I don't think we need to be that advanced. I think modern mass communications is enough. We just need to build the right tool to apply our capabilities to the job.
I've written about this on the board a bit before, and I think Angle would remember it... but I think social media is the unwitting skeletal prototype for the egalitarian government of the future.
The whole problem Solifuge and Frumple are going back and forth over is how egalitarian society can only exist on small scale, because it's limited by the ability for everyone to communicate their abilities and needs to each other to organize efficiently. Mass communications completely removes that restriction.
I think it's a major struggle that's taking place within modern society right now. Old power structures are cracking down on and subverting the potential of the internet purposefully, because they already realize it's making them obsolete. Just look at how much of a witch hunt for anarchism there is in the U.S. right now, even though it's not a widespread political affiliation at all, and there's only been one significant instance of terrorism by a self-identified anarchist in the last 100 years (the Unabomber). It's because they know that the stage is set for anarchism to become truly legitimate. All it will take at this point is the right memetic spark.
In the past, efficient organizing relied on hierarchy. Information could be funneled upwards through chains of command, until it encountered the appropriate decision-making node to send an instructive response back down through the chain.
Now flat organizational structures are capable of responding to information faster than hierarchies can. While information and instructions are flowing up and down through a hierarchy, a flat organizational model can simply disperse information instantly to all participants and respond. We're already seeing this with the way protesters are able to outwit law enforcement. Direct action groups can pretty successfully outmaneuver police units on the streets, unless communications hubs are raided and cell phone service shut down to the area. Similarly, there have been many examples of startlingly successful efforts to solve difficult problems by crowd sourcing collaborative efforts, instead of relying solely on traditionally organized groups of experts. And online file sharing is a futuristic egalitarian economy, whose models can be (and somewhat have been) altered and expanded to cover more than just information.
I mentioned social media. So imagine something like this. You have a profile on this website, where you offer your location, skills, and available resources. You can post wants, needs, or suggestions to this website, and those things will become visible to or ping relevant members of the community within a suitable distance of your location, or the location relevant to your suggestion. This scales to the scope of the project suggested, and reacts to the urgency of the request.
So let's say you have a medical emergency. You use your cell phone to transmit this, and people with the relevant skills within a reasonable distance will be alerted to your emergency. Or you post that a road nearby is in need of repair. This will become visible to everyone in the community, who second the request or disagree with it, and those with relevant skills/resources within a certain area will be notified of it. Maybe you want to propose that your city needs a bicycle trail, and that will spawn a discussion board and poll visible to the everyone within a certain distance to have the opportunity to chime in their stance and be involved in planning. Or let's say you propose something like "Let's cure the fuck out of cancer". I don't see why global projects couldn't be generated the same way. They'd just need their own infrastructure to connect the right people and facilitate cooperation.
And if motivation is a concern, you can have a system of personal thanks and endorsements, whereby you can credit someone on their profile when they've done something for you or your community, and verify that they have the skills they say they have. I don't think it's too optimistic of me to believe that people would go out of their way to help people that have a decorated profile, marking them as a valuable member of the community. There could be some meritocracy, without all the desperation and coercion of capitalism.
The idea is we can do all the organization that keeps the modern world operating without hierarchy. We just need to turn the technology that we have now into the proper tool and embrace it.
Edit: A little cleaning because I typed this in a hurry, as it's late and I need to get to bed soon :[
Author
Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1293509 times)