I found this post on Boing Boing yesterday to be very relevant to our discussion last class concerning whether the rise of online communities who share collective intelligence could bring about new political power. The New Zealand police force has just launched a wiki that allows users to contribute to the writing of their new policing act. They believe that their old set of laws are out of date and that many of them are no longer relevant to policing people from today, but that the laws should not only be under the purview of their politicians, but rather created from the input of all their citizens. Not only that, but the wiki is open to input from anyone around the world, so people from other countries can input their own ideas on what makes good or bad laws.
It is a fascinating experiment, and I really can't wait to see what comes of it. I personally see it as an excellent way to inform people about the laws in their own country, and to gain public input on which ones are no longer relevant. Comedy shelves in bookstores in this country are full of silly and outdated laws that no one realizes still exist in this country - imagine what a boon it would be for the government if they enlisted the help of the public to sort through and get rid of outdated laws, rewording and updating the books for our modern era using modern technology.
Here is the link to the original article. Maybe wikis are the first step towards getting people directly involved in democracy again?
1 comment:
Yes, this is a great example of convergence in the "black box" sense of it. And iphone hacking suggests that people not just technology are part of the convergence process.
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