serpent.antonchanning.com » liberty

How to beat Google at search using Emergence

Anton Channing — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:06:09 +0000

How hard can it be?
Well for a corporation very hard. But fortunately my solution to this problem that seems to be vexing everyone lately doesn’t rely on a corporate sponsor, and places the future of web search in OUR hands.

My vision of search is that each website takes a small share of responsibility, indexing sites that website finds relevant and/or useful and sharing its results with other search engines that request the info via a standard API, much like blogs share feeds using standards such as RSS and ATOM. Each webmaster can control how much weight to give to each set of imported results in comparison to sites it indexes itself and how the results are merged. I have the following basic vision, but as different developers get involved in ironing out the final details of the standard things may change. None the less the basic principles of my idea are as follows:

API:
Each search engine should accept requests in either/both http and/or https, probably with search parameters passed in the query string. The results then get sent back in an standard XML format, which may look something like:


	
		
		
			This title contains the search terms
			This paragraph contains one of the search terms
			
		
		
			This paragraph contains one of the search terms
		
	
	
		...

CMS:
With the API open, different CMS systems can be developed that both index selected sites and process results from other search engines that implement the API. Each CMS can process the results in their own way, and allow the webmaster to configure various options in their own way also. For example, they can either integrate imported results, show them separately in a side panel or some mixture of the two depending on source. They can determine whether to show multiple results for one site or whether to group them. They may be configured to show country of the webserver of each result, or warnings if they appear on a malware list, or any other number of options. They may have options for doing image search, or map results etc, linking to whatever service they choose for these specialist searches.

A basic CMS may involve no login at all, with configuration handled via a file, whilst others may implement the API as a plugin to existing CMS systems such as Wordpress, Elgg, MediaWiki or whatever. Some may allow each logged in user to configure their own preferences and weightings, suggest relevant sites to index, report sites as spam, etc.

Plugins:
More complex dedicated search systems may themselves allow plugins or feature advanced options. This may include scraping results from existing search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, in the manner that Scroogle currently does with Google results. Again these results may have weightings applied to them by the webmasters.

Conclusion:
A distributed solution to search means we don’t have to have massive datacenters under our control in order to compete with Google, each of us can take responsibility for indexing portions of the web important to ourselves, and share that data with each other freely for the benefit of all. To make a distributed system work we don’t need to abandon the huge stores of data provided by google until we are ready, we can in the mean time scrape from them, but ultimately a distributed system, based on qualified trust, should prove better at promoting sites that are useful over sites with good SEO but useless content.

Google is becoming less and less useful as each search tends to produce 100 sites all with the same article scraped from wikipedia, interspersed with adfarms, and I can’t help think such sites wouldn’t make it to prominence in the distributed model, as it won’t be in any webmasters interest to index useless sites. Unlike google who actually profit from many of the adfarms that host google advertisements. But yet despite this I fail to see why Microsoft or Yahoo would prove better, as both also suffer from corrupt corporate agendas. Rather than looking for another closed top-down corporate ’saviour’ to rescue us from the latest tyrant, I believe a bottom up emergent approach can prove not only successful, but also something that will become the dominant means of doing search.

Doesn’t this exist already?
Often when I come up with a good idea, I’m not surprised to find that something like it already exists. However I can’t find anything quite like this idea at present, although some similar Peer-to-Peer based systems exist, such as FAROO and YaCy. However I don’t see P2P as quite the solution, as this involves each user installing software on their own computer. My proposed web based model lacks this requirement and thus has quite a few advantages, without precluding the idea of programs users can install that integrate searches from various sites. Also, the above proposed model precludes the ability for malicious links to be injected, as webmasters who index such sites will unlikely be trusted by others, and users will likely not use engines that fail to exclude such links.

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Free Cultural Sorcery

Anton Channing — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:35:17 +0000

For some time I have documented the spread of Open Source Sorcery by starting a page in the KIAwiki just for that specifically. This followed the spread of the Open Source movement in computing that believed in sharing the code that programs ran on to allow community feedback on parts of the code that needed improving. Some Open Source licenses went further, releasing code on permissive licenses that allowed for branching, or even protected the code so that all branches need to be released on the same license.

