Abstract
Technology is allowing communication to become inexpensive, ubiquitous, secure, and instantaneous, in the process transforming individual lives and societies. Representative government was conceived in an era of laborious, slow, insecure, local, and high-cost communication modalities. These modalities imposed burdensome but inescapable limitations on both the representatives who were entrusted to aggregate and adjudicate public sentiment while making decisions on the behalf of others, as well as the public who faced trust crises, participation barriers, and ignorance of facts and issues. This paper explores positive and negative consequences that improved communication has for representatives. Consequences for a better educated and informed citizenry often with unprecedented discretionary time are also examined. Conclusions include deliberate power divestment on the part of representatives and an open source government model for citizens.
Highlights
Representative government and democracy trace their history back over 2500 years ago to the Greek city states
This paper explores positive and negative consequences that improved communication has for representatives
What is the technology or science that could eventually solve for obviate this fight over abortion between sincere factions? One possibility is the following: if there existed free, long-term, reversible, side-effectless, and 100% effective conception control followed by mandatory DNA testing for all conceptions to promote accountability, would that not obviate most of the contention surrounding abortion? Such a conception control does not currently exist except as research (Waller et al, 2017; Long et al, 2019), but if such conception control did exist and was provided free to all citizens, all but a fraction of a percent of abortions currently performed would be unnecessary
Summary
Representative government and democracy trace their history back over 2500 years ago to the Greek city states. Appointing or electing representatives of groups of people allowed for differentiation and specialization. The politician could dedicate time and energy to representing the people and the people could use their time and energy for other pursuits. This agreement between the people and the representative was a necessary compromise between the two extremes of anarchy on one side with no one working toward societal improvement and stagnation on the other side with all people being politicians only with no care-
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
