Defining terms: "Democracy 2.0"
Happy Friday AIR-Lers! I have a two-pronged question to pose to you all. But first, a bit of context: I am on a advisory committee for Philly NetSquared, which organizes monthly meetings (Net Tuesdays) on using technology to advance social change (another topic for another day). The idea being thrown around for the February Net Tuesday is "Democracy 2.0," which when assimilated with "Web 2.0," is a very timely topic. However, upon a quick Google search of the term, I emailed the rest of the committee with the following information, which *I will now use to frame my questions to all of you: * *1.* The first two Google search results (http://moourl.com/r3jcz) are from Mobilize.org, which conducted a survey of Millennials way back in 2002, and their thrust at the time focused strictly on Millennials identifying specific needs for change (http://moourl.com/l5vqp). The third result is Digg citing a broken link from wiki-law.org (http://moourl.com/z9kow): Democracy 2.0 is an experiment that hypothesizes that a wide range of
individuals can contribute to the creation of our nation's laws through a wiki on the web. Democracy 2.0 hopes to answer the following question: if the country started from scratch today, without any laws, what laws would you make for society?
This is not what has been intended by the term in the NetSquared discussion. And perhaps there is a reason why this entry has been removed from Wiki-Law... *2.* There is no entry in Wikipedia for "Democracy 2.0" ( http://moourl.com/0y09k). While Wikipedia is, of course, by no means* *the final authority on either historical or cutting edge concepts (or anything in between), it is generally a good gauge of which concepts the Internet public (namely Wikipedia contributors) has formed even a somewhat stabilized and homogenized perspective on. While I completely understand the intended conceptual thread drawn from Web 2.0 to "Democracy 2.0," I'm a beat leary of NetSquared coining a term that doesn't quite seem to have a single-minded use as of yet. Not to mention that "Web 2.0" has lost some impetus as it's increasingly become cliché. I've also searched "Democracry 2.0" on BoingBoing, ReadWriteWeb, and Technorati. While the term is actively used as a tag on Technorati (as well as a related tags,"Government 2.0" and "Open Source Democracy"), the other two sites yielded null search results. There are also no entries yet on UrbanDictionary.com. *So my two-prong question for you is as follows:* 1. What are your thoughts (as tech savvy researchers) on the term "Democracy 2.0" and similar terms "Government 2.0" and "Open Source Democracy" (and are there any other synonyms in use)? 2. How do we as internet researchers determine the validity of such terms in our temperamental social-networked information age? In what cases should we define terms and in what cases do we allow the Internet public to define terms? I'm really eager to hear your input. All the best, Julia Julia Pellicciaro // Passion:Purpose:Integrity // tweet :: twitter.com/juropel blog :: telluricaesthetic.net ... Whatever is flexible and flowing will tend to grow, whatever is rigid and blocked will wither and die. —Tao Te Ching
Julia, some terms to try searching: "participatory democracy" and "digital democracy" I think anything 2.0 runs a the risk of sounding cliched and being instantly out of date. It might be useful for identifying a moment in history or a past trend. I think the practices you are discussing need to be clearly identified/defined and then a term that refers to those should be easier to decide. You are not looking at laws being recreated through a wiki; what are you looking at? best, Kim On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Julia Pellicciaro <jpellicciaro@gmail.com>wrote:
Happy Friday AIR-Lers!
I have a two-pronged question to pose to you all. But first, a bit of context:
I am on a advisory committee for Philly NetSquared, which organizes monthly meetings (Net Tuesdays) on using technology to advance social change (another topic for another day). The idea being thrown around for the February Net Tuesday is "Democracy 2.0," which when assimilated with "Web 2.0," is a very timely topic.
However, upon a quick Google search of the term, I emailed the rest of the committee with the following information, which *I will now use to frame my questions to all of you: * *1.* The first two Google search results (http://moourl.com/r3jcz) are from Mobilize.org, which conducted a survey of Millennials way back in 2002, and their thrust at the time focused strictly on Millennials identifying specific needs for change (http://moourl.com/l5vqp). The third result is Digg citing a broken link from wiki-law.org (http://moourl.com/z9kow):
Democracy 2.0 is an experiment that hypothesizes that a wide range of
individuals can contribute to the creation of our nation's laws through a wiki on the web. Democracy 2.0 hopes to answer the following question: if the country started from scratch today, without any laws, what laws would you make for society?
This is not what has been intended by the term in the NetSquared discussion. And perhaps there is a reason why this entry has been removed from Wiki-Law...
