Over the next 3 days, lets build up some ideas of technologies that can positively impact democracy and political participation:

• Possible design principles: low cost of operation, easy to learn and use, solves a problem of giving people a voice or making institutions accountable

I think Emerging Democracy is on the wrong track
http://www.danger-island.com/~dav/writeon/archives/000786.shtml
Though I still need to actually read Joi's paper :)
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Some ideas for getting this discussion started are in my paper at http://www.mikiko.net/house/e-democracy.htm -- comments welcome.
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An idea for Community Hubs, which perform a simple but critical function of lowering the barriers between citizens and knowing what is happening in their local communities in terms of quality of life and political issue, is developed at http://www.1to1express.com/cgi-bin/sgx/d.cgi?activist-10000. I think the pursuit of more sophisticated understandings of emergent systems is enticing and fascinating, and that doing something practical that works now will show us emergent systems in action while producing results sooner.