The spatial dimension of democracy Since the time of the Greeks, democracy has been understood to have a spatial dimension and so, by extension, an element of scale. Plato measured the polis, the unit of democratic citizenship, at five hundred citizens, an extremely tractable size for a community that seeks to express itself through direct engagement. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan democracypoliticscommunity
What kind of world it's going to be The wonderful thing about living in a world of our own creation is that we get to choose what kind of world it's going to be—at least in principle. But the promise is meaningful only if a broad enough "we" can be engaged in the process. At present, mechanisms and democratic institutions for making collective decisions about the deployment of technology are hopelessly cumbersome. How can anyone make a sensible choice without being able to weigh one alternative against another? Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape democracypoliticsclimatechoice
Interoperable Personal Libraries and Ad Hoc Reading Groups An Article by Maggie Appleton maggieappleton.com We would need a system that enables people to: Publish a list of books they would be willing to discuss with other people to the open web. Antilibraries – collections of books you haven't read yet but would like to read – are particularly well suited to this proposition. See which books people in their social network want to discuss, and/or subscribe to other people's lists Be notified when 4+ people in their network have the same book on their discussion list – possibly via an email thread? Coordinate and schedule a time to read and discuss the book with that group. readingbooksnetworks