*2.* There is no entry in Wikipedia for "Democracy 2.0" ( http://moourl.com/0y09k). While Wikipedia is, of course, by no means* *the final authority on either historical or cutting edge concepts (or anything in between), it is generally a good gauge of which concepts the Internet public (namely Wikipedia contributors) has formed even a somewhat stabilized and homogenized perspective on.
While I completely understand the intended conceptual thread drawn from Web 2.0 to "Democracy 2.0," I'm a beat leary of NetSquared coining a term that doesn't quite seem to have a single-minded use as of yet. Not to mention that "Web 2.0" has lost some impetus as it's increasingly become cliché.
I've also searched "Democracry 2.0" on BoingBoing, ReadWriteWeb, and Technorati. While the term is actively used as a tag on Technorati (as well as a related tags,"Government 2.0" and "Open Source Democracy"), the other two sites yielded null search results. There are also no entries yet on UrbanDictionary.com.
*So my two-prong question for you is as follows:*
1. What are your thoughts (as tech savvy researchers) on the term "Democracy 2.0" and similar terms "Government 2.0" and "Open Source Democracy" (and are there any other synonyms in use)?
2. How do we as internet researchers determine the validity of such terms in our temperamental social-networked information age? In what cases should we define terms and in what cases do we allow the Internet public to define terms?
I'm really eager to hear your input.
All the best, Julia
Julia Pellicciaro // Passion:Purpose:Integrity // tweet :: twitter.com/juropel blog :: telluricaesthetic.net ... Whatever is flexible and flowing will tend to grow, whatever is rigid and blocked will wither and die. —Tao Te Ching _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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On Friday 23 January 2009, Julia Pellicciaro wrote:
Democracy 2.0 is an experiment that hypothesizes that a wide range of individuals can contribute to the creation of our nation's laws through a wiki on the web. Democracy 2.0 hopes to answer the following question: if the country started from scratch today, without any laws, what laws would you make for society?
Since I follow the (often silly) "2.0" phenomena in my work on Wikipedia, I made note of the original description from their site in December 2005, which gives a little extra info: [[ Democracy 2.0 is a Wikilaw experiment that hypothesizes that a wide range of individuals, not just politicians and special interest groups, can contribute to the creation of our nation's laws. All laws listed in this section are the collaborative effort of the Democracy 2.0 community. The site aggregates the viewpoints of all users, after a large number of edits, to reach a consensus on what laws society should impose on us. \acite{Wikilaw2005d2w} ]]
I've also searched "Democracry 2.0" on BoingBoing, ReadWriteWeb, and Technorati. While the term is actively used as a tag on Technorati (as well as a related tags,"Government 2.0" and "Open Source Democracy"), the other two sites yielded null search results. There are also no entries yet on UrbanDictionary.com.
Rushkoff coined "Open Source Democracy" in 2003. (References to many of the "open foo" neologisms are provided in: http://reagle.org/joseph/2006/02/fm10-openness.html )
*So my two-prong question for you is as follows:*
1. What are your thoughts (as tech savvy researchers) on the term "Democracy 2.0" and similar terms "Government 2.0" and "Open Source Democracy" (and are there any other synonyms in use)?
Best to think about and specify what you think is novel and what is the same. With "Web 2.0" O'Reilly got himself in the pickle of admitting that ironically many of the most famous 2.0 sites existed before the 90s bubble collapsed -- the alleged demarcation the term was intended to make -- and Berners-Lee's original Web was the first 2.0 app!
2. How do we as internet researchers determine the validity of such terms in our temperamental social-networked information age? In what cases should we define terms and in what cases do we allow the Internet public to define terms?
It's naturally for pundits and thinkers to create new buzz words, some stick and people then attempt to further define what they mean, and sometimes this is a significant contribution. Sometimes it's lost to the ether. (I was sometimes frustrated that the term "social protocol" was preempted by "social software" but both now seem destined for the bit bucket.) I consider the Open Source Definition and Free Software Definition to be two such lasting contributions. I'm still not sure about the utility of "Freedom 0", but that too is a largely forgotten conversation now. I imagine the more theoretically inclined might have something to say on the emergence and establishment of such terms in discourse (e.g., Dawkin's memetics, Bourdieu's field, Pinch and Bijker's stabilization). In the new media space the following might be of interest: Rullani: Free and Open Source Software and reflexive identity (which makes use of Habermas): http://www.lem.sssup.it/WPLem/files/2005-18.pdf Lourenco: wikis and political discourse formation: http://www.wikisym.org/ws2008/proceedings/research%20papers/18500066.pdf As a scholar, I feel I'm along for the ride: documenting and commenting in some historical or analytical context, maybe even clarifying/contributing where I can.
participants (3)
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Joseph Reagle -
Julia Pellicciaro -
KMV