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About the BookAmerica 2076 examines the potential of pop technology - including Web 2.0 - to transform politics, and to allow a new level of citizen participation in democracy, one that goes far beyond simply voting, bloggin, and reacting to broadcasted viewpoints. The book takes a "system" view of American democracy, addressing its flaws as bugs in the system, rather than accusing players of morality problems or lack of intelligence. In this mindset, the system can be debugged and improved with the proper tools. System "crashes" are caused by placing unrealistic expectations on current political methods. The current version of American democracy relies upon a set of communication tools can only offer a flawed democratic process, because they are not capable of organizing and facilitating the kind of massive participation our current national complexities require. We place unrealistic expectations on the current version of the political system, only to be repeatedly disappointed and alarmed when things go wrong. A new - upgraded - version of American democracy becomes possible when better communication and collaboration tools are implemented. This is the core point of the book: The emergence and popularization of low cost communication and collaboration technologies offers us an unusual opportunity to address the fundamental problems that reduce the effectiveness of our democracy. The system improves as new tools become available and as its participants learn how to use those tools. When I wrote the book, I was motivated by the belief that these new tools need to be understood and utilized by ALL Americans rather than a select few. This is more or less the mission of America2076.com: to share information about new technologies and methods that can enable citizens to participate more meaningfully in democracy. This information is applicable to individual citizens, as well as elected representatives, campaign managers , and state and national government officials. The book proposes the development of an Internet application that allows US citizens to use web browsers, cell phones and other devices to collaborate on the annual creation of a "National Agenda" document. The document would be frozen and published on December 3rd of each year, one month before the opening of the next session of Congress. These ideas are being implemented in a number of projects and experiments. The National Agenda Document ProjectAn experimental National Agenda document has been created at Google Docs, a collaborative online word processor. Participation in this non-partisan project is free, and new participants are welcome. To learn more about this project and how to participate, see The National Agenda Document Project page.
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