What if we combine these two proposals, and make them work simultaneously? Will web-based political system help more people being represented? Will bottom-up representation mechanism help more people participating in the online decision making?
Let's say if there's a family including a college kid like me, my parents and my grandparents. The only thing my grandparents know about the Internet is online card games. They are those that most likely to be excluded in web-based decision making, but they do have political opinions. They know how the country was like decades ago, witnessed reforms carried out by various presidents and maybe participated in movements and revolutions, which has their insight a certain reference value. Luckily both my mom and my dad knows the Internet very well, so they could represent my grandparents. However, my parents are too busy at work to care about politics, but they do have considerable political insight. They made possible the economic boom late 20th century, interact with the contemporary society as well as its government in different dimensions and some of them might have occupations directly related to the political system. Luckily they have me, a 20 years old son who could represent them and their political opinion. I am the member of my family who knows the Internet the most. I am energetic and dedicative to speak for my family and its rights on the internet. As the most educated family member, I also have my own political opinion, built on the stuff I have learnt during the past decade and on my understanding of the world.
You see, as a family with members of three generations, there could easily, naturally be a bottom-up representation mechanism. I represent my parents, and my parents represents their parents. As a result, I will be the representative of us 7 people to express our minds on and to get information from the web-based political system.
Disagree with Prof. Woodhouse's "8 levels of representative" in The Future of Technological Civilization, I suggest each family with one representative, who is also the ultimate representative. First of all, if we move political meetings onto the web, we don't have to narrow down the "top-level" representatives to some 5 hundreds of people. A nice cloud server, just like Facebook's, is definitely able to include millions even billions of users representing their own families. Secondly, if there are too many "levels" of representation, one would be less likely to express their opinion, believing that "someone else might have the same opinion and might have express it already" or that "if my opinion failed to be perceived by 'top-level' representative, I really don't know who to blame on." If have immediate access to the 'top-level' representative, who in my thesis is one's family member, one will participate in the political decision making more actively and effectively. Thirdly, family is the party that like no other. Family is the party in which each member truly cares about others' well-being. With that said, instead of friends-based and organization-based, I personally prefer a family-based representation mechanism.
Commonly speaking, each family's representative would better be its youngest adult, who will benefit the most from democratic policies. She is physically and mentally mature to represent her family and take part in politics, and is qualified to communicate with others efficiently online.
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