How to achieve ‘real’ democracy for web
It’s been an interesting week in regards to the users asserting their authority.
Conference goers at SXSW made a clear statement that they weren’t willing to sit back and just listen politely.
Digg users are trying to thwart an acquisition.
On Newsgang Live 3.10.08 (not released yet), Gillmor claims it’s 1968 again, and we better watch out if the people don’t feel the Democratic Party candidate was chosen with a fair shake.
I was born in 1968, so I can’t say, but It does seem that the tipping point has happened and it’s no longer about ‘what the users want’. It’s now ‘what they have a right to’.
I’ve said it before, though, that Digg is no democracy at all, certainly when it comes to an acquisition stance. Digg users have only one vote, in that case, and it’s with their walking shoes.
That’s not democracy, it’s free market. Ahhh, but wait, it’s not so free, because they still have the data.
We want democracy and free market and we only get it when we control our data. That much we agree on.
Until the algorithms that feed us are free, and the data that we are fed is unloosed then we have no democracy, and that includes Twitter.
The federation that was talked about on Scripting News a few weeks back would do the trick, but it doesn’t have to happen in a formal way. In fact, I don’t think it will.
As long as we control the endpoints, we can control the center, and that’s where an open tool like gangbuster will pierce a veil of opacity, if not pave the road to the new CRM, Cloud Relationship Management.
In order to turn the tables on the silos, we can’t ask them to change their ways. We change our ways, and if they want our attention, they will have to transform to get it.