Democracy is Poised for a Comeback –– Goodly Labs’ Annual Founder’s Message
Everyone loves a good comeback story. Democracy is due for one.
The past years have been tough on Democracy. Electoral campaigns remain unprotected from blatant online attack. And the erosion of the public’s relationships with the state and media continue unabated. Polarization between the political parties has been turbocharged by social media. And publics throughout The Democratic World are losing faith in their institutions. We propose a resolution. Let us regain our focus. Let’s remind ourselves of the crucial differences between Democracy and Oligarchy. Let’s be clear-eyed about the fact that organized voices, both foreign and domestic, are undermining our institutions to ‘prove’ they are chaotic and ineffectual. They are doing this so that the publics of the world will lose faith in Democracy and accept Oligarchy. Most importantly, let us know and share the fact that the best democracy has yet to be tried – and now may be our best chance.
Polls show that trust in government is at the lowest levels in the history of the US. Political disengagement and fatigue are at record highs. Less than 40 percent of millennials, the largest generation in our nation’s history, believe that living in a democracy is important.
We can hope these poll results reflect people’s frustration with democracy as it is practiced and not with the ideal of Democracy itself. For many patriots, Democracy is still the shining city on the hill even if it is too often practiced as zero-sum partisan bloodsport. Perhaps it is worth remembering that many democratic constitutions were substantially written by Kings and Nobles who could best preserve their own power by offering the public democratic machinery that would keep them divided.
Unfortunately, adversarial partisan politics is only half Democracy’s problem. This past decade has also brought us the meteoric rise of Facebook and X/Twitter, Google, Reddit, and Instagram. Today these platforms are so large and so shape our national discourse that we can no longer speak of Democracy without considering them. Yet we are barely coming to grips with the impact these giants have on the news media and our entire society. They have grown beyond their initial visions –– beyond their own capacity to take responsibility for their impacts.
And whether these public forums controlled by private entities are sandbagging, as some suspect, or earnestly trying to resolve the very problems which have grown their bottom lines, we the public have yet to appreciate their sheer power, much less what they could mean for Democracy and Oligarchy. Frankly, those of us who still believe in Democracy have been caught on our heels while more nimble oligarchs divide and conquer the public. Now, we, the publics of the world, are beginning to sharpen our focus and realize how we might use Internet technologies to build more pro-social media platforms and better democracies, instead of watching as autocrats sow chaos amongst our friends and families.
It is time for Democracy to make a comeback. It’s time for us to apply the technology we love to use to share cat photos for a much higher purpose. On the technical front, there is nothing particularly difficult about refactoring Internet technologies to improve how democracy functions. We’ve got plenty of ingenuity amongst us. And we managed to build our current policy-making system using a communication network that depended on the Pony Express. How much greater could we be if we effectively used today’s technologies to come together and solve our shared problems?
Here, at the Goodly Labs, we don’t see Democracy through the lens of hopelessness many people do. Because we are building social and technical solutions to big societal challenges facing Democracy, we know the situation is better than most people realize.
We can work together through the Internet to improve media content and media literacy. We’re already doing it with the Public Editor project. We can work together to ensure protests are healthy and productive –– that they do not devolve into the militarization of civil society. We’re doing that with the Demo Watch project. We can work together to audit the public behavior of our elected officials. Goodly has already set up the Research Ready Archives projects to support such public research. And, in the not too distant future, we the public will be able to survey ourselves to better understand what we want, what we need, and ideas for ensuring more people get more of both. That project will probably be called The Goodly Mirror. We will even be able to rank the urgency of our shared problems – and deliberate over and vote on potential solutions –– using a Goodly project called Same Page.
With the help of you and thousands of volunteers and donors, Goodly Labs aims to share a set of online democratic governance technologies at a range of organizational scales –– from a community house, or board of directors, up to a town hall, state, or even nation. These tools will be open for use by anyone –– all made possible thanks to Goodly’s ever-growing team of good-hearted, talented engineers, data stewards, designers, and community managers.
It’s hard to say enough about the the amazing people in Goodly’s community. As a friend recently commented, “not all heroes wear capes.” Most of the Goodly team are data science students eager to learn and practice new skills. Their pathbreaking work is guided along by professionals with years of experience in research, management, design, public relations, and engineering. (We even have a Nobel Prize winner among the Ph.D.s on our team.) Our crew has enormous talent, ingenuity, persistence, and goodness. We care about humanity. We care to do this the right way, carefully. So, please join us! There is still so much to be done. Any contribution helps –– whether you volunteer your efforts or help sponsor the work of our engineers and organizers.
It’s time for Democracy to make a comeback. Are you ready?
