The term democracy is an ever-evolving, ever-changing concept since the first time it appeared in the Ancient Greek world. Back then, democracy was nothing like what we perceive today. Can you imagine a democracy where women cannot vote because they are not considered as equal citizens to men and not only the men but the most powerful? Can you imagine a democracy where there were slaves of all kinds? Hopefully you cannot, but that was exactly the form of democracy back in the ancient world. However what they had was still unique and could not be preceded for hundreds of years. The democracy as we now know could only spring after the women’s suffrage movements and war against every kind of discrimination after the 19th century. So actually democracy took around a thousand of years to mature. However, maturity doesn’t mean that it stopped evolving.
After the 20th century the term began to evolve faster than ever with the socio-technological developments. Telecommunications, movies and Internet revolutionized the way we think about the world and the societal structures.
According to an article in Wikipedia, even though there is no universally accepted definition of ‘democracy’, there are two principles that any definition of democracy includes. The first principle is that all members of the society (citizens) have equal access to power and the second that all members (citizens) enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties.
The new hype in democracy after the Internet revolution is personal democracy.
It takes the definition in Wikipedia to a higher level of interaction. Internet enabled citizens to group for any cause that they like without any costs and to rally for whoever they want, creating big pressure groups.
Also, through the Internet the videos of glorious moments in any campaign can be forwarded to millions of people. However personalized democracy is not only campaigning as we can understand from the bold move of Barack Obama to appoint the founder of Craig’s List, one of the biggest social interaction Web sites in the globe, Craig Newmark, as the new technology officer of the White House. He is going to be responsible of all the policies of White House Office of Science & Technology Policy.
Craig Newmark is a very good choice for the job because the younger population who is born with the net demands to be connected to the White House via Internet as well.
They want to send an email whenever they see something wrong with their country, be it maltreatment of disadvantaged or insufficient use of solar panels.
Some of the main areas the personal democracy will change are below, we will be talking about these issues that will change our lives hopefully for the better.
- Open fundraising and how to create Internet “money bombs”
- Mastering the new world of online political video
- Re-inventing political media with the rise of the semi-pro
- The changing roles of the “net-roots” and the “right-roots”
- Converting online supporters into on-the-ground volunteers
- Unblocking the future of mobile politics
- Big fish in small fishbowls: How bloggers are upending local politics
- The inside scoop on what worked and what didn’t from the Presidential campaigns
- Ideas that spread win: how to go “viral”
- How “Wiki Government” can work
- Open data, open government and the problem of corruption
- Creating better debates with and without television
- The cross-partisan politics of transparency
- Design principles for online democracy: Connecting government and constituents in the Internet age
- The changing role of the net-roots and the right-roots
- How to embrace voter-generated content
- New ways of making and spending money online
- The Internet’s revolutionary power overseas
- National tech policy: Which way forward?
- Social technology and how the Internet can save the planet
- The rise of dynamic data-driven journalism
- Redefining leadership in a networked age
