Tag Archives: Democracy

We, the Web Kids

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Occasionally, I read a piece of writing that sums up my thoughts so well, so exactly, that I sit and try to blog something comparable and just fail.  Try as I might, I can’t outdo the original.  I’m not sure what Pastebin.com’s retention policy is, so just in case, here it is in full:

We, the Web Kids

by Piotr Czerski (translated by Marta Szrede)

There is probably no other word that would be as overused in the media discourse as ‘generation’. I once tried to count the ‘generations’ that have been proclaimed in the past ten years, since the well-known article about the so-called ‘Generation Nothing’; I believe there were as many as twelve. They all had one thing in common: they only existed on paper. Reality never provided us with a single tangible, meaningful, unforgettable impulse, the common experience of which would forever distinguish us from the previous generations. We had been looking for it, but instead the groundbreaking change came unnoticed, along with cable TV, mobile phones, and, most of all, Internet access. It is only today that we can fully comprehend how much has changed during the past fifteen years.

We, the Web kids; we, who have grown up with the Internet and on the Internet, are a generation who meet the criteria for the term in a somewhat subversive way. We did not experience an impulse from reality, but rather a metamorphosis of the reality itself. What unites us is not a common, limited cultural context, but the belief that the context is self-defined and an effect of free choice.

Writing this, I am aware that I am abusing the pronoun ‘we’, as our ‘we’ is fluctuating, discontinuous, blurred, according to old categories: temporary. When I say ‘we’, it means ‘many of us’ or ‘some of us’. When I say ‘we are’, it means ‘we often are’. I say ‘we’ only so as to be able to talk about us at all.

1.
We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view, difference: we do not ‘surf’ and the internet to us is not a ‘place’ or ‘virtual space’. The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries, websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind.

Brought up on the Web we think differently. The ability to find information is to us something as basic, as the ability to find a railway station or a post office in an unknown city is to you. When we want to know something – the first symptoms of chickenpox, the reasons behind the sinking of ‘Estonia’, or whether the water bill is not suspiciously high – we take measures with the certainty of a driver in a SatNav-equipped car. We know that we are going to find the information we need in a lot of places, we know how to get to those places, we know how to assess their credibility. We have learned to accept that instead of one answer we find many different ones, and out of these we can abstract the most likely version, disregarding the ones which do not seem credible. We select, we filter, we remember, and we are ready to swap the learned information for a new, better one, when it comes along.

To us, the Web is a sort of shared external memory. We do not have to remember unnecessary details: dates, sums, formulas, clauses, street names, detailed definitions. It is enough for us to have an abstract, the essence that is needed to process the information and relate it to others. Should we need the details, we can look them up within seconds. Similarly, we do not have to be experts in everything, because we know where to find people who specialise in what we ourselves do not know, and whom we can trust. People who will share their expertise with us not for profit, but because of our shared belief that information exists in motion, that it wants to be free, that we all benefit from the exchange of information. Every day: studying, working, solving everyday issues, pursuing interests. We know how to compete and we like to do it, but our competition, our desire to be different, is built on knowledge, on the ability to interpret and process information, and not on monopolising it.

2.
Participating in cultural life is not something out of ordinary to us: global culture is the fundamental building block of our identity, more important for defining ourselves than traditions, historical narratives, social status, ancestry, or even the language that we use. From the ocean of cultural events we pick the ones that suit us the most; we interact with them, we review them, we save our reviews on websites created for that purpose, which also give us suggestions of other albums, films or games that we might like. Some films, series or videos we watch together with colleagues or with friends from around the world; our appreciation of some is only shared by a small group of people that perhaps we will never meet face to face. This is why we feel that culture is becoming simultaneously global and individual. This is why we need free access to it.

This does not mean that we demand that all products of culture be available to us without charge, although when we create something, we usually just give it back for circulation. We understand that, despite the increasing accessibility of technologies which make the quality of movie or sound files so far reserved for professionals available to everyone, creativity requires effort and investment. We are prepared to pay, but the giant commission that distributors ask for seems to us to be obviously overestimated. Why should we pay for the distribution of information that can be easily and perfectly copied without any loss of the original quality? If we are only getting the information alone, we want the price to be proportional to it. We are willing to pay more, but then we expect to receive some added value: an interesting packaging, a gadget, a higher quality, the option of watching here and now, without waiting for the file to download. We are capable of showing appreciation and we do want to reward the artist (since money stopped being paper notes and became a string of numbers on the screen, paying has become a somewhat symbolic act of exchange that is supposed to benefit both parties), but the sales goals of corporations are of no interest to us whatsoever. It is not our fault that their business has ceased to make sense in its traditional form, and that instead of accepting the challenge and trying to reach us with something more than we can get for free they have decided to defend their obsolete ways.

One more thing: we do not want to pay for our memories. The films that remind us of our childhood, the music that accompanied us ten years ago: in the external memory network these are simply memories. Remembering them, exchanging them, and developing them is to us something as natural as the memory of ‘Casablanca’ is to you. We find online the films that we watched as children and we show them to our children, just as you told us the story about the Little Red Riding Hood or Goldilocks. Can you imagine that someone could accuse you of breaking the law in this way? We cannot, either.

