The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture __________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 November 30, 1993 Volume 1 Issue 7 SQARV1N7 WILLIAMS PARTICIPATION '90 -- THE END OF THE PASSIVE AUDIENCE Lynda Williams, Virtual Square Columnist Reetion Politics If the public had universal network access, could we become the government? I began thought experiments on this theme for reasons which had almost nothing to do with the Internet. I was inventing a universe. You do that sort of thing when you are a science fiction writer, which is one of its great appeals for me, although I have yet to get anything formally published. (I have a small, but growing informal fan club and a co-author in England who has, indeed, sold a novel, and is still collaborating with me.) One of the things I wanted to happen in this universe was for a bunch of thugs to run into some people who really had their act together, do the standard "take me to your leader" routine, and get blank looks. In an attempt to invent a leaderless culture, I came up with one heavily influenced by my experience with internet conferences, which had not one but many leaders. I call these people Reetions. My first attempt to define Reetion politics died of committee contagion. Authority in Reetion culture is a function of numbers. The larger the Voting Group, the more authoritative a decision. But how could an entire population keep up with the myriad issues of daily governance, even if they did use electronic lists instead of trotting around clutching day-timers? They would never get anything done. Problems like that are impossible to overlook for people in an adventure novel, since just as the Spartans cut off the occasional debate in ancient Athens, my bad guys demanded a certain practicality of Reetions. Elitism therefore raised its ugly head, and the government got cut back to 10 per cent of the population. These are the Voting Citizens. The general public still played a role, but more of that later. Voting Citizens are specialists. They have jobs apart from government, but these are typically related to their areas of expertise. They form Councils which keep in touch through mailing lists, where they discuss issues and create policy through a voting mechanism. The Voting Council Lists are text only. Reetions consider irrelevant details like multi-media showmanship, or plain good looks, to be detrimental to the sensible evaluation of issues. (Wouldn't it be nice if our elections were as innocent of marketing pizzazz?) All traffic on the lists is public, and questions which cannot be answered from a Frequently Asked Questions databank are allowed to filter through for attention by the Voting Citizens. You may well want to know who administers all of that, and I will 'fess up eventually, although you may as well brace yourself for disappointment if you were planning to stage a revolution to install the Reetion System locally. We don't have the technology. First though, let's polish off the Voting Councils. Media specialists assigned to the councils are crusaders in the battle against information overload. While they keep an eye out for things which should be brought to someone else's attention, their success is judged not by how many stories they pass along, but by the level of relevance assigned to their tattling by the recipients. Councils also include members appointed to them by other councils. All very well and good, but what makes these councils tick over? Conflict! After all, Reetions are human. Failure to resolve conflict ultimately triggors escalation which can ultimately result in a national referendum. Each council elects an executive of three, who have the power to speak for the council within the scope defined by the group. The executive manages the agenda and keeps the business of the list on track. If they disagree, or a critical mass of members vote for revolt, then power devolves on the Council as a whole. If the council cannot achieve closure within a reasonable period, as defined by policy, then the matter escalates to the agenda of the next largest family of councils. Failure may be due to refusal to call the question, rather than an indecisive vote, but whatever the cause each time a deadline passes the issue engulfs more councils until it is before the whole Voting Population. If they still can't get it together, it goes to a planet-wide referendum. By now you can see why "Take me to your leader" would baffle a Reetion. But what about budgets? Can Voting Councils vote themselves anything? Governments, after all, are in the business of deciding how to parcel out resources which every interest group, or council, could happily spend all on their own. The answer is that councils only get to decide how to spend money, not how much they get. The general public takes care of that. Every citizen controls 100 ballots which they allocate to councils according to the importance they place on various objectives, such as health care or space exploration. Citizens may re-assign their ballots, but not all at once, and only at periodic intervals. Otherwise budgets could be boom or bust. Another set of ballots are applied to establish the criteria for being a Voting Citizens, which is a privilege since Voting Citizens are excused certain duties in order to free up enough time to pursue their specialties and take an active role on one or more councils. Being a Voting Citizen is not permanent, and people move into and out of the classification based upon whether they are keeping their credentials up. How's that for participatory government and integrity in office? This brings me to the bit where I cheated. The mechanics of Reetion democracy are formidable. Who maintains and updates the millions of ballots? Who makes all those rulings on policy, answers the FAQs, referees, counts votes and calls time on floundering councils? What's needed is the perfect civil servant. Enter the Crystronic Arbiter. A Reetion Arbiter-Class Artificial Intelligence Crystronic Computer is the ultimate administrator (although something of a crashing bore as my characters keep finding out). Since science fiction authors only invent things to point out what's wrong with them, my arbiters also commit at least one nasty mistake but only because they merely apply existing policy and are dependent on humans to generate adaptation. After all I couldn't let the Reetions get away with believing they had the perfect government. That's not what space saga are made of. Imperfect or not, however, after the joyful work of creation was over, I discovered I wouldn't mind being a Reetion. I serve on "Voting Councils" already, through my volunteer work, but whenever we need money to accomplish something we must petition government for funds. How much more efficient if we were, collectively, government! And how much more direct the public's expression of priorities if the resouces at our disposal were directly assigned by them in advance? That's Reetion Politics, as it stands. If you've spotted a hole, have a question, or want to suggest some improvements, please let me know. My e-mail address is williams@cnc.bc.ca Maybe we can perfect the things and stage that revolution after all. ---------------------------------- About the Author: Lynda Williams, M.L.S., M.Sc. Computation, teaches computer information systems at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George, B.C., Canada where she is also the President of the local Free-Net Association. Lynda has worked in the software industry, the mass media, and a hodge-podge of jobs from medical receptionist to crisis line counsellor. ----------------------------------- _____ Articles and Sections of this issue of the _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ may be retrieved via anonymous ftp to byrd.mu.wvnet.edu or via e-mail message addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU (instructions below) Papers may be submitted at anytime by email or send/file to: Ermel Stepp - Editor-in-Chief, _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ M034050@MARSHALL.WVNET.EDU _________________________________ *Copyright Declaration* Copyright of articles published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture is held by the author of a given article. 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