17. May 2009 by justdanika.

All the different tools available on the internet have allowed people to share more information, collaborate and have better, stronger opinions. The availability of information from all different points of view and from a diverse group of people has been organized and made available to the masses. This sharing of information allows for people to be more informed to make better decisions when place in a group.

Applying these new tools to a democratic system has allowed for better decisions to be made. Decisions can be made without wondering what other people are thinking. You can truly collect and aggregate information and make an informed decision that takes into account your opinions and those of people who agree and disagree with you.

If cocoons are avoided you really will get a more democratic system working. I heard in a speach once that you should always discuss your opinions with someone who does not necessarily agree with you because it will improve your own opinion by 1) forcing you to justify why you think that way and 2) force you to accept that others are going to disagree with you. Democracy is based on this aspect and the internet has allowed people to become better, more well rounded citizens.

Cocoons are truly the biggest issue I can see. People secluding themselves in bubbles, not reading the news, not seeing how other people live, making conjectures about those that are not like them, stereotyping people without asking why and certainly living in spaces that allow them to not see the outside world. All of these types of actions are what will truly break the democracy that we need to keep creating to encourage information sharing and collaboration. I think the best way to make our democracy better is by encouraging people outside of these cocoons and to see the world as it is and then make a judgement based on the actual thing.

“Its marvelous what you can see when you open your eyes.”

-Unknown

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13. May 2009 by justdanika.

I was inspired after reading about the poor ability of groups to make decisions that there are ways to make deliberation work better.

“We have to move from old to new” Sunstein says on pg 102 of Infotopia. I tore into the next chapter delighted to hear that there could be a happy ending. But when I arrived I found gambling, betting and prediction markets.

I’ll give it to Sunstein…provide an incentive and it will get people with insider information  to share that information and keep people who have no clue from voting in the first place. I think the use of the internet to pool this information is really compelling. It creates a platform (most likely anonymous) that allows people to voice what they actually believe based on the information they have because there is a monotary incentive to get the answer right.

Sunstein is telling us to move from old to new…new being the space the internet has created to pool this information. To collect a group of people with information means you can make the outcome of the group’s deliberations more accurate. Is prediction that important though? Perhaps the real use of this tool should be to collect people who have information in order to steer decisions. Get a group of people with a common thread (whatever the topic of discussion is) to collect in a space (virtual or physical) and share their knowledge to make deliberation better, not just more accurate.

I look forward to seeing what other tools Sunstein has regarding the power of the internet to create change, not just to help predict future happenings. Though I will admit, predicting the future has a nice ring to it.

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