As the buzz word grew some new occult groups formed and adopted the term. Mainly they seem to have used it to mean open participation, or that the rituals, theories and other writings of the group are made public, albeit often on a still restrictive license. Sometimes without even permission for others to republish.

Others however have begun wiki projects with licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License or Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike. These licenses qualify not just as Open Source, but moreso as Free Cultural Works. These can be copied, modified and redistributed, by others, provided they give credit and provided they use the same license for the work they release it as a part of. There is no restriction on commercial use, but exploitation is protected against by the Share Alike license. If some Hollywood producer were to try and use some clips from a CC AT SA film, they would have to release their whole film on that license, or pay the copyright holders of the clip for rights to use it without those terms. But if somebody wants to use it on a blog with an advertising banner, no problem.

Wikipedia and other projects show the power behind the kind of collaborative approach that a Free Cultural Works can provide in the realm of reference texts. The GNU/Linux operating system and most of the software that runs on it demonstrate the power of this approach in writing software. Less well known projects such as Kaltura video are forming and will in time demonstrate the power of this approach in the realm of film, soundtracks and other creative projects.

With this in mind I started a page in the KIA wiki called ‘Free Cultural Sorcery‘, which is an attempt to catalogue those open source sorcery projects that opperate on a Free Cultural Works approved license. Projects that I organise that fit with this definition include the content on this blog (excluding the nest which remains copyright of its contributors), the KIA wiki, and now the films on alchemical.tv.

For the latter, I am hoping to draw together artists, musicians, script writers and film makers willing to collaborate on Free Cultural Sorcery film projects. Whether or not others join us, Lolita Perdurabo and I will be working on such projects in any case…

Freedom and Liberty in Democracy Today

Anton Channing — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:43:56 +0000

(Note: This article was originally written for Key64 and published a while back. However since they seem to be down at the moment I’ve decided to republish).

I was born in the UK in the year of 1974. The cold war was in full swing and I grew up with the threat of nuclear war hanging over. From an early age I came to understand that I was fortunate to have been born onto the side of the war where the people were free, the government democratically elected and no one lived in fear of the secret police. Or so I thought for some years in my childhood innocence.

As I grew into an adult I had become increasingly aware of the limits to freedom in the democratic West, and came to understand the degree to which people seemed to tolerate government intrusion into our lives. And I found them unacceptable. To begin with I knew not what to do about them. I found my friends and allies in the anarchist underbelly of society. A strange world full of beautiful subcultures that share as their common thread a healthy disrespect for authoritarian politics. Of course, some of these subcultures have a darker side, harbouring those with communist or even fascist leanings, and they are not always as obvious to spot as they should be having found many cunning ways to disguise themselves. Such is the sophistication of the hiding mechanisms, it seems like some of those with authoritarian leanings may have deceived even themselves.

The reasons people end up in the ‘counter culture’ are diverse, but are usually related to having a taste for something frowned upon by society at large, or even actually illegal. This can be as simple as holding a minority political view, or belonging to an unconventional religion. It can be attendance at raves and squat parties, if not actual squatting. It can be membership of direct action and protest movements. It can be smoking marijuana, and perhaps increasingly tobacco as it too becomes ostracised from the mainstream. Other things like motorcycles, or skate boards, surfing and extreme sports. Sexual attraction to the same sex, or both sexes, cross dressing and transsexualism are all unconventional enough to lead to counter culture. Even something as basic as an interest in non-mainstream music can lead one to the counter culture.

Of course, a lot of people meeting some of the criteria above will find themselves only on the fringes of counter culture. Others will attempt to hide their difference in a veneer of normality and a revulsion for anything else that causes them to stand out.

However, when I say underbelly, I do not wish to confuse counter culture with the underclass. The counter culture is made up of people from all walks of life, some living on benefits, some in low income employment, others are students, or in professional graduate jobs. Some run businesses, or work in creative media perhaps even as artists, poets, musicians and those with fairly successful acting careers. Some are quite wealthy and drive nice cars/have big houses. Whilst others are homeless and live on the street or in squats. However, those unfortunate enough to become jobless and homeless pretty much become counter culture by default since the dominant culture failed them they need to turn elsewhere for support. Counter culture is where they find that support. If they are lucky. It partly depends on how well evolved their local counter culture is.

