########## ########## ########## | FIGALLO DIRECTS EFF/CAMBRIDGE ########## ########## ########## | #### #### #### | CLINTON ON HIGH TECH ######## ######## ######## | ######## ######## ######## | ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY #### #### #### | The Implications ########## #### #### | ########## #### #### | ===================================================================== EFFector Online September 11, 1992 Issue 3.04 A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 ===================================================================== FIGALLO ONLINE AT EFF.ORG Cliff Figallo became the new director of EFF-Cambridge at the beginning of the month. Former director of The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (the EFF's birthplace), Fig is charged with developing and coordinating the Cambridge office's outreach activities, increasing active EFF membership, and expanding overall awareness of the EFF's programs in the computer- conferencing community and the world at large. Commenting on his new task, Figallo said, "EFF came upon the online scene a couple years ago with a big splash. I'd like for us to continue splashing. EFF is uniquely engaged in many useful and important activities in the areas of online civil liberties, sane lawmaking and advocacy of improved electronic highways for the future. I want news of these activities to get out to the people for whom we are making a difference. I also want us to develop better channels for these same people to communicate their wants and needs to those of us with access to the legal, informational and technical resources. Our purpose is to serve those wants and needs for the betterment of the world. "More specifically, I will encourage people to become members of EFF by demonstrating to them the value of a membership. One should expect noticeable benefits from paying membership dues and I intend to make it plain that those benefits exist and will only increase as more people become involved in telecommunications. I will also be working with regional groups who may be interested in forming local EFF chapters so that we can learn together how such affiliations can enhance our mutual effectiveness. "I'm excited about working here. I believe in what EFF is all about." Cliff can be reached as fig@eff.org. -==--==--==-<>-==--==--==- STATEMENT OF BILL CLINTON FOR THE INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERS (IEEE) Bill Clinton for President Committee * 1317 F Street, NW, Suite 902 * Washington DC 20004 Telephone 202-393-3323 FAX 202-393-3329 e-mail correspondence@dc.Clinton-Gore.org "We face a fundamental economic challenge today: to create a high-wage, high-growth national economy that will carry America into the 21st century. We need a long-term national strategy to meet this challenge and win. "Our productivity and income have been growing so slowly because we've stopped investing in the economic infrastructure that binds our markets and businesses together, in the education and training necessary to give our workers world-class skills, and in the research and development that can restore America to the cutting edge of the world economy. As a nation, we're spending more on the present and the past and building less for the future. We need a President who will turn the country around and refocus on the long view. As President, I will divide the budget into three parts, creating a separate 'future budget' for the federal government to make investments that will enrich our country over the long term. Today the federal government spends only 9 per cent of the budget on investments for the future; a Clinton Administration will double that. We will pay for it by diverting resources no longer needed for defense, but we will ensure that every dollar we take out of military R&D goes into R&D for civilian technologies until civilian R&D can match and eventually surpass our Cold War military R&D commitment. "As President, I will create an investment tax credit and a new enterprise tax cut that rewards those who invest in new businesses that create new jobs. I will also make the research and development tax credit permanent. "My administration will create a civilian research and development agency to support research in the technologies that scientists have already identified as the basis for launching new growth industries and revitalizing traditional ones over the next two decades. This civilian DARPA will coordinate R&D to help companies develop innovative technologies and bring new products to market. And without inhibiting the competition that drives innovation, we will encourage and promote collaborative efforts among firms and with research institutes for commercial development just as we have done with defense technologies for 40 years. "A Clinton Administration will create a high-speed rail network between out nation's major cities. And in the new economy, infrastructure means information as well as transportation. More than half the U.S. workforce is employed in information-intensive industries, yet we have no national strategy to create a national information network. Just as the interstate highway system in the 1950s spurred two decades of economic growth, we need a door-to- door fiber optics system by the year 2015; a link to every home, lab, classroom and business in America. "For small defense manufacturers hit by cuts in defense spending, the Small Business Administration will provide small conversion loans to help finance their