Mitch Kapor has a few comments on politics and network architecture that you may find of interest.
Politics is Architecture
When it comes to building a new movement, the converse proposition, “politics is architecture” holds true as well. The architecture (structure and design) of political processes, not their content, is determinative of what can be accomplished. Just as you can’t build a skyscraper out of bamboo, you can’t have a participatory democracy if power is centralized, processes are opaque, and accountability is limited. Politics needs a new architecture, not just a new coat of paint. We need to renovate the house (and Senate). The architecture team needs to reflect the future, not the present–who is sitting at the table, and the experiences and perspectives they represent matter enormously.
The internet, if kept open and accessible to all, is a tool we can use to reform our politics and create new democratic processes and institutions. By using the internet and building upon its open decentralized architecture, we can help give every person a voice and offer them a forum to participate in creating a healthy politics. The internet provides the tools to build bottom-up systems that are both globally interconnected and locally controlled. As the printing press was the technology that helped birth modern self-government, so the internet can be the tool to build a new democratically controlled participatory politics.
Read the entire article here: Architecture is Politics (and Politics is Architecture), by Mitch Kapor, Mitch Kapor’s Blog, April 23rd, 2006.
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Politics is architecture, Congress is a car, and we’re the mechanics | The Open House Project // Jun 22, 2007 at 3:23 pm
[...] This is very much the same as Mitch Kapor’s blog post “Politics as Architecture,� posted earlier this week by James Jacobs. The political process requires a foundation in rules, norms, and societal trends to create change and pass laws. These rules, norms, and trends all affect the political process and the legislative process. The Open House Project intends to create new rules, new norms, and put Congress in line with the societal trends, empowered by the Internet, towards openness, online networks, and user-controlled information. These changes will ultimately alter the political process in ways that we cannot yet predict. It’s always hard to predict how a building will be affected if you change the foundation without tearing it down. [...]
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