Commitment and membership of the counter culture varies, many who think of themselves as part of it are only paying lip service, whilst yet others deeply ingrained within it may not see themselves as part of anything. What is more, it is deeply divided with many factions that dislike and distrust other factions. And yet if one has an understanding of their commonality, it is easy to move around within it and be liked by most of the diverse strains.

The single most important rule to get along in counter culture is to remember to never grass on anyone to the police for any activity the authorities unfairly classify as a crime or for which you know the punishment will be entirely disproportionate. Nor indeed to make undue fuss about such things when they have no negative impact upon your person or your freedom.

Manifestation of this counter cultural rule depends entirely on the innate sense of fairness common to the vast majority of human beings, and will vary greatly depending on the nature of the current injustices being perpetrated by the worlds governments.

For example, when being Jewish was a crime punishable by death in Nazi occupied Europe, many non-Jews recognised the unfairness of the ruling power and were willing to risk their own freedom, and even their own lives, in order to hide, feed and assist in the escaping of those directly persecuted. This is an extreme example from a particularly vicious totalitarian government, although we must remember that whilst they disbanded democracy in favour of dictatorship they could only do so because they were voted in using a system based almost exactly on the democratic model still officially in use in the modern day United States. It also demonstrates quite clearly that sometimes it is only by breaking and tolerating the breaking of unjust law that true justice can be served.

Another example closer to home would be those living in a post war democracy before the legalisation of homosexuality who recognised the injustice of their persecution, and who would knowingly keep the company of gay men without reporting them. In the modern day United Kingdom as I write this, it is still illegal for three or consenting gay men to have sex with one another. I remember reading somewhere that more people were arrested for homosexuality after it was legalised than before. I don’t know if that still holds true but it was fairly recently that a group of gay men were arrested for nothing more than making video of themselves having group sex. Making the video wasn’t the crime, it was just used as evidence that these men had illegal group sex. Still, whether people know it is illegal or not, I very much doubt I know many people that would go so far as to report group sex practising gay men to the police, and I certainly wouldn’t count such people amongst my friends.

Indeed I myself would not report any illegal activity to the authorities that occurred between consenting adults. Nor would any of my friends. It is all very well democratically elected governments passing laws that violate the sovereignty of consenting adults in their private lives, be it in the bedroom, a private party, a muddy field or an organised centre of recreation if no-one is actually willing to report violations of such unjust laws.

Of course, some misguided people are willing to report such things, sometimes even quite well meaning people. It is partly to make such people think about the true meaning of justice and liberty that I am writing articles like this one. Others however have quite hypocritically turned on their fellows out of spite or revenge. For example I know of an adept (second in command) of a magic order that got involved in a custody battle with an ex member of the same group. In the ensuing court case she actually had the nerve to out the father of her child as a witch in the hopes of prejudicing the court against him. Luckily freedom of religion is very much an excepted part of the modern legal system these days and so her tactic backfired. None the less she demonstrated considerable hypocrisy in her actions which are one of the many reasons I no longer count her as a friend or even someone to be trusted.

By this point I have come to notice that I have been bandying about terms such as ‘unjust law’, ‘individual sovereignty’ and ‘consenting adults’ without defining precisely what I mean by such terms. On the surface they seem self explanatory, but if we explore them deeper we find that they are not without ambiguities and each raise questions. Of what exactly is the individual sovereign? What makes a law unjust? How are adults able to grant or withdraw consent, and under what circumstances can we consider consent to have been broken?

These are valid questions and so for the purposes of this book I will attempt to define these ideas in as simple a form as possible.

Individual sovereignty means that the individual is sovereign of their own mind and body. It can also be extended to refer to sovereignty over personal possessions, and whilst I see this as a natural conclusion, at no point should it distract us from the core issue of sovereignty and ownership of ones own mind and body. Ownership of the mind is something we have come to take for granted in the democratic west. We can believe and think what we want although we are not always free to say it. Freedom of speech is of course a much touted cornerstone of democracy but in practise it has never been total. Slander and libel laws have ensured that. To say nothing of incitement to violence/crime and hatred laws. Thought however has never been a crime in a real democracy.

