This short essay is my presentation at the inaugural The Public Sphere to be hosted by Senator Kate Lundy at the ANU on 7 May 2009.
Despite living in one of a relatively few nations with compulsory suffrage, the electorate largely remains woefully uninformed about the political process – how elections actually work, the difference between and respective powers of the layers of government, and the services provided by and obligations of each.
Largely, the legislature is little better in the reverse direction. “Non-core” promises are broken in the name of political expediency and world-affecting policies and programs our nation ought to be taking the lead on are pushed aside in order to curry favor with powerful industry lobbies and a few fringe-dwelling Senators who hold the balance of power.
In a nation where it is in everyone’s best interests to work together, we have governments who continue to proclaim bipartisanship, yet barely manage to hold it together in the face of internecine feuds. They declare they know what is best for us in a manner that is one small step away from Nanny Stating at its worst and we have an executive that favors a Byzantine, impenetrable bureaucracy defined by a public perception of hollow men in grey suits over really understanding what their employees and more importantly the public truly wants.
Today, we’re speaking about the potential social, cultural and industrial impact of an increasingly fast and widely distributed access to broadband in this nation. Despite the recent announcement of the NBN, supposedly bringing 100Mbps fiber-to-the-home to a significant proportion of the nation, my view is the proposal is an order of magnitude in speed too slow and by the time it has been implemented, will be a decade out of date.
That said, there are many opportunities to be garnered by the provision of high speed broadband to the people of Australia. But, concomitant with that technology, a truly Kuhnian paradigm shift must occur in the culture of the legislature and the bureaucracy of this nation in order to fully realise the power of an informed, engaged and empowered society.
We live in a geographically dispersed nation. Our families and governing structures no longer inhabit a close, day or two’s ride from our wattle and daub huts. Rather, we live in a 24×7x365, always-on world where our village truly is global. And, despite continuing to declare ourselves a clever country, we continue to suffer a drain of intellectual capital overseas and an increasing fragmentation of our social infrastructure. In a world where we can be and are increasingly hyperconnected, we face the very real risk of political, social and cultural hyperisolation if we fail to participate as individual and as a society.
In his incredibly important work, The Experience of Middle Australia [1], Michael Pusey of UNSW states, “…change has depleted the the resources that were once provided by… older, denser forms of association.” In a hyperconnected world, underpinned by a utility provided, equitably distributed, high speed broadband network, our ability to readopt these denser forms of association, then made sustainable by tools such as social networks, become reality. We become the true global village, as much the neighbor to the bloke next door as some geographically remote but by association, close, neighbor with whom we share an interest of some sort.
Already, we see this happening in our own lives as we increasingly turn to trusted sources for information, turning our back in increasing numbers on the formal media which has yet to catch up with this engaged super-community. We empower ourselves to make better, more informed decisions and to take action on those decisions.
Yet, government is falling behind. And why? Because, largely, government by its very nature is not built to operate in a 21st Century that has more or less invoked Gilmore’s Law on the executive and in places, is not far off doing the same to the legislature. We will “route around the damage” and do for ourselves what government seems incapable or unwilling to do for us.
What needs to happen, and happen soon, is a radical reimagining of the way in which governments engage and converse with the public. It’s no longer necessary nor sufficient, to make proclamations from on high. The constituency wants, and parts of it are demanding, an engaged, two-way and ongoing conversation with both politicians and the public sector. In places, this is already happening. In the UK, a significant number of local government bodies and an increasing number of national bodies are engaging one on one with the public. In the US, too, government bodies are increasingly engaged with the public they serve.
How else do you account for an oversubscribed, attendees capped at 500 people, event that took place in Washington DC just a few weeks ago? The Government 2.0 Camp was a resounding success in attracting politicians, public sector workers and a wide range of informed and engaged others and opening up the conversation that must occur to input and participation from any interested party, and not just those who can afford lobbyists.
So too, in the UK and US politicians are engaging online with the voters they serve.
Yet, in this country, despite a few strong examples, the largest part of e-Government and e-politics is still seeing the world as just another place to make proclamations and tell people what is good for them and at which CWA meeting a politician is turning up at next.
This must change. And soon. Or we risk an even more disconnected and apathetic electorate than we have now.
When politicians and public servants truly seek to engage in an ongoing, personal conversation with the public they serve, I believe we will have the opportunity to see a massive increase in public understanding of government. Alongside that, I believe we will see an attendant increase in an ability to get things done, with the public sector and the legislature working hand in hand with an informed, engaged and empowered community.
In a hyperconnected world, we can be more informed than ever before, by more sources and from a broader opinion base than ever previously possible.
We can be engaged in our communities; local, national or global.
We can empower ourselves and others to know, to understand, in ways just not possible before the advent of broadband.
And we can act on that information. In an informed, engaged and empowered way.
- Pusey, Michael, The Experience of Middle Australia, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 135, ISBN 0521658446
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Stephen a very interesting talk. You may be interested in the work of our company http://www.edentiti.com which has the objective of providing individuals with an electronic presence that can work on behalf of the individual. That is, we provide you with the tools for interacting with others.
We need these sorts of tools to enable us to inhabit and survive in electronic networks. While constructing and developing the tools is most interesting the emergent properties of the “agent” systems are even more interesting.
We have started to write a book on the subject – see Chapter 1 at http://cscoxk.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/a-solution-to-the-tragedy-of-the-commons-chapter-1/ but we keep finding better ways of changing the systems to achieve the same result of fixing the economic “tragedy of the commons”.
The latest can be seen at http://stableproductivemoney.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/changing-the-way-we-increase-the-money-supply/ . What this does is to give a mechanism whereby everyone can communicate through the language of money exchange for our society to achieve common purposes – like build a national broadband network.
That is, one way to understand what we are trying to build are systems where agents communicate in quite simple ways and where the organism that we create exhibit interesting emergent properties. In economic systems the method of communication is money. The syntax is the rules we put on how money is manipulated and used. The meaning arises from the outcomes of the communication.
One area that I would like to explore more – and we now have the tools to build – is the idea of the method of communication we call the vote. I would like to see what would happen if we set up a richer syntax for how votes can be used and observe the outcomes. I think this is important to bring more order and diversity out of the communication system we call politics. So an example might be the same model we have for money which is used to allocate the ownership of resources. We can think of votes as a way to allocate political influence. Instead of one vote for one purpose used once every three years let each person be issued with 1000 votes each year that can be used to decide issues. Let votes depreciate with age but let them be allowed to accumulate. Votes are to be used to help decide a range of issues but let there be a limit on how many each person can use. If you are particularly passionate about an issue then you can use your votes directly or you can direct your votes to be used by your representative. Of your 1000 votes you might decide to use 500 of them on “right to life” matters and 500 on the control of poker machines – or you could use them on issues associated with reducing ghg emissions or education. That is what I am suggesting is that we need to find other ways of communicating “en masse” other than simply replicate the current political system which is designed around physical constraints on communication that no longer exist. I am interested in providing these tools.
I agree that the Internet is a timely enabler of a desired change that is long overdue. But – Equally I think the Internet could become (and arguably is becoming) a tool for exerting control that will sustain the political elite in its current form. The starting point for a discussion about democracy can not be technology/ bandwidth as the isuses at hand are far more fundamental than that.
Daniel, I agree completely that tech is not the starting point and that culture and people is. This particular talk was given in the context of a specific event discussing possibilities with increased broadband speed and access in Australia.