Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DemocracyOS

democracyos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 160 posts

Re: DemocracyOS

#111

Post by piamancini »

sharp11 wrote: post #95

This is very inspiring stuff and very exciting that YC is backing it! A key thing that Pia said in her TED talk: technology is only a tool here, cultural change and reinvention is necessary. I haven't had a chance to play with DemocracyOS yet, but the focus does somewhat seem to be on "direct democracy" (as opposed to "representative"), and as others have pointed out, that's fraught with problems. But I hope and beli…

We met Tom Atlee lately, he is fantastic. His insights on how to move forward, the importance of diversity in the process, where super sharp. I would add to the list, When People Speak by Fishkin and check Marina Gorbis' book on The Nature of the Future, specially the chapter on the future of government. Her proposal of a new large, agora of randomly chosen citizens is super interesting and challenging.

Re: DemocracyOS

#112

Post by piamancini »

vannevar wrote: post #93

I've seen a few of these now over the years, and I've come to believe a successful implementation should combine argument mapping, consensus building, and a trust network. Just framing an issue and having a comments section isn't enough; that form is ubiquitous across the Internet yet hasn't proven a viable way on its own to actually make decisions.

I agree, we have a long roadmap ahead and all your points should be in it. If you wish to contribute, by all means github.com/democracyos. It's an open source project.

Re: DemocracyOS

#113

Post by chm »

na85 wrote: post #68
santisiri wrote: post #23

Hi guys, I'm one of the founders. Glad to answer all your questions.

Why did you choose to implement Yet Another Blockchain Solution? Assuming 3-letter agencies haven't already broken it, they will sooner or later, and now all your users will be susceptible to having their votes manipulated at the whim of US intelligence.

What do you mean by "it"?

Re: DemocracyOS

#114

Post by piamancini »

na85 wrote: post #68
santisiri wrote: post #23

Hi guys, I'm one of the founders. Glad to answer all your questions.

Why did you choose to implement Yet Another Blockchain Solution? Assuming 3-letter agencies haven't already broken it, they will sooner or later, and now all your users will be susceptible to having their votes manipulated at the whim of US intelligence.

What would an alternative be for you?

Re: DemocracyOS

#115

Post by santisiri »

seppo0010 wrote: post #107
santisiri wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people that believe that internet access is only for the rich, is rich people. We come from Argentina, a latinamerican country and we are very aware of the social challenges we face. But it's not just a technological solution, we ALSO created a Political party that does a lot of offline activism helping society understand the power they have using digital technology. The Net Party ran for elections in 2013 a…

> The only people that believe that internet access is only for the rich, is rich people. > The Net Party ran for elections in 2013 and got 1.2% of the votes in Buenos Aires How do you justify that most of the votes came from wealthy neighborhoods of the city? https://twitter.com/seppo0010/status/578031940651118593

we had votes in every single neighborhood of the city. Our correlation was better with progressive parties (ARI) than conservative (PRO) ones even. Actually in Congress, The Workers Party (PO) brought more users to DemocracyOS than ANY other party.

Re: DemocracyOS

#116

Post by falcolas »

moe wrote: post #90
jonnybgood wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the ones who don't?

The current world population is 7 billion people. Approximately 1 billion smartphones are sold every year. Do the math. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population [2] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2665715

Because nobody buys more than one phone ever. Those two numbers have no impact on each other.

Re: DemocracyOS

#117

Post by santisiri »

na85 wrote: post #68
santisiri wrote: post #23

Hi guys, I'm one of the founders. Glad to answer all your questions.

Why did you choose to implement Yet Another Blockchain Solution? Assuming 3-letter agencies haven't already broken it, they will sooner or later, and now all your users will be susceptible to having their votes manipulated at the whim of US intelligence.

Im still waiting for proof on this claims. Regardless, the blockchain is still a protocol lacking good applications and products. But its fundamentals described in Satoshis papers + the traction it got, speak for themselves. It's a technology with growth. Show me another one like it, and I'll be glad to study it.

Re: DemocracyOS

#118

Post by kpatrick »

saraid216 wrote: post #80
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #59

The idea of "open source governance" is hardly new. I'd imagine such a system in the form of a web app would be swamped with irrelevant queries. Assuming an idealistic direct democracy where citizens draft new laws or modify existing ones, the feedback loop of constantly changing legal information to its application would be overwhelming. On the flip side, too much unaddressed issues and slow or wasteful processes wo…

Well, this has the fun distinction of actually being functioning code in active use. I'm pretty happy to see some "open source governance" that isn't just talk. I'm only aware of one another project that has crossed that line.

I'm actually pitching a similar idea to a major corporation.

Here is a reading list if you are interested in the subject. There have been (at least) four conferences on the subject of online deliberation.

https://www.loomio.org/

http://wikis.evergreen.edu/civicintelligence/index.php/ELibe...

http://odbook.stanford.edu/static/filedocument/2009/11/15/Ch...

http://www.publicsphereproject.org/ncn/

http://online-deliberation.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_deliberation

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=134286...

http://www.virtualagora.org/

http://parliament.sourceforge.net/ftf-paper.pdf Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software

http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/IS/archive/henry/RobertReport.pdf Prakken, Henry. 1998. Formalizing robert’s rules of order: An experiment in automating mediation of group decision making. Tech. Rep. REP-FIT-1998-12, GMD.

Re: DemocracyOS

#119

Post by santisiri »

seppo0010 wrote: post #109

The technical quality of the project has been so far debatable[1][2]. The Partido de la Red results seem to reveal a problem that is obvious at first sight: the underrepresentation of those who need representation the most[3]. I have doubts about whether direct democracy is a good idea, at all[4]. Summarizing, dividing the burden of decision making is inefficient for the population at large, and it does not guarantee…

It's not "direct democracy". It's just democracy. If you trace back the term used by the Greeks, they called both the technology and the concept agora. Etymologically, agora means "speaking in public", "thinking with others" and in many verses it's used as antonym of war.

Democracy is always a work in progress. Otherwise it would be a totalitarian concept.

So what we are trying to understand is simply democracy but for the digital age. Using computers and networks, and the power of software. Open source, collaborative free software.

Re: DemocracyOS

#120

Post by santisiri »

jordanpg wrote: post #100

I like the sentiment very much and I think the demo platform looks like a solid foundation. Not crazy, like others, about the "OS". That said, I think that, as far as revolutionizing elections/politics in any important sense, something far more drastic than this will be required. Finding new ways to debate hot political questions of the day, as a function of what is coming out of the news (any news outlet), is missin…

Very insightful, there's no doubt we have a lot of work to do.
Post reply on HN