Of course, most democracies in the world are currently turning their backs on what democracy means, seeing in their majority vote a mandate to do exactly as they please, and so it is not surprising to see thought crimes starting to appear on the statute books. For example here in the UK a young woman was imprisoned for simply owning Jihadist literature. The UK is no stranger to terrorist attacks. Throughout my life there have been far worse troubles in Ulster, which often fed into the UK mainland, with far more dead than the Jihadists have so far caused, and yet it was never to my knowledge a crime in those days to simply own Irish Republican material. Nor when some neo-nazi’s nail bombed Soho did they make it illegal to own neo-nazi material. The tide it seems is turning back to its authoritarian roots.

Or perhaps it is just that the first wave of freedom broke and receded at the end of the seventies, the next wave arrived in time for the nineties but broke around the millennium. If this is cyclical the next wave should start in time for 2012, lets hope it reaches a bit further inland this time…

The freedom of an individuals mind is a cornerstone of democracy, whether or not it us under threat from current democracies, since without it the very discourse on which democracy is based becomes meaningless. But sovereignty of body is not something that has ever been fully recognised by any government, democratic or otherwise. Homosexuality has only been barely legal for a few decades, many democratic governments reserve the right to enforce conscription, even if they aren’t currently practising it, all control to a certain degree what medicine and recreational substances we are allowed, restrictions on who can get a sex change operation, the right to sell sexual services for money. You don’t have to look far to see that the law is full of instances where the government evidently feels it has the right to control what individuals can and can’t do with their own body, evidently feels that our bodies are its legal property.

Personally I do not feel this is a task that should fall within their remit. They are only elected officials. The only qualification they need to be appointed to their post is winning a national popularity contest based on sound bites, false promises, celebrity endorsements and having the best smile. Why should we trust such people with anything at all, much less our own bodies?

Many people are currently campaigning for all sorts of reforms to our legal and electoral systems. Some want cannabis legalised, others want a proportionally representative democracy, etc. And I am not saying that these aren’t worthy causes, but a movement I could really get behind would be one where the very legal right of government to violate the sovereignty of an individual was challenged. Imagine a world where we had successfully devested government of such power. This is the kind of world I would like to see achieved in my own lifetime. And that is why I am writing this, to help turn us back on track, so that once again we can move forwards towards a future of liberty and freedom from tyranny (instead of mistakenly assuming we’ve already got there as those with authoritarian outlook want us to believe). Let us continue the journey we started in the Enlightenment, rather than giving up and retreating back into totalitarian control.

With this in mind, it becomes clearer what I mean by consenting adults. For one adult to do something physically to another, consent must be given by the receiving party. If the technology exists to tamper with the contents of a persons mind, consent must similarly be obtained. We can see this in action already with regards to rape law, trials primarily concerned with determining whether consent for sex was given, or whether sex continued after consent was withdrawn.

Of course the problem is that the government presumes to intervene and make activities illegal despite consent being given. This is often done under the guise of ‘protecting the individual from themselves’ but is more often a pandering to the sensibilities of some influential religious group that are somehow offended by the activities involved and wish to suppress their practise, even amongst those who don’t subscribe to their teachings.

Just law is then all law that recognises the sovereignty of the individual over their own mind and body, recognises the right of consenting adults to be sovereign over their collective minds and bodies and protects that sovereignty from all who would violate it. Unjust law is law that permits or demands that such sovereignty be violated. This can be on an individual level, such as a law that permitted a man to rape a woman without consequence, or it can be on an organisational level, such as a law that required the authorities to arrest members of the public caught in certain sexual practises.

To summarise:

Individual Sovereignty is the absolute sovereign right of all individuals over their own minds and bodies.

Consenting Adults. Any activity in which all present consent, and are mentally mature enough to grant consent, have not been deliberately misinformed by others present with regards to the risks of the activities and are able to withdraw consent, is an activity that is taking place between consenting adults.

Unjust Law: Any law which fails to recognise the sovereignty of the individual or of consenting adults shall be deemed unjust.

