When I set out to write this article, just for argument’s sake, I tried to remember what the reason against giving women the vote was. And for the life of me I couldn’t remember what those patriarchal dinosaurs were putting forth to justify their position.
Was it because they felt men needed to dominate in the political arena to compensate for their genetic inferiority? ( Men are vulnerable to a lot of extra diseases because they’re missing an extra leg on their “Y” chromosome that would normally carry the extra data required to prevent those said diseases. ) Was it that they felt jealous of women because they get stronger orgasms? ( Women have an average of 12-15 muscle contractions during an orgasm, as opposed to 9-10 for Men. ) Were they depressed because statistically women get to live longer then men, and felt they needed to compensate?
No, after looking into it, I found out that the people who were against giving women the right to vote, were mostly doing it because they were defending what they saw as “still-valid” traditions. And any movement promoting the modernization of our political system will probably encounter similar opposition. They’ll be told that our current political systems are “still-valid”, even though most of the time they were conceived in a technological era that predates the telegraph.
I think there are similarities between the fight for women to have the right to vote, and the fight for the modern electorate to be able to have a say in what they’re paying for.
I was reading about the Canadian Suffragette movement, and what they did which was pretty clever, which is that they decided to hold “mock-parliament” sessions. They would re-enact parliamentarian procedures, but this time with women in charge. They had various parties debating whether simple creatures like men, should be allowed the responsibility of being able to vote. Basically using humor to get their point across. I’m a big fan of that.
I’m also a big fan of their “mock-parliament” idea. Doing a modern-day, online “mock-parliament” could also be a lot of fun. It could be an easy way to illustrate how a digital democracy might work. All we really need is to purchase a web-domain name, run a forum/online chat type of operating platform, you then you just add a logo. As far as the technical aspects of setting up something like that I’m sure it wouldn’t be too much of a challenge.What would get harder though, would be to get a bunch of collaborators to agree on what the structure should be for the next-gen of gov systems. Should it be structured like an online forum with the head-of-state replaced by the equivalent of a forum moderator? Or perhaps tweaking the current system, with voters being able to vote on all government law projects and programs? Or, how about we turn it around, make it that only the electorate can propose law projects, and it’s the politicians who have to decide if it goes thru or not?
Which would be the best structure?
It’s hard to say.Obviously there’s a lot of potential avenues which could serve as an appropriate soil to erect a digital democracy, the question is, which one better suited for that type of project? I don’t have the answer yet, but I think that sometimes it’s a good idea to look at the past for inspiration…
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technology4democracy 
The war against the web
Darpanet eventually became the Internet as we know it today. The internet is a vital world resource, but since it was originally created within the U.S., it’s mostly all regulated within the U.S. as well.
US laws have repercussions all over the world. Which is why law projects like SOPA ( the Stop-Online-Piracy-Act ) which threaten the neutrality of the internet, is a concern to everybody. At least everybody that’s online. And now-a-days, that’s a lot of people.
And the good news is that this article is more of a eulogy than anything, since as we all know, SOPA, that no good piece of law, was defeated. An unprecedented amount of people contacted their government to complain, web organizations like Google and Wikipedia had blackouts and similar actions. Basically the internet got together to defeat a bill that would have amputated the internet. Basic survival instinct. That’s powerful stuff.
And sure, I’m against copyright infringement, but it should be up to the copyright owner to enforce it. It should not become the responsibility of search engines and internet service providers to police such content.
And who’s asking for such draconian measures? It’s mostly the RIAA ( Record-Industry-Association-of-America ) and MPAA ( Motion-Picture-Association-of-America ).And to this day, depending on the jurisdiction, some people are still being given massive fines and even sent to jail for ripping or distributing some movie, or some piece of music. And yet any public library will have a photocopier available to photocopy any written copyrighted work right there on the premises. They even get a cut of the profits. And that’s legal.
So my questions is: Why do we allow municipal institutions, such as public libraries, to profit from facilitating copyright infringement of the written word and of visual arts, while we prosecute criminally people who distribute music and music type arts for the only crime of wanting to share their love of that art?
It’s possible that our culture and our governments are telling us that anything visual is of no value, but that, oh wait! IF it’s got soundtrack to it, IT IS A CRIME TO COPY IT!!!
The reality is that the feds are too cowardly to start going after those evil municipal governments and their evil public libraries. That would be one level of government taking on another level of government, and that would require courage. Feds don’t like working that hard.But, when it comes to creating a legal framework that allows music industry related enforcement pit-bulls to pounce on single moms and their kids for sharing a song, well in those cases, the feds are glad to help.
But maybe I’m getting worked up about this, so I therefore conclude expediently, not wanting to become another person who ends up M.I.A. because of the R.I.A.A. …
Conclusion: So, in a supreme display of irony, the internet, a system that was created to protect vital information from foreign invaders, ended up getting attacked by a home-grown threat to liberty and freedom of speech: unchecked corporate greed.
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*NATNOTE: And for those who think the art for this particular post is rather weak, well, that’s precisely the point. I create original art that I own for this blog. So if SOPA would have gone thru, it would not have affected me that much. But If SOPA had gone thru, the blogs of most people who post material they do not own, would have ended up looking like the visuals for this blog: [ NO ART INCLUDED ] !
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Posted in COMMENTARY, TEXTUALS WITHOUT VISUALS
Tagged BEFORE/AFTER, DARPANET, getting screwed, MPAA, RIAA, SOPA