3.
We are used to our bills being paid automatically, as long as our account balance allows for it; we know that starting a bank account or changing the mobile network is just the question of filling in a single form online and signing an agreement delivered by a courier; that even a trip to the other side of Europe with a short sightseeing of another city on the way can be organised in two hours. Consequently, being the users of the state, we are increasingly annoyed by its archaic interface. We do not understand why tax act takes several forms to complete, the main of which has more than a hundred questions. We do not understand why we are required to formally confirm moving out of one permanent address to move in to another, as if councils could not communicate with each other without our intervention (not to mention that the necessity to have a permanent address is itself absurd enough.)

There is not a trace in us of that humble acceptance displayed by our parents, who were convinced that administrative issues were of utmost importance and who considered interaction with the state as something to be celebrated. We do not feel that respect, rooted in the distance between the lonely citizen and the majestic heights where the ruling class reside, barely visible through the clouds. Our view of the social structure is different from yours: society is a network, not a hierarchy. We are used to being able to start a dialogue with anyone, be it a professor or a pop star, and we do not need any special qualifications related to social status. The success of the interaction depends solely on whether the content of our message will be regarded as important and worthy of reply. And if, thanks to cooperation, continuous dispute, defending our arguments against critique, we have a feeling that our opinions on many matters are simply better, why would we not expect a serious dialogue with the government?

We do not feel a religious respect for ‘institutions of democracy’ in their current form, we do not believe in their axiomatic role, as do those who see ‘institutions of democracy’ as a monument for and by themselves. We do not need monuments. We need a system that will live up to our expectations, a system that is transparent and proficient. And we have learned that change is possible: that every uncomfortable system can be replaced and is replaced by a new one, one that is more efficient, better suited to our needs, giving more opportunities.

What we value the most is freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of access to information and to culture. We feel that it is thanks to freedom that the Web is what it is, and that it is our duty to protect that freedom. We owe that to next generations, just as much as we owe to protect the environment.

Perhaps we have not yet given it a name, perhaps we are not yet fully aware of it, but I guess what we want is real, genuine democracy. Democracy that, perhaps, is more than is dreamt of in your journalism.

“My, dzieci sieci” (“We, the web kids”) by Piotr Czerski (translated by Marta Szrede) is licensed under a Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Na tych samych warunkach 3.0 Unported License
Originally posted at: http://pastebin.com/0xXV8k7k
Contact the author: piotr[at]czerski.art.pl

Farewell, Dynamic Democracy

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Back in April, the Digital Economy Bill was rushed through the wash-up procedure of the outgoing government without the due debate and consideration that I and others believe such a far-reaching bill deserved. My disillusionment with the government decision-making process over the following week led me to set up and announce a new site, called “Dynamic Democracy”. It was an experiment to see what would be discussed if everyone was involved — on an anonymous basis — rather than just our elected representatives that often do not do a good job of representing us anyway.

The site allowed all users to create and comment on ‘Bills’, encapsulated ideas or laws that they would be pushing for if they were in power. Registering gave users the ability to vote bills (and comments) up and down, leading to a list of highest-ranked bills that represented the users’ favourite potential policies.

Dynamic Democracy saw little success, possibly because writing a full, well-thought-out bill represented significant effort that a casual browser would be unlikely to commit. ‘Karma’, the point system that aimed to encourage users to submit bills and comments, did not prove to be a good enough incentive as there were so few users to compete with and no direct reward was ever implemented for reaching high karma levels.

What the site did bring, however, was a number of enquiries from like-minded individuals all over the world, keen to discuss the ideas behind the site and whether or not something like Dynamic Democracy could ever be implemented as a real government policy-making tool. One of the more notable contacts, Denny de la Haye, stood as a candidate for Hackney South and Shoreditch in the general election and promised to implement a crowd-sourced voting system similar to Dynamic Democracy for his constituents to voice their opinions in Parliament through him. (Denny, who sadly did not win his seat, now represents the UK arm of political party DemoEx.)

I have decided that today is the day to close the Dynamic Democracy experiment, because today the UK government announced their “Your Freedom” website. While largely focussed on repealing or changing laws rather than the complete freedom to suggest anything you like, Your Freedom is certainly in the same vein as Dynamic Democracy, with the crucial extra feature that is endorsed and used by our government and thus ideas proposed there stand at least some chance of making it into official government policy.

Time will tell whether that really happens, or if like the No. 10 Petitions site, suggestions will be responded to with an e-mail from the Prime Minister’s office explaining why thousands of users are all wrong. But I do still hold out hope.

Did Dynamic Democracy influence the government in their decision to create Your Freedom? Almost certainly not. As my discussions with visitors to the site have shown, I am far from the only person to have come up with this idea, and neither am I the only one to have coded up a website around it. No — this is simply an idea whose time has come. A vast gulf exists between Westminster and the world outside, just as it always has, but these days the public are coming to question why that is and if we can do something to correct it. And nowhere is the desire to bridge that gulf stronger than among the tech-savvy youth that have the drive and the ability to use the internet to that end. Sites like these will come and go a hundred times over the coming years and decades, and slowly but surely we’ll reshape our government into what we want it to be.

