Joi Ito has written a fascinating paper – Emergent Democracy about edemocracy, weblogs, the power law, trust and “emergence” (self-organizing systems).
It’s fascinating and I think it moves the debate along significantly but I don’t altogether agree with the optimism it expresses about the democratising power of weblogs. I also fear it bites off more than it can chew – bravely, Joi Ito tries to tackle edemocracy, privacy and copyright law in a single paper.
See below for a more in-depth initial analysis. In the spirit of the democratic weblogging phenomenon he describes, I welcome further comments.
I wrote a paper recently on a very similar theme: “Do the new digital media enable wider participation in the public sphere?“. I certainly wish I had read Joi’s paper earlier, but I hope mine still has interestingly contrasting things to say and I would be happy to email the full paper to people who are interested in reading further.
Thanks to Cory @ boingboing for the link
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