The Internet and Liquid Democracy - with Prof Simon Tormey & Cathy Vogan
Channel: Cathy Vogan Films
Date: 14/05/2015

Some slam social media for being unreliable, but recent history shows that the more people who contribute to a body of knowledge, the more reliable it becomes.

In its infancy, we as academics abhorred the superficiality of Wikipedia, but thankfully a number kept an eye on it, and began adding their 10 cents worth.

Today, the people’s 'encyclopaedia' is more reliable than Encyclopaedia Britannica, because structurally, it is a model that self-corrects, and where the best information percolates to the top.

We now admit that the ivory tower is neither the only, nor the best broadcaster of fact. But is the public domain, such as it now stands; not also a better place to carve out policy?

We have needed representatives for many centuries, because we couldn’t physically be present, to acquire or transmit information.
21st century technology reduces that need dramatically, and if you apply the model of Wikipedia, political debates might very well drift in the future, to being decided by the many.

There is certainly evidence in Iceland now, that the future is nigh…

Filmed at Politics in the Pub, Sydney, May 7th 2015
http://politicsinthepub.org.au/