At the 5th Annual Personal Democracy Forum this June we will be publishing "Rebooting America: Democracy in the 21st Century," an anthology of essays from leading thinkers and activists (see the complete list of invited essayists here.) Their essays all respond to this challenge:
When the Framers met in Philadelphia in 1787, they bravely conjured a new form of self-government. But they couldn't have imagined a mass society with instantaneous, many-to-many communications or many of the other innovations of modernity. So, replacing that quill pen with a mouse, imagine that you have to power to redesign American democracy for the Internet Age. What would you do?
But the collection wouldn't be complete without reading your thoughts on this, too! Submit your essay, tell us how to make America better, stronger, more inclusive and participatory. Up to three winning essays will be included in the anthology.
Also, if you like someone's essay, vote it up, if you don't, vote it down, and we'll take your opinions into account. The book's editors, Allison Fine, Micah Sifry, Andrew Rasiej and Josh Levy, will be making the final decision.
Essays should run from 500 to 1500 words, and the deadline is May 1.
Check the site for more information about how to enter and get started.
Hm. Simply voting an essay up or down is not sensitive to minority perspectives or strength of feeling.
Something more finely grained than raw power of the majority is needed.
Posted by: Stephen Downes | April 14, 2008 at 05:26 PM
Hi, Stephen, thanks for your comment. We appreciate your concern about hearing minority voices in our essay effort. The up and down voting will be just one way that we will be assessing the essays. People who feel strongly about an essay are also welcome to email us or comment on the site. And we will be reading and ranking all of the essays ourselves. We welcome any suggestions you have for the next time we do something like this.
Allison Fine
Posted by: Allison Fine | April 14, 2008 at 07:07 PM