Digital Democracy
News articles breathlessly heaped praise on the country’s democratic vibrancy, often citing its groundbreaking foray into digital democracy with vTaiwan. But in reality, the momentum of vTaiwan—and of the country’s digital participation revolution—had fizzled out years earlier. The platform hasn’t been used for any major decisions since 2018, as it was seen as difficult to use and people lost interest, vTaiwan co-creator and former Taiwanese legislator Jason Hsu told The Daily Beast. Since the government is not mandated to adopt recommendations coming from vTaiwan, “legislators don’t take it seriously.”
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 a... See more
Addressing Power Imbalances in Deliberation
With technologies that can now facilitate discussion and decision-making among groups both big and small, we must ask if we can build new kinds of intermediating digital spaces, ones that provide perspective, attention, and action on shared rather than personal problems, while at the same time accommodating discussion and deliberation at local as w... See more
Alex Pentland • Rediscovering the Pleasures of Pluralism: The Potential of Digitally Mediated Civic Participation — Digitalist Papers
Rediscovering the Pleasures of Pluralism: The Potential of Digitally Mediated Civic Participation — Digitalist Papers
Alex Pentlanddigitalistpapers.com
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
Thus, the effectiveness of deliberative processes is threatened by what British political theorist Marit Hammond describes as “processes that may have the appearance of empowerment, but only serve to pacify democratic demands without actually submitting to their bottom-up force.”
Addressing Power Imbalances in Deliberation
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 includ... See more
Alex Pentland • Rediscovering the Pleasures of Pluralism: The Potential of Digitally Mediated Civic Participation — Digitalist Papers
