Democracy, peace, dialogue & deliberation

Technology cannot fix the fact that freedom is an endless meeting, but it can make the meetings shorter and less painful with new collaborative tools and by automating the worst of the bureaucracy

Quantitative experiments, sometimes including tens of millions of individuals, have examined inclusiveness and efficiency in decision-making via digital networks. Their findings suggest that large networks of nonexperts can make practical, productive decisions and engage in collective action under certain (1) conditions. (2) These conditions... See more

Bringing this all together, the technologies through which we see the public shape how we understand it , making it more likely that we end up in the one situation rather than the other. As you have surely guessed by now, I believe Twitter/X, Facebook, and other social media services are just such technologies for shaping publics. Many of the... See more

Titled “A Bigger We,” FTF’s report argues that today’s democracy crisis is rooted in a crisis of agency, in that most Americans rarely, if ever, experience themselves as having the collective ability to change the world they live in. Or, to put it in a simpler vernacular: people don’t give a shit because they don’t think they matter. And too often,... See more

Ultimately, the essential work of creating systems that genuinely work for everyone requires us to redistribute resources and grant power to those who have been denied it—something that deliberation can help to achieve alongside other political organizing. Deliberation alone will not create a more equal society, and the outcomes of such processes... See more

In short, the technologies through which we see the public shape what we think the public is. And that, in turn, shapes how we behave politically and how we orient ourselves. We may end up believing - in a highly specific way - in things that we know we are ‘supposed’ to believe, given that we are Republicans or Democrats, Conservative or Labour... See more