Jeremy wrote:
] No offense, but I'm tired of hearing this. It's whining.

Whatever.

] This assumes that people care. I remain unconvinced. And
] even then, there are degrees of caring. There's caring enough
] to complain about it, and then there's caring enough to
] identify an alternative and take action to see it
] through to success.
]
] With regard to direct representation, this assumes that all of
] the sufficiently motivated people are actually prepared for
] this duty. Again, I remain unconvinced. I would point you to
] the recent Edge thread around the Aristotle idea of Danny
] Hillis; look at the replies and see what the academics say
] about the hard problems in education.

I'm also unconvinced. I think you have to cross a burden of simplicity before people will do anything, even things that are in their best interest. The benefits that information technology can provide in this area is to reduce the burden of involvement still lower. I'm saddened that so many people think that reading a paper or reading some websites is too much work, or that voting is pointless, but they do. So, if we can come up with a way to let more people involve themselves with minimal effort, so much the better. There'll still be people who don't care and don't participate... you'll never get 100%, but maybe you can do better than we have today.

Prepared or not, the people have the duty, so maybe we can come up with some tools that make it easier for everyone to contribute. There's a vast amount of information available, and lots of people talking... not all of them are fools... maybe that can be captured for the benefit of all.

I've got that edge piece printed and waiting to be read, but alas, too busy the past few days to read it. perhaps it will change my view. certainly there are people far smarter than me, with far more resources, devoting their cycles to these issues...

RE: Creating a New Picture of War, Pixel by Pixel