The Hidden War

Anton Channing — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:25:59 +0000

War. So simple a word. Three little letters. And it conjures images in our heads of planes, bombs, nukes, soldiers, guns, battles, tanks, rockets, guerrillas, knights, swords, imperial legions and barbarian hordes stretching from the dawn of civilisation to the present. We think of the suffering, the destruction, the loss of life, the wounded, the horrors, and so we think we know what war is. Some us have witnessed this death and destruction first hand, but many of us have simply heard tales, watched footage from tv, etc. So we think we know what war is.

If this is what we think of when we think of war, then I am not entirely convinced we do. From my perspective these things seem like attributes of war, or maybe expressions or consequences of war, rather than an understanding of war itself. I feel instinctively that war is something deeper, and I also feel So how can we understand war itself? My intention is to explore this theme in this article, as I don’t think war will ever go away, nor do I even think its constructive to want it to, but I do think we can build a world in which its more deadly and destructive expressions are.

As I was writing this article, a discussion started on the kiamagic.com forum about Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”, which might be renamed “Basic Strategy for Dummy’s” these days despite widespread ‘use by analogy’ in various fields of human competition. Definitely worth a read, but following blindly no substitute for intelligence. In any case, in replying on the thread I came up with the following insight:

“Before deciding to fight, one has presumably asked themselves first the question ‘why?’

Probably to either gain or protect something you value or even need (either physical or abstract). Fair enough. But this raises other less obvious questions. Firstly, what do you stand to lose if you don’t win? And perhaps more importantly, what do you stand to lose even if you do win? Are these potential losses of even greater value/need to you than the loss from not fighting? Can they be protected against?”

So a big question to ask in deciding to whether to fight is determining or understanding what you are prepared to sacrifice in order to win. “Winning at any cost” may be a defiant battle cry but is hardly a sound basis on which to form a beneficial strategy. In any conflict one should understand how much one is willing to sacrifice, whilst only making those sacrifices where necessary. One should also understand how much is being sacrificed and when. But also, one should be very clear about one’s definition of a successful outcome.

I have no doubt that the generals involved in most of the conflicts both contemporary and historical understood this. I also doubt very much that the reasons they given to troops and populations or the levels of sacrifice they are prepared to endure have matched those they held in their heads. Indeed giving away one’s true objective and level’s of excepted sacrifice may put the general at a disadvantage compared to their opponent. Of course, the general does have to be clear about how much they can expect their troops and population to sacrifice also before this support. Although it can work the other way. Sometimes the public demands tough talk from a leader such that they must exaggerate in a big show of bravado. This can help to intimidate the enemy.

This could result in a major disadvantage for democratic leaders during a conflict, such that they would almost certainly have to find objectives to keep public support that may vary greatly from their true objectives. Indeed the true enemy they wage war against may not even be the one they tell the public. It is not inconceivable for example that a democratically elected government may not even care about winning some foreign adventure they are sending their troops to fight in. That may simply be a diversion to distract the public attention from laws designed to remove their freedoms, or simply make obscure changes to the law that may have otherwise . Their real opponent may be their own electorate. Seen from this light, it may be that America never intended to ‘win’ in Vietnam. It may not intend to actually ‘win’ in Afghanistan. If it does, great, if not it didn’t really matter, it was just a sacrifice it was prepared to make.

Allies may not even share objectives. They may simply be able to work together in a conflict in order to achieve entirely different goals, presuming they don’t have to step on each others toes too much in the process. Nor do they need to be truthful with each other.

I would suggest taking a non-dualist viewpoint on war, embracing the idea that multiple factions exist within any conflict, many of which form uneasy alliances with each other and that the strongest bonds may be more about shared ideology than loyalty to nationality. Although nationalism can be one of the ideologies involved in the struggle.

Armies, weapons and destruction therefore seem more like occasional symptoms of an underlying conflict between hundreds of ideological factions that takes place on many other levels.

For example during the cold war many in the west supported communism and many in the east supported democracy and/or capitalism. During WWII, many in Germany wished for a return to democracy, whilst an active faction of British Fascists, including at one point prominent newspapers such as the Daily Mail, wanted us to ally with Hitler. In the ongoing conflict between various capitalist democratic nations and fundamentalist Islam, we find many Muslims in fundamentalist countries would like democracy and whilst some living in democracies would support their conversion to a fundamentalist dictatorship. Things are rarely clear cut.

