According to the author, it stated that the British government is facing a huge problem which is that the citizens are seemed to ignore the representatives’ democracy. Since everyone is using the internet, therefore the British Government wants to use internet to solve this problem and connect to the citizen. But the solution that come out by them – The internet is not working. Its true that internet can connect with many people and most of the people used internet everyday but the problem here is that the citizens in not interested in the politics and they will not view their page and so on. As the author had mention “if someone isn’t interested in politics and they don’t see the point in taking part, doing it online is not going to help much”.
The author had mention some interesting points in the article such as electronic politics, reciprocity online, the democracy application, and most importantly is the civic hacking and e-democracy ethic.
Reciprocity online - helping each other
Reciprocity online means that people help each other to solve problem thru the Internet. To make it simple, it is like I help you to solve your problems and you help me back with mine. The author had stated a good example which is the gamer today. The gamer today will go to the gaming community to ask for help to overcome a challenge. Then, the other gamers help to solve the problems because sometimes they may need others help to overcome their challenge as well. How to link this to the politics? The author stated that the British government should have developed an application – democracy application or software to meet the social goal. It can let the citizens to participate in it and help each other with their problems, interact with the parliament. It is called as “civic hacking”.
The author had given a good example for civic hacking – Meetup. Meetup had the similar concept with civic hacking. It is not a application but it is a website which allow people that have the same interest to link together – meet up. For example, Jane had just moved to a new town and she had no friend there and she wanted to find friend with the same interest like play Sudoku, likes animal and so on. Then, she can go on Meetup and register her interests. When there are sufficient amount of people had register for the same interest, the sites will send an email and suggests you to meet up for a drink. Isn’t it cool and sounds fun? We can have lots of friend with the same interest.
From the author point of view, the British government should develop a civic hacking website instead of some boring political website. Because people will not interest in the political website; they will not visit it and use the application and they won’t find that it will help a lot in their life. About the ethic of democracy, the author stressed that people should be connecting are not citizens and parliamentarians, or voters and civil servants. It should be connecting ordinary people with other ordinary people. The application that develops should connect ordinary people with each other and help each other to overcome the civic problem. It will helps in the people to involve in the democracy as well.
If people are not interested to the programs or anything, they won’t pay attention to the things and understand it, so do the politic issues. Nowadays, teenagers don’t care about the politics. Even the British government improve it to electronic medium those teenagers also won’t pay attention on it. To create a effective ways to make teenagers care about the politic, government should let them involvement in it and create a forum let them to discuss or sharing the opinion and idea because the sharing information ways is the most effective ways for internet’s peoples to communicate and sharing their ideas.
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