[p2p-research] P2P democracy?

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear Smari,

what's the news on the election, and on your candidacy in particular?

Michel

2010/10/18 Smári McCarthy <smari at anarchism.is>

> Hi all,
>
>  As some of you may know, a lot of things have been happening in
> Iceland of late. The collapse has led to a rather invigorating
> democratic upheaval, with strong demands amongst the public for greater
> transparency, freedom of information, and many other things which, to
> anybody who payed attention to the revolutionary ideals of the 19th
> century or the enlightenment ideas before them, would seem incredibly
> reasonable, but yet for some reason have not become the norm...
>
>  On the 27th of November the Icelandic electorate will vote for 25 to
> 31 people to sit on a constitutional assembly, a special assembly which
> has the purpose of proposing a new constitution for Iceland.
>
>  I have decided to run for the election, along with about 500 other
> people who are all ostensibly independent but many have ties with
> special interests, political parties, and so on.
>
>  What sets myself and some of the other candidates apart is our
> involvement with the digital freedoms battle, the fight for freedom of
> information, the participation in the commons, the understanding of the
> new Peer-to-Peer reality. There are a few of us, but in general we
> suffer from having ideas which are somewhat foreign and weird to a
> majority of the public, and little access to traditional media to
> promote ourselves.
>
>  This, while the industrial interests and old guard have vast
> resources, they own the traditional media, and the political ideas of
> centralized government by the elite, these ideas which they will
> espouse, have been taught as fact to every schoolchild here since the
> schooling itself became fact.
>
>  So you understand that the opportunity here is great. We may have the
> opportunity to change the world. We may have the opportunity to alter
> the way the world thinks about democracy forever, by creating a
> democratized democracy - a Peer-to-Peer Democracy.
>
>  But only if we win. Not necessarily me, but somebody from this line of
> thought must win, and must be put in the situation where the ideas of
> the 21st century are put into the new Icelandic constitution.
>
>  The old guard have the media, they have the money. They have the
> political clout and the ideological indoctrination. But we have an
> immensely powerful and infinitely valuable secret weapon at our disposal.
>
>  You.
>
>  You're receiving this mail because I have had the good benefit of
> getting to know you, and I believe that I can ask your assistance in
> making this work. I don't exactly know what it is I'm asking of you,
> because I'm not exactly sure what will work; rather, I'm requesting that
> we crowdsource an answer to the question of, "given great opportunity,
> what can the P2P community do?"
>
>   Specifically, I think these questions need to be answered:
>
>        - How do we make the idea of crowdsourced/participatory democracy
> seem
> realistic to people who've been taught to think it isn't?
>
>        - How do we make the idea of the commons and collective ownership
> palatable to people who associate it with failed communist ideals?
>
>        - How do we show that the models we've seen on the Internet can
> apply
> in meatspace state governance?
>
>        - How do we most effectively promote these ideas amongst people who
> aren't active users of social networks or are outside our immediate
> network's reach?
>
>  ... and so on.
>
>  Again, this isn't about getting me into the constitutional assembly,
> per se, although inevitably the two goals are coupled by way of me being
> a representative of these ideals. Rather, it's about using this great
> opportunity.
>
>  What say you?
>
>        - Smári
>
> (cc'd is Herbert Snorrason, who is also a candidate.)
>
>
> p.s., at this time I don't think it's prudent to share this line of
> thinking on publicly listed/indexed mailing lists, blogs or web pages;
> rather for discussion amongst ourselves (not adding people either..).
> Reason being that we still haven't identified who is serving the
> interests of the existing power groups and other special interests; this
> won't be fully possible until the full candidate list is published a few
> days from now.
>
>


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