be well suited to collaboration between groups, because they would share a common decision-making framework. Finally, groups would be able to experiment with different decision-making procedures and share the most effective ones for other groups to use.

If a large portion of the public started making decision with a new system like this, it would lead to a profound change in the nature of our democracy. One might argue that ordinary citizens have no real power, and that this kind of voting would therefore be pointless, but this argument ignores the fact that there is power in collective action. This is the principle behind labor unions, which are supposed to be democratic institutions that fight for the interests of workers. As individuals, the workers have no power over their employers, but together they can force him to raise their salaries by going on strike. Collective actions like strikes are only possible on a large scale when people have some means of making collective decisions, which is why unions exist. With a new internet-based platform for democracy, this kind of collective action could be used by any group of people that have a common interest. It would have the potential to transform civil society into an army of union-like communities, all fighting for a noble cause. It would, in effect, give people the power to control, and if necessary, replace the traditional civil institutions which would increasingly be seen as obsolete.