transition, and launch a Technology Assistance Service -- modeled on the Agricultural Extension Service -- to provide easy access to the technical expertise it takes to convert to commercial production. "To enjoy the full benefit of these investments, we must do everything possible to open up markets now closed to American products. My administration will provide the leadership for Japan and the European countries to join us in coordinating our macroeconomic policies and in reaching multilateral trade negotiations. But we will also provide the muscle to open up Japan's markets to competitive U.S. products using a stronger and more carefully targeted "Super 301" approach. We favor a free and open trading system, but if our competitors won't play by those rules, we will play by theirs. "All the investments in the world won't mean much if our workers don't have the education or the skills to take advantage of the opportunities they create. My administration will fully fund Head Start, increase funding for Chapter 1, and provide seed money for innovative education projects. However, we will also raise standards by establishing a national testing system in elementary and secondary schools and instituting report cards for ever state, school district, and school in the nation, to measure their progress. We will also create a nationwide apprenticeship program for those young people who choose not to go to college, and a national trust fund for college loans for those who do. These loans will be repaid either as a small percentage of income over time or with a couple of years of national service. "With the strategy I have outlined, we can restore the American Dream by enabling every citizen and every business to become more productive, and in so doing, restore our nation to the front lines of high technology. -==--==--==-<-==--==--==- ON ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY AND ITS PROFOUND IMPLICATIONS by Marilyn Davis, Ph.D. madavis@igc.org Principal Software Engineer and Founder The Electronic Democracy Project on EcoNet President and Principal Software Engineer, Frontier Systems One vision of Electronic Democracy is the television show, where we are presented with some options and we vote, using either phone lines or new gadgets attached to our television cables. Experiments in this type of ED (the QUBE system in Columbus, Ohio, 1977- 1984; Canada's Talking Back, 1978-9; the New Zealand Televote, 1981; the Prime Time Electronic Town Meeting in the SF Bay Area, 1987) can all be characterized as the "big-vote" type of Electronic Democracy. We are presented with a set of predetermined options and we press a button to indicate our choice, and it's over. The articles written about these systems state that participation runs high, and that participants came from all walks of life, but that, in the Canadian experiment, at least, the results were largely ignored by lawmakers. Getting our lawmakers to listen to us is one problem with this style of Electronic Democracy. Another problem is that it requires us to all watch television at some specific times. Still another is the technological inefficiency involved in building a system that is huge enough to record everyone's nearly simultaneous vote, but, that is only used for a half-hour per week. The worst complaint about this style of Electronic Democracy is that it is not "democracy" from a political theory point of view. The big-vote type of Electronic Democracy was criticized in 1982 by Jean Betheke Elshtain, a political scientist, as being an "interactive shell game [that] cons us into believing that we are participating when we are really simply performing as the responding "end" of a prefabricated system of external stimuli." Elshtain complains that these systems are not "democracies", but "plebiscites". "In a plebiscitary system, the views of the majority, ..., swamp minority or unpopular views. Plebiscitism is compatible with authoritarian politics carried out under the guise of, or with the connivance of, majority views. That opinion can be registered by easily manipulated, ritualistic plebiscites, so there is no need for debate on substantive questions." Another political theorist, Brian Fay, has said about democracy that what "is most significant is the involvement of the citizens in the process of determining their own collective identity." Thus, the primary activity of a real democracy is discussion, not voting. In a real democracy, there is facility to bring up issues, exchange opinions, poll ourselves, re-discuss, and re-poll, until consensus is reached. Here I suggest two tenets of an ideal democracy: 1. Equal power: In an ideal democracy, every participant has equal opportunity to bring up new issues, equal opportunity to participate in every discussion, equal opportunity to vote in every decision, and equal weight in each vote. Because, until now, we haven't had the technology for Electronic Democracy, we have been trapped away from this ideal by the necessity for a representative democracy, i.e., a democracy where we elect representatives who make our decisions, rather than make our decisions ourselves. 