Choose your allies well, but try and understand who they are and how much and how little their objectives match your own. We are all in secret societies, whether we realise it or not…

Io Ares! Io Athena! Io Anarchons!

Sharing Culture, Open Source and Creative Commons

Anton Channing — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:27:09 +0000

I’ve noticed some discussions on irreality.net about sharing culture, which usually revolved around justifications for music piracy and stuff. Now I’ve got nothing against music piracy. Many a band I own on vinyl and cd, and have attended concerts of, I first listened to on pirate tapes made for me by friends. Sometimes I didn’t even like the music until I’d heard it a few times. Some music really does need to grow on you. So I’m not down on piracy or anything. I think many bands whose music is not immediately accessible have benefited from piracy. Its corporate capitalism that’s killing music, not home taping.

But this article is not about piracy, or even musicians that are giving their music away for free, but rather a more relevant movement to the culture of sharing. I am talking about Open Source and Creative Commons.

Open Source software, especially Free Software (free as in libre, as well as in beer), has been incredibly successful so far, and is continuing to grow and challenge previously complacent corporate software monoploies for dominance. Most of the web is hosted on the Open Source apache webhost for example.

I am writing this article on a GNU/Linux PC (an open source operating system) and using the open source Mozilla Firefox web browser.

What is open source? Well at the basic level it means that the source code is open for to all see. But proper open source software is released on a license that allows that source code to be reused and modified by other open source projects. In the case of some licenses, such as Apache and FreeBSD (the open source OS used as the basis for Mac OS X), the license also allows for non open source derivatives to be reproduced. Essentially it is a challenge to the existing copyright paradigm by presenting a freer alternative. Ironically these licenses are built upon and rely upon the very copyright laws they are challenging. But this doesn’t make them less useful.

A number of sorcery and magick related groups have adopted the open source banner, sometimes just to mean their rituals are public, but at other times adopting rather more of the open source philosophy and methodology in the sharing and developing of ideas. This includes the KIA Illuminated Adepts, which has a wiki article listing those open source sorcery groups we’ve discovered so far. This includes key23/key64, The Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn, SourceryForge and frequency23.

Creative Commons is a movement to extend this philosophy into the realm of art, photography and other creative pursuits. I have already released all the internal illustrations from the books Chaos Monkey and Kaos Hieroglyphica on Creative Commons licenses and plan to release more. The KIA logos, current and historical are also available on these licenses. These images can be found in my deviant art gallery. Not everything in there has been released on said license, but good portion has been.

I am very interested to see what other creatives are able to do in terms of derivations on these works. The license I have chosen allows derivations, allows commercial works, but requires that the new image be released with the same license.

last.fm

Anton Channing — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:47:16 +0000

Just a quick post to say I’ve signed up an account with last.fm

I’m not sure about downloading their scrobbler thingy. Since I don’t really play music off my PC I don’t see the point, and having something monitor what I play and reporting it back to some website seems a bit intrusive on my privacy. But I’m having fun playing music from their site though. Anyway, if anyone wants to add me as their friend on last.fm, my account is here: http://www.last.fm/user/antonchanning/

Freedom and Liberty in democracy today

Anton Channing — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 07:24:50 +0000

Just published on Key64.net:

http://key64.net/article/1329-freedom-and-liberty-in-democracy-today

Open Source Democracy

Anton Channing — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:11:06 +0000

I have just finished reading my first ever on-line book from the Project Gutenburg library. Well, more like a pamphlet really, but inspiring none the less. It was Open Source Democracy by Douglas Rushkoff. I came across it searching on the title. I’d never actually heard of it, and although the authors name is familiar to me, I can’t actually remember where I’ve come across it in the past. Probably several places.

His argument is about how new knowledge emergent, or bottom-up, organisation, such as one might find in chaos mathematics, the behaviour of coral colonies and perhaps more importantly considering the pamphlet title the Open Source Software movement, will eventually impact and revitalise democracy, returning power and participation to the people. This knowledge will in largely be experiential. In that we as individuals have slowly gained control over the spectacle of media. With the advent of of television, we were passive viewers of a strange ‘magic’. Remote controls, video recorders, camcorders all played their part in giving us more control and power over what we watched. Finally video games, computers and the internet played their share in reducing our attention to corporate and government controlled centralised programming and allowed us to use media as a means of communication. As people get used to the participatory nature of the web, they will start to realise how unresponsive the current democratic system is. This, he argues, is why participation in elections are falling. Apparently though, people will start to demand a more participatory democratic experience, rebuilding it in such a way as to make it more responsive.

