He makes some good points, and I hate to rain on the utopian parade, but I'm afraid issues "too complex for representative governments to understand" are hardly likely to be understood any better by democratic masses, no matter what technology is involved. Quite the contrary.

Representative democracy (though flawed) is preferable not simply because we've lacked the means to implement direct democracy. Democracy unchecked by representation can easily be strangled by masses of ill-considered, contradictory laws, just as democracy unchecked by a constitution can turn into (in an amusing phrase) two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

For an interesting little book on another example of techno-utopianism, see The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...104-5447451-8022310

Some people thought the telegraph would bring a golden age. Nations would never go to war because they'd be able to communicate so well, you see....

But I don't want to be an ant.

Dan, the ED group got the ant thing as an example of emergence from Steven Johnson's _Emergence_. Steven came into the emergent democracy conversation late, but it's worthwhile to read what he said about the pismire controversy:

http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movable...rchives/000048.html

PapayaSF "Democracy unchecked by representation can easily be strangled by masses of ill-considered, contradictory laws"

Kinda like what we got now, n'est-ce pas?

 "just as democracy unchecked by a constitution can turn into (in an amusing phrase) two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner."

Ditto.

Well, somewhat true, King Ludd. Representation is no guarantee of sensible law-making. Still, I think it's pretty clear that the structure

1) electorate
2) representatives
3) law

is inherently less susceptible to impulse and contradiction than

1) electorate
2) law

Similarly, a constitution is no proof against other sorts of democratic excesses, but it helps.

I think the paper raises some very interesting issues and should become very influential but I feel it misses covering some important issues (of course you can't cover everything). I have posted some comments at http://blog.org/archives/cat_best_of_blogorg.html#000687 I wrote about 1200 words in all - but it's divided so you don't have to read it all to get the gist! I conclude:

"I want to remind the authors that there is no necessary connection between the theoretical capabilities of the Internet and the mass adoption of those capabilities by a broad public.
That's not to say that it's not worth pushing towards the goal of greater Internet-mediated political inclusion. I'm all for that. I feel, however, that the market (or the open source community) are unlikely (for different reasons) to provide the kind of tools needed and that governments and NGOs need to get behind them. But that's the subject of another discussion!"