An even more perfect union

extreme democracy, self-governance

I went to the Quakers to see how wisdom manifests in the presence of a truly intentional, deliberative group of people facing each other across a room. My dream is that such co-created wisdom is possible in the virtual communities that are now blossoming into early childhood on the net. I have carried with me for a number of years now a vision that resembles quite closely the notion of extreme democracy.

The tools are now arriving for a truly self-organized, self-governing society. I have a feeling that we are recapitulating the spirit of idealism and citizen empowerment that moved the founders of the United States to form a more perfect union, with the best social technologies available at the time. They strove to create an adaptive, counter-balanced system that could evolve in response to a changing world. But working at a time when the fastest message traveled at the speed of a horse, even they could not foresee our postmodern society that travels near the speed of light across networks of economy, culture and computer that wrap our world in a global embrace.

Now in our era it is our turn to create an even more perfect union. Luckily, you and I have some specific ideas about how to help these far-fetched dreams become a reality.