Sunday, April 03, 2005

Internet-like network for our Mass Shared Dream

Imagine a website where you can learn the true overall popular opinion on any important issue, and enter your own opinions on issues you care about. It would actually be a collection of websites with each site having a copy of all opinions from its geographic area (local, county, state, national, and global). Examples of issues that might be popular at national level and global levels are:
1) should the Arctic Refuge be opened for drilling?
2) should u.s. military leave "..." now?
3) should "..." be president in '08?

Some opinions might carry more weight than others, such as scientists' opinions on technical matters or mystics' opinions on religious matters. For self-government, the "one-person-one-vote" idea might be important, or "one-dollar-one-vote", or "one-gun-one-vote". I like "one-creature-one-vote" or "one-liter-of-biosphere-one-vote" except that the concept of ownership reduces it back down to "one-dollar-one-vote".

The system would be heirarchical with local issues shared by a local community, then state-wide issues at a higher level, then nation-wide, and then global issues at the top.

Of course, the number of issues at each node at each level must be limited so copies of all info can be transmitted quickly and easily so every node can store new updated copies at all times, helping prevent forged copies from gaining footholds and corrupting the overall data.

To prevent powerful special interests from taking over, the "one-person-one-vote" concept must be somewhat possible by having the entire system rooted in local geography, e.g. network addresses based on longitude, latitude, and altitude, so each part of the biosphere gets an appropriate amount of vote.

The design of the system would always evolve, as open-source software, with new updated versions always available, vying for popularity among users. Of course, any new version would be able to intercommunicate with existing versions. "Affero" should be given to any programmer who detects and reveals a malevolent version, if a corresponding "negative-affero" could be given to the purpetrators.

The physical medium for all this could be handheld computers with wireless network routing capability. Each node communicates with its nearest neighbors and can operate independent of existing infrastructure such as electric and telephone utilities.

One application of all this would be voting for lists of candidates who would uphold popular opinion, no incumbents needed, hence no professional politicians, hence higher costs for powerful special interests to control our representatives, hence government more of, by, and for the people.