2. Consensus: In an ideal democracy, group action only results from a consensus agreement. Here (and everywhere), by "consensus", I prefer Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, unabridged, definition that says, "unanimity; agreement, especially in opinion; hence, general opinion." Random House has a much longer discussion of the word but has no interpretation that implies "unanimity". More practically, by "consensus", I mean the style of consensus decision-making practiced by Quakers, by many peace groups, and by some groups of people who live together. These groups don't act until all agree - or, at least, no one disagrees. You may "stand-out" of the vote if you still disagree with an action, but don't wish to block the group. Our computer networks offer the only means to implement a method of organization and decision-making where these ideals can be efficiently achieved. Although the number of on-line participants is growing fast, still there are only an elite few of us. The first tenet of an ideal democracy demands equal access; we don't have that yet. But, if providing tenet #1 becomes a national priority, it would also provide an economic alternative for some of our dependence on technical weapon-making. Each of us, who is a member of a BBS community, has equal opportunity to introduce and discuss issues, but very limited decision-making tools. Even so, these systems are proving themselves to be powerful political tools. In Santa Monica, where there is a city-provided computer network with a public BBS, the on-line citizens have been able to coerce their lawmakers into opening the public beach showers in the early morning so that the homeless can clean up and possibly find work. On the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) networks, EcoNet, PeaceNet, and others, 10,000 peace and environmental activists world- wide participate in discussions and organize for actions with the goal of saving the planet. In October of this year, these networks, and all C/Unix-based conferencing systems, can add voting to their list of features. "eVote", vote-keeping software from Frontier Systems, will be available for integration into these systems. This software will enable the on- line communities to take votes and polls, to spend budgets democratically, and to develop consensus opinions. IMPORTANT TECHNICAL DETAILS Most C/Unix-based conferencing systems maintain a number of conferences; each conference is a discussion about one narrow (or broad) subject. To organize the discussion, each conference has a list of "topics", relevant to the conference, that are posted there by users as the conference grows. Each topic has a number of "messages", also posted by users, that carry the thread of the conversation on the topic. When eVote comes on line, votes will be taken at the "topic" level only, not on messages. This means that you will always be able to add a message when you vote, to qualify or explain it. The list of topic titles for a particular conference appears on the "index screen". When eVote is in place, the index screen will also list statistics indicating the number of readers, and, if a vote is being collected on the topic, the number of voters and average vote. The user who originates the topic dictates the format for the vote: whether the vote will be from "0 to 9", "Yes or No", or "Vote for 3 of the following 10". The voting can be configured so that users can change their votes and see how others voted. These are essential features for enabling consensus and/or for emulating an in-person meeting. The "Vote for 3 of the following 10" feature can be used to democratically spend a budget. In this case the instructions will be "Distribute your 100ED-bucks among the following 20 proposals". The group can decide (probably by consensus) to spend the real budget according to the group's average distribution. This then, is a mechanism for determining and carrying out group decisions without depending on a representative. A group can decide to spend money on a political campaign. The Electronic Democracy candidate would be a figure-head who, if elected, makes all the decisions of the office according to the decisions of the on-line group. This computer-networked, discussion-dominated, type of Electronic Democracy provides both tenets of an ideal democracy: equal power, and consensus facilitation. In addition, we can democratically direct funds, thereby facilitating an ideally democratic process from the first expression of a new idea, all the way through discussion and decision- making, to implementation by spending the money. In face to face meetings, the consensus process works. It is easy to imagine that it will work in small on-line groups of similar mind (like the EcoNet community). Mathematics and computer science will provide algorithms to insure that each group deals fairly with other groups Indeed, special cases and special privileges are very difficult to build into software. Because we will be starting with small groups, we won't confront big decisions until we've built the software to coalesce our small-group decisions into larger and larger circles of consensus. There can be no danger in it. WHAT WILL THIS MEAN TO THE HUMAN RACE? A seminal difficulty of our species, is the struggle we each face with two distinct, universal, and somewhat opposing human drives. The first is our need, or at least our expectation, that we should have "self- determination". It is this expectation that has compelled us to rebel against despots throughout history. Our struggles with the "terrible two's" and "troubled teens" can be interpreted as our struggle to reconcile our expectations of self-determination with our other, apparently opposing need: the need to belong to groups. To survive, we must conform to the expectations of our parents and of our cultures, and compromise our