By way of Nancy White, here’s Extreme Democracy – a book for changing the world the wired way. (Although not, I’m hoping, the Wired(TM) way.)
Extreme democracy, taking a cue from the recent evolution of software development towards a practice known as “extreme programming,” anticipates a politics based on lowered friction in communication that increases the diversity of ideas and opinions that can be brought to bear on the development of public policy. Using communications channels available in advanced economies today, activists can form teams locally or across the globe to develop new options and policy alternatives‚Ķ. Extreme democracy is predicated on the belief that policy can be developed by small groups based on simple steps and extensive communication among affected parties and those responsible for carrying out policy. Finally, based on the experience of extreme programming, which ships an incomplete but sufficient software release and draws on the experience of real people using it to roll out improvements, extreme democracy argues that policy and governmental systems ‚Ķ can be improved constantly through feedback and re-calibration.
There’s more than a little whiff of technoutopianism in that blurb, but a lot of the names in the list of authors come straight from the political trenches. For those of us trying to plug the world of politics into the world of digital communications, this book looks like a must-read.
Which makes it all the nicer that they’ve put each chapter online for you to download and read as a PDF, absolutely gratis. (It’s also available to purchase for a mere $18 US, if you’re still into that – snicker – whole paper thing.)
