13 October 2003

Open source democracy: how online communication is changing offline politics

By Douglas Rushkoff

The emergence of interactive media may offer a new model for cooperation. Interactive communication technologies could help us to understand autonomy as a collective phenomenon that emerges when people are allowed to participate actively in their mutual self-interest.

Interactive technologies offer us a ray of hope for genuine civic engagement.

As the mainstream media, particularly in the United States, becomes increasingly centralised, its ability to offer a multiplicity of perspectives on affairs of global importance is diminished.

In America, broadcasting the Iraq war meant selling the Iraq war. But this did not stop many of the journalists from creating their own weblogs, or blogs: internet diaries through which they could share candid responses to the bigger questions of the war.

Internet users were free to engage directly with the so-called enemy, as in the case of a blog called Dear Raed. This daily journal of high aspirations for peace and a better life in Baghdad became one of the most-read sources of information about the war on the web.

Clearly, the success of sites like Dear Raed stems from our increasingly complex society's need for multiple points of view. Only now are the social effects of interactive technologies being considered by political scientists for what they may teach us about public opinion and civic engagement.

Emergence of networked democracy

The underlying order of apparently chaotic systems suggests that systems can behave in a fashion mutually beneficial to all members, even without a command hierarchy. The term scientists use to describe the natural self-organisation of a community is 'emergence'.

The amazing organisation of an anthill 'emerges' from the bottom up, in a collective demonstration of each ant's evolved instincts. In a sense, it is not organised at all since there is no central bureaucracy. The collective behaviour of the colony is an emergent phenomenon.

The decision to grant the public open access to the internet in the early 1990s should have heralded a new era of teledemocracy and political activism.

This is why it appeared that the decision to grant the public open access to the internet in the early 1990s would herald a new era of teledemocracy and political activism. The emergence of a networked culture, accompanied by media literacy and open discussion, held the promise of a more responsive political system.

But most efforts at teledemocracy so far, such as former Clinton pollster Dick Morris's website www.vote.com, are simply new versions of the public opinion poll. The sites amount to little more than an opportunity for politicians to glean knee-jerk reactions to the issue of the day.

So what went wrong? Why didn't networked politics lead to a genuinely networked engagement in public affairs?

By casting themselves in the role of watchdog, governments - particularly in the United States - became internet society's enemy. The internet's growth into a public medium seemed to be impeded by the government's own systemic aversion to the kinds of information, images and ideas that the network spread.

New decency laws aimed at curbing pornography elicited cries of curtailment on free speech. Bungled raids on young hackers turned law enforcement into the Keystone Cops of cyberspace and the US Justice Department into a sworn enemy of the shareware community. Misguided (and unsuccessful) efforts at preventing the dissemination of cryptography protocols turned corporate developers into government-haters.

(I should say that this tradition of government interference in the rise of a community-driven internet is contrasted by the early participation of the UK's Labour government in the funding of internet opportunities, such as community centres and public timeshare terminals.)

The true promise of a network-enhanced democracy lies not in web-driven political marketing surveys, but in encouraging broader participation in more interactive forums.

For politicians to lead more effectively in such an environment, the interactive solution may well be a new emphasis on education. Elected leaders could use the internet to engage with constituents and justify the decisions they have made, rather than simply soliciting opinions.

Politicians cannot hope to reduce the collective will of their entire constituencies into a series of yes or no votes. They can, however, engage the public in a dialogue on issues and their impacts.

Open source democracy

One model for the participatory process can be found in the 'open source' software movement.

One model for the participatory process through which legislation might occur in a networked democracy can be found in the 'open source' software movement. Faced with the restrictive practices of the highly competitive software developers, a global community of programmers decided to find a better development philosophy.

They founded one based in the original values of shareware software development, concluding that proprietary software is crippled by efforts to keep its underlying code a secret.

By publishing software along with its source code, open source developers encourage one another to improve upon each other's work. Rather than competing they collaborate. As a result, the software can evolve with the benefit of multiple points of view.

Of course this means that participants in an open source collaboration must be educated in the field they are developing. People cannot expect to be able to edit the code until they have taken the time to penetrate it. Very often, as in the case of computer software, this depends on open standards so that the code is accessible to all.

This is also true of many other systems outside of software development. Those who are invited to re-evaluate our political structures will stand the best chance of gaining the perspective necessary to see the emergent properties of such systems, as well as avenues for active participation.

Members of an open source community are able to experience how their actions affect the whole. As a result, they become more conscious of how their moment-to-moment decisions can be better aligned with the larger issues with which they are concerned.

The experience of open source development provides real-life practice for the deeper change in perspective required of us if we are to move into a more networked and emergent understanding of our world. The local community must be experienced as a place to implement policies, incrementally, that will eventually have an effect on the whole.

The good news, for those within the power structure today, is that we are not about to enter a phase of revolution, but one of renaissance. We are heading not towards a toppling of the parliamentary or legislative processes, but towards their reinvention in a new, participatory context.

Douglas Rushkoff is an writer of several books on new media and teaches on the interactive telecommunications programme at New York University. This essay is based on his latest book, Open Source Democracy, published by Demos. It can be downloaded free from www.demos.co.uk/opensourcedemocracy