The actual argument is slightly more complex than my brief summary, and well worth a read in full if you have time. It is not my intent to reproduce it here. I have my own argument to add…

The reason I was searching on the term was because I had an idea. And the term ‘Open Source Democracy’ summed up that idea. I wanted to see if anyone had already thought of it. Rushkoff is heading in the right direction, but falls short of the idea that came to mind. Although I might be one of the people he mentions that will rewrite the rules. That’s not a role I object to playing! So I shall put my idea out there right now. The sooner people start building towards the realisation of this idea the better really…

My idea was at first a reaction against the take over of democracy by corporate closed source electronic voting systems, with no paper trail, verifiability or accountability. Of course, being a software engineer, I realised the problem was not with electronic voting, but with trusting the building and running of electronic voting systems to closed source and unaccountable corporations. After all, with old paper voting systems, we wouldn’t have trusted a private company to count the votes in secret. Yet this is effectively what we allow electronic voting companies to do today. Whether they have actually abused their position yet is besides the point. They shouldn’t be given the power to do so in the first place.

Why would an Open Source e-voting system be different? For one thing, it would allow the public to see the source code and submit improvements, meaning better security, ensured anonymity of voters, and guaranteed accuracy. Any flaws in the system would be spotted and corrected without vested interests hiding the flaws for fear of losing profits.

But why stop there? Such a system has the potential to do so much more than simply recreate the paper based system. We could rethink democracy and make it much more responsive and participatory. Here is my idea for a new democratic system:

1. Every member of society can register as a voter, and must be uniquely identifiable to prevent voting fraud from duplicate voting counts.

2. Voters can also register as a candidate, with their own personal manifesto, and if they have them details of party allegiances.

3. Voters can register and change their support for candidates at any time. Via a secure website systems, local public booths or where available via a traditional paper ballot.

4. The position of every candidate is clear at every stage of the voting process, so voters can see whether they feel the need to back a different horse.

5. At the beginning of each month, week, day or even hour depending on the model required, the top n candidates are awarded seats, where n is the number of seats.
6. Seat holder with the most backers gets to propose the agenda for the next debate, and the other seat holders are given a set amount of time to prepare counter arguments before the debate starts.

7. After all the debate, amendments to the proposal by the lead seat holder must be declared, and each successive seat holder may propose an alternative option to the proposal.

8. Seat holders then vote on the proposal and the alternative options, using a single transferable vote.

9. Each seat holder represents the total backers they currently hold, which may be different from the total they had when they were first selected. In this way, everyone gets to vote on each proposal, not just the seat holders.

Well, at the moment it is little more than a pipe dream. And I would add some caveats to prevent the system from being taken over by tyrants. This reflects that I do not stop at support for Open Source, but take things one step further by supporting the principles of the Free Software Foundation.

First, all truly democratic systems have limits on the power of the government over its people. Most people recognise freedom of speech as an important cornerstone of democratic liberty. However, I extend this to suggest complete individual sovereignty in matters of mind, body and soul. Not only should it be beyond the remit of government to violate an individuals sovereignty, it should be considered treason against democracy for them to make an attempt to do so, resulting in an immediate ban from candidacy at the very least.

Of course, it would be good to see this system developed and tested in experimental communities before attempting to introduce it for a real government, so that any flaws in my proposal or the initial implementations of it, can be ironed out. But I think I have come up with a basic blue print for advancing on the road to a better and freer society that early democratic efforts set us upon. Later I would like to see the system tested in a real governmental situation. With all the controversy over the House of Lords reforms in the UK, our parliaments second house might well prove to be the ideal testing ground.

The UK government has already started the Open Source Academy to promote the use of cost saving Open Source Software in local government and with the Conservative Party already promising a level playing field for Open Source Software in the UK, the early signs of political momentum building in this direction are already there. But the nature of emergent behaviour politics is such that we have to build it from the bottom up rather than waiting for the powers that be to do it for us.