X Marks The Box is pleased to announce that the Times Online will be doing a live chat with Daniel Blythe from 1-2pm today (Wednesday). Come along and ask some searching questions.
Link here.
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X Marks the Box: How to Make Politics Work for You
Daniel Blythe, author of X MARKS THE BOX: HOW TO MAKE POLITICS WORK FOR YOU will be giving away the EBOOK version of his book absolutely FREE in the run-up to the 2010 General Election and in advance of the publication of the printed edition.
Read Icon Books' press release here and click here to read more about the book itself.
Read Icon Books' press release here and click here to read more about the book itself.
1 comment:
It would seem to me that contemporary politics, as practiced in the UK, is pretty much a complete failure. As a voter, I have no "real participation" in the way decisions are made, either at a local or national level, and the options available every four or five years are so limited that there's effectively no difference in the subsequent outcomes.
It's popular to describe people who do not vote as "apathetic", but at least in my own experience, this is not really the case. When questioned, most people are interested in factors which directly impinge upon their own lives but feel that the current political process does not enable them to engage with the matters about which they are primarily concerned.
So in the 21st century I think we need to re-evaluate how individuals can engage effectively and intelligently in collective decision making (i.e. the democratic process), and here there will be many opportunities for use of technology. Do we really need to have individuals which somehow "stand for" the views of citizens? Do we need political parties? Could some of the more managerial aspects of politics (resource allocation and deployment) be optimized through automation?
The way that politics is organized at present seems to be a function of the rudimentary technological infrastructure which existed in previous decades and centuries. In the past, it was not really practical to have millions of citizens vote on issues with any great frequency since this required much physical and human resource to be deployed, but new technology such as mobile phones and personal computers makes this a far more achievable and cost effective prospect.
Today people "vote" in something isomorphic to a democratic process on TV game shows and contests, and they do it quickly and easily at negligible cost and inconvenience to themselves. We also have systems, such as the No. 10 petitioning web site where individuals or interested groups can raise questions or issues. If we combine technology enabled issue raising with technology enabled voting then I think this is closer to what we can expect from a much more democratic and engaging political process of the future.
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