the intenret and the logics of groups

I've seen a number of pieces coming out recently about the Intenret and the social logics of groups. In other words, how people use the Internet to 'get organised' in different domains of life. One, from Bruce Bimber et al, is reported in a previous post. Two more, from Beth Noveck and Stephen Coleman, are pasted below. Interesting and long-due developments I would say.

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First Monday, volume 10, number 11 (November 2005)

A democracy of groups
Beth Simone Noveck

In groups people can accomplish what they cannot do alone. Now new visual and social technologies are making it possible for people to make decisions and solve complex problems collectively. These technologies are enabling groups not only to create community but also to wield power and create rules to govern their own affairs. Electronic democracy theorists have either focused on the individual and the state, disregarding the collaborative nature of public life, or they remain wedded to outdated and unrealistic conceptions of deliberation. This article makes two central claims. First, technology will enable more effective forms of collective action. This is particularly so of the emerging tools for 'collective visualization' which will profoundly reshape the ability of people to make decisions, own and dispose of assets, organize, protest, deliberate, dissent and resolve disputes together. From this argument derives a second, normative claim. We should explore ways to structure the law to defer political and legal decision–making downward to decentralized group–based decision–making. This argument about groups expands upon previous theories of law that recognize a center of power independent of central government: namely, the corporation. If we take seriously the potential impact of technology on collective action, we ought to think about what it means to give groups body as well as soul — to 'incorporate' them. This paper rejects the anti–group arguments of Sunstein, Posner and Netanel and argues for the potential to realize legitimate self–governance at a 'lower' and more democratic level. The law has a central role to play in empowering active citizens to take part in this new form of democracy.

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IPPR Paphlet, 11 November 2005

Direct Representation: towards a conversational democracy

Stephen Coleman

The problem faced by contemporary democracy is horribly simple: governments have come to believe that the public don’t know how to speak; the public has come to believe that governments don’t know how to listen. Faced with apparently ‘apathetic’ citizens, the political class complains about the difficulty of governing in a vacuum. Convinced that the political class is not interested in them, the public is increasingly pursuing a conversation in which politicians are outsiders.
It is ironic. Two centuries ago, democracy was regarded as a subversive aspiration. The disenfranchised majority clamoured for the right to participate, and the political elite resisted their claims ‘because their reason is weak; because when once aroused, their passions are ungoverned; because they want information; because the smallness of the property, which they individually possess, renders them less attentive to the measures they adopt in affairs of moment’ (Burke,1871). Now the roles are reversed. The demos are voting with their feet, bored and demoralised by the institutions and processes of ‘politics as usual’, while angst-ridden political elites are desperate to re-engage them.
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