sense of self-determination for a sense of security, and for the love of others. We must organize ourselves into groups; there must be some method of decision-making, and of carrying out those decisions. Electronic Democracy offers a path of reconciliation for these two powerful forces in each of us. Using this technology, we can experiment with decision-making by consensus, the only method of organization that can fully materialize our dreams of self-determination. But, how can we know if we should take this path? How can we know if we can trust our collective human nature? The concept is so radical, how can we know if it is right? Luckily, living on islands, and deep in the rain forests of Panama, are the Cuna Indians, who can serve as a model of a consensus-run culture. ABOUT THE CUNA These amazing Indians, 40,000 in number, have been making decisions, by consensus, since before Columbus discovered them on his fourth voyage. Because the Cuna have been living for centuries in the only truly democratic culture, we look to the Cuna to answer, "What happens to people who live democratically"? There is very little literature about the Cuna. However, from ALL accounts, they are well-organized, harmonious, wise, resourceful, energetic, playful, gentle, astute, even enlightened. But how do such innocents fair in dealings with the rest of the world? The Cuna are possibly the only unconquered native Americans, still living on, and in control of, their homeland. They won a short war with Panama in 1925 when it tried to usurp their autonomy. When, in this decade, Catholics came as missionaries, the National Catholic Reporter reported, "Panamanian Indians Evangelize Evangelizers". Although non-Cuna Panamanians may not participate in the affairs of the Cuna, some Cuna work and study in Panama City, and have been elected to offices in the Panamanian government. While preserving their own culture, which they value more than money, the Cunas capitalize on the world market for their "molas", the colorful fabric art pieces that the women sew. A connection between the Cunas' consensus-run politics and their obvious enlightenment, their unity, their individuality, and their strength is evident here. As we, through Electronic Democracy, claim our earth and our rights, we will become like the Cunas: free. As Electronic Democracy replaces our old political systems, and our strengths as individuals and as communities grow, we will experience a profound, even miraculous, change in human attitudes in most cultures. Of course, it's a big leap from our current reality to imagining ourselves, like the Cuna, loving our system of organization for its fairness and responsiveness, and for making us feel heard, and for making us feel powerful. In addition, we will love our system for being efficient and for not tempting us to be influenced by clothes, or speech impediments, or age, or a thousand other irrelevancies. We'll base our decisions only on the content of what is written. We'll make excellent decisions. Like the Cuna, WE will BE our system. This tool has been waiting for us, in our future; like speech once waited for us to discover it; and writing. When we, as evolving humans, were given the dexterity for speech; it must have been, somehow, left for us to discover our ability and invent language. Given our manual dexterity and our speech, inventing writing naturally followed. Given writing, accumulation of knowledge follows. Given knowledge, technology results. Given technology and our innate and inalienable rights, Electronic Democracy is inevitable. Indeed, when you consider the mountain of mathematical, scientific and technological advances that this system is being built upon, we are a hair from finished; and just in the nick of time. Our old structures for civic organization are buckling under the pressures of bad decisions. Our old structures breed bad decisions. There is, and there has been, much suffering. We can make it better now. Electronic Democracy is an answer. There is no other. Electronic Democracy is inevitable. Our deepest natures hunger for it. The quicker we adopt Electronic Democracy as our system of civic organization, the less total suffering there will be. -------- Becker, Ted, "Teledemocracy - Bringing Power Back to People", The Futurist, December, 1981, p.6. Elgin, Duane, "Conscious Democracy Through Electronic Town Meetings", Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1991, p.28. Elshtain, Jean Betheke, "Interactive TV - Democracy and the QUBE Tube", The Nation, August 7-14, 1982, p.108. Hallowell, Christopher, "A World of Difference", Americas, Jan.-Feb, 1985. Mazlow, Jonathan, "A Tramp in the Darien", a B.B.C. Adventure Series Documentary, 1990. Moran, Julio, "Computers Forge PEN Pal Link", Los Angeles Times, Feb 25, 1990, p.56. Myers, Norman, "Kuna Indians, Building a Bright Future", International Wildlife, July-Aug., 1987, p.17 Wirpasa, Leslie, "Panamanian Indians Evangelize Evangelizers", National Catholic Reporter, Mar 8, 1991, p.8. Wittig, Michele, Ph.D., "Using a City-Owned Public Electronic Network for Community Organizing", American Psychological Association, Division 9 Newsletter, July, 1990. Wittig, Michele, "Electronic City Hall",Whole Earth Review, Summer 1991, p.24. -==--==--==-<-==--==--==- MEMBERSHIP IN THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION If you support our goals and our work, you can show that support by becoming a member now. 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