David Wilcox ponders internet democracy

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Interesting discussion of our Networking Democracy project by David Wilcox of the great Designing for Civil Society blog. He also contrasts what we are doing with a Tom Steinberg message on Democracies Online that I have been meaning to blog. Steinberg suggests it is a waste of time trying to influence actual government behaviour. Whether this is because of civil service decrepitude and chronic arse-covering, ministerial heeby-jeebies, cabinet procrastination, big organisation pass-the-parcelism or what, he does not quite say. I know what he means. That's why what we are doing is independent of the government and a big hat-tip to Michael Wills for giving this the official go-ahead in his Ministerial capacity and "letting go". Who knows what will happen with the Summit and how it connects to input from the internet? Wills has let us get on with our own discussion and what I want to come out of it is a document that will be at the very least a marker for the future. At some point - by which I mean 2020 at the latest - there will be a set of relationships between the internet and democratic decision taking. I'm sure one of the rules that will emerge will be the Wilcox rule that "You need to be very clear about what you are trying to do, with whom".