Metagovernment and the People2020 project

[Michel Bauwens]

Via Paul Codd McDonald, whom I met in Barcelona last week,

More info via [e-mail]

Here is a link to the open source democracy project I mentioned. I am a founding committee member and can act as a liaison for you with the project, or introduce you to the rest of the committee if you want to get more closely involved.

See http://www.metagovernment.org

Here are some other related projects we have come across over the last 6 months or so.
http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Related_projects

My particular pet interest as I said in the Q&A after your presentation is 2020people.com. In my view it provides a missing piece in the jigsaw that completes the democratic picture. The project aims to evolve the process of innovation itself. I feel that decision making is often of a very poor quality even when all participants have the best of intentions and no matter how inclusive the process I am not confident that organisations such as government, NGOs and businesses identify, define and analyse problems competently, work to understand causes, effects and the root of the issues, linkages to other problems and positive and negative feedback loops. In my view without these understandings and without an appreciation for what they mean in terms of how the problem manifests and where are the leverage points, any interventions to solve the problem may in fact have the opposite effect, or at best simply shift the problem elsewhere. It also means organisations often (or usually) work on peripheral issues, ignoring root causes and far greater opportunities to innovate. These are amply evidenced by the situation we are in as a civilisation.

My thesis is that no matter if we do "P2P everything", although a massive evolution in its own right, and a quantum leap forward, this will still be insufficient for us to save the human species for tremendous suffering. I also believe that we can be spared from the worst of the negative effects of our current mistakes and the resulting suffering, if only we could make better more systemic decisions.

So that is why 2020people exists. There are a few dozen people involved at present, maybe a dozen occasional collaborators and myself. Unfortunately no programmers yet. You can find more info here: http://www.2020people.com/node/84

I'd be delighted if you might be able to connect me to anyone that might take an interest.