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<div class="gmail_quote">Dear Democracy Campaigners</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">About <a href="http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/" target="_blank">www.peoplesassemblies.org</a> <br></div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">Below are the helpful comments from Lucio just sent regarding the URL above - can everyone please reply with any thoughts on how we might best proceed?</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">I do think this is an absolutely key issues, how to make the site itself into an Assembly. The site itself - and the actions that flow from it - needs to become a form of popular, common property that is of real practical use and a source of inspiration to everyone involved. For this IMO we need a clear, agreed (political) narrative, and a means to popularise it, and indeed franchise it around the countries we inhabit aswell as ones we don't and the website, in order to fulfil its potential needs to play a starring role in this. </div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">Thoughts? Would be great to factor in before the London meeting tomorrow </div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">And thanks again to Lucio for sending the ideas through - really helpful !</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">Cheers</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">Mark<br><br></div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Lucio Versaggi</b></div></div></div></blockquote>
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<div class="gmail_quote">Date: 6 May 2011 10:36<br>Subject: thoughts on the website<br>To: <a href="mailto:marknbarrett@googlemail.com" target="_blank">marknbarrett@googlemail.com</a><br>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">HI Mark,</p>
<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Unfortunately I will not be able to make it to the meeting due to some personal reasons, however I have been thinking about some issues around the functionality of the website.</p>
<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">I've noticed that its development is already on the agenda, so there's a good chance that you've already had a thought around the same issues, I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know what you think, and what will come out of tomorrow's meeting. I've tried to put together my thoughts, and it would be really nice if you could consider them during the meeting. Please feel free to circulate the email if you think it would be appropriate.<br>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">As the People's Assemblies tries to promote a more participative model of social organisation I think it is essential to consider the ways in which technology can facilitate this. Transporting the decision making process onto a virtual platform will save time and make participation much more accessible and therefore tangible. That's why I think the website should increasingly serve as a tool of internal communications and decision making, as it could facilitate all the procedures of the meetings and make the organisational process much leaner and more inclusive.</p>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">The way this platform would work is obviously to be debated, but I think it could easily reflect the proceedings of a standard meeting, with someone making a motion, which would have to gather a certain amount of support within a period of time in order to be then opened up to debate, in an area in which everyone can make a contribution to the issue, where it stays for sometime before being put to the votes.</p>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">I would imagine it a lot like Facebook, where a “like” would replace our shake of hands in the air... there could be room for arguments and comments but more generally I think it should provide the tools for the dissemination of information and ideas and the analysis of consensus, which I guess it's what Facebook does, only for the city and their goons. </p>
<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">But if we could make it work as a platform for our internal debate and organisational procedures, I think it would make a big contribution towards a more participatory model of organisation.<br>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">I am not a technical person and I'm not sure what this would entail exactly, but I really think that such options should be explored, as it seems to me that it is only by creating efficient platforms for public contributions to the debate around the relevant organisational issues, but most importantly to their decisions, that a wide participation can really be achieved. </p>
<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">In general, I think that a direct access to the decision making process can serve as a stimulus to participation, connecting more closely the citizens with the structures of society, enabling them to see more clearly the links between political life and the world around them. </p>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">In my daydream this kind of open system ends up being slowly implemented by the councils and other public bodies, so the public would have unprecedented access to the running and the development of the social, political and economic structures that regulate their lives.</p>
<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">I believe that the current bureaucratic systems make it difficult for a citizen to make a meaningful contribution to the decision making process at most levels of society, facilitating a culture of apathy and political delegation instead of involvement. Their structure as it is, with responsibilities and accountabilities removed as far as possible from the people, alienate citizens from the political process reducing us to mere consumers. </p>
<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">But I do believe that people are keen to share information and ideas and get involved with what they feel close to them, and this becomes quite evident evident within the realm of social media. Browsing through Facebook shows people posting about issues that matter to them, and posting comments, and creating pages and events and building up momentum for issues that would otherwise remain obscure under the old media system. </p>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">On Facebook this is however often sterile, as it is a commercial organisation that makes its money by monitoring content to provide accurate market research for advertisers. This promotes the establishment of a platform that does to a certain extent stimulate dissemination of information and promotion of debates, however information and debates are constrained by a site structure that leads them to be brief and schematic, reducing ideas to soundbites and thus slowing down the development of an organic and comprehensive understanding of the matters in question. The primary objective of Facebook is to label and classify people's thoughts for marketing purposes, and that's all there is to it. Most of the passing of information and ideas has very little consequence on people's lives, doing very little to ultimately empower the users while offering incredible monitoring tools to corporate power. </p>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">But if we think that this technology could be used to serve not the logic of profit but the democratic process and social progress then I think we should seriously consider investing time and resources into such a project, maybe researching other similar systems of organisation and maybe seeking collaboration and advise.</p>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">I hope I haven't bored you too much, had I been able to attend, my intervention would have been much briefer but I thought I should try to articulate my thoughts more organically. I'm not sure whether you'd like to summarise the points to the group or circulate this text at or prior to the meeting, but either way I would be really grateful if you could at least try to test the room with these ideas, when you'll be discussing the “website development” item on the agenda.</p>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Hope you have a good meeting</p>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">thanks a lot</p>
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<p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0cm">Lucio </p></div> </div></div></blockquote></div> </div>