So to everyone who contributed to Dynamic Democracy: thank you, and goodbye.

If you’d like to contact me about Dynamic Democracy (or anything else), you can still do that here. If you’d like to help get the Digital Economy Act repealed, please vote up and comment on one of these ideas on Your Freedom. If anyone would like use of dynamicdemocracy.org.uk until my ownership expires in 2012, let me know. Stay tuned for the announcement of another project that bridges politics and the internet in the next few weeks.

An Experiment in Dynamic Democracy

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Dynamic Democracy

Dynamic Democracy

I’ve been an advocate of opening up our democracy and involving the public in government decision-making for some time, without doing anything particularly concrete about it besides placing my vote. The Digital Economy Bill fiasco showed us that, really, we’re not involved with the day-to-day workings of government at all, and born of that is this experiment.

I’d like to know what we, the people, think our government should be talking about. I’d like us ordinary people to submit our ideas, vote on other people’s ideas, and come up with some idea of what we really care about. And so here we are:

Dynamic Democracy

This is all very experimental at the moment — please sign up, post ideas, vote on other people’s ideas, and if it proves popular I’ll take it on as a permanent project. Let’s do this!

Welcome to the New Digital Economy

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Despite its sponsorship by a twice-disgraced and unelected politician, despite the fact that it was transparently lobbied for by companies representing the record labels, despite it carrying disproportionate punishments for file-sharers, despite it seeking to undermine the work of content creators, despite a promise to oppose it from the Lib Dems, still the Digital Economy Bill passed through the Houses of Parliament.

In the end it became not even a matter of the content of the bill itself, but of its inclusion of in the outgoing government’s “wash-up” process that would allow it to be passed without proper scrutiny by the House. Surely a bill with so many far-reaching implications should be treated to the proper debate it deserves? But no.

Organisations such as the Open Rights Group and 38degrees have campaigned long and hard. 20,000 people wrote to their MPs asking them to demand that the Digital Economy Bill get proper scrutiny, and hundreds made phone calls. There were protests in the streets in Westminster. 38degrees asked for £10,000 to pay for advertising, so that “on the day of the vote they’ll see our opposition over their cornflakes, on their way into work and over tea in Parliament”. They raised more than double that figure in two days.

How many MPs turned up to the second hearing last night to vote on whether this crucial piece of legislation is allowed to proceed? About thirty. Tonight, for the third hearing? Maybe forty. Uses of #debill on Twitter were running above 1 a second; we were having much more of a debate than the House was.

Some good arguments were put forward by those that did see fit to turn up, raising hopes that the assembled MPs might realise how flawed the bill really is. Tom Watson deserves particular credit, but even John Redwood expressed his reservations about pushing the Digital Economy Bill through.

But in the end, that’s what it came down to. Maybe ten of the 50 clauses in the bill received any kind of debate whatsoever, the rest were blazed through in five minutes by a combination of John Bercow and some doubtless super-strength coffee. Some things went our way — particularly the loss of the controversial ‘orphan works’ clause, clause 43.

The House went off to vote on whether to accept the bill on its third reading, and though the majority of those actually present at the debate seemed in opposition to it, the final tally stood at 189 Ayes, 47 Nays. 189?! Where did they come from? Oh, right, the bar.

Just as we expected and feared, the government waited until the wash-up to put this bill before Parliament so that it would receive as little debate and as few amendments as possible before being pushed through by a horde of MPs who didn’t even care enough to sit in on the debate.

We failed.

But what more could we have done? I don’t recall as great a public demonstration of opposition to a single bill since fox-hunting, and yet still we have had virtually no impact on its progress. Must we simply accept that, having voted for our MPs in an election, we can have no real effect on them for the next five years; these people who supposedly represent our views? Do they just settle in for five years of representing the views of the party Whips instead?

Well that’s that, I guess. Leave your torrent client at the door, and grab as much of Wikileaks and Rapidshare as you can before the government realises it now has the power to block them. Welcome to Mandelson and Murdoch’s Digital Economy.

Dial M for Mandelson

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I can’t be the only one thinking along these lines right now, so… have blog, will rant.

I think Peter Mandelson has too much power.

First off, he’s unelected, not having been a Member of Parliament since 2004. So how come he manages to be such a prominent figure in the Government? How is he even still heavily favoured by the Labour Party, despite having resigned (twice) over involvement with various scandals? How come his anti-filesharing agenda, which headlined the Queen’s Speech, seems to be being calmly accepted as the law-to-be despite the fact that is was transparently influenced by lobbying from the entertainment industry? To say nothing of how much of an insane overreaction his anti-piracy plans actually are (but that’s for another post, one I’ve probably already made some months ago).

And now this? If there’s any truth in that, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a brazen and dangerous power-grab. We didn’t vote Mandelson in, we can’t vote Mandelson out, and now he’s aiming for the power to make laws and impose them on ISPs and individuals in the name of protecting copyright.

Am I the only one thinking this isn’t quite the Democracy we had in mind?