Appendix C
“I am not an advocate
for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions
must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes
more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths
discovered and manners and opinions change. With the change of circumstances,
institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might
as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy
as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous
ancestors.”
Thomas Jefferson
We the people of the United States need a completely
new Constitution, improved by magnitudes beyond the political and social
ideals of the original and fully commensurate with and dynamic enough
to vitally inform the structure of our modern society.
The undertaking and successful achievement of such a profound work,
however, is generally seen as a deeply perplexing problem rather than an
exalted challenge. There are reasonable fears on the part of all of losing
what has already been gained as rights, liberties, representation and recognition
in the process. A major question is who should be entrusted to impartially
undertake the work and how it should be carried out. Some fear that opening
up the process to the entire citizenry would be too unwieldy or the ordinary
citizen would not be sufficiently competent in some pertinent areas and the
end product would be inferior as a result. Any such undertaking will be
resisted by those who have found ways to take advantage of or subvert the
current Constitution and the laws made under its aegis for their personal,
political, or economic advantage.
Our electronic age, however, has afforded near instantaneous
real time communication across the nation and across the planet. A major
feature of that creation of a global village is the potential for nationwide,
in depth, information distribution, education, and electronic input through
secure voting on issues by the entire population in real time. The
computerization of the voting process has already begun and electronic voting
machines are being installed and the process implemented. The recognition
of the potential power to be gained politically by control and manipulation
of these first devices to subvert the democratic process by fraudulent means
and the production and control of the machines and their programming by private
companies has already caused serious concern and alarm. But
the potential for true democratic operation and benefit of the electronic
modality is tremendous and obvious to most if only it will be made secure,
impartial and the integrity of the system guaranteed.
Taken separately, these two developments can certainly appear as challenging
“problems”. I propose, however, that, taken together as two sides
of the same coin, these two seemingly separate problems can transform
into positive reciprocal resolutions and a single grand solution. The
two parts of the project ---- the development of the secure input/voting/feedback
electronic system and the development of a second Constitution mandating its
use ---- would be entrusted to all the citizens through an open source programming
modality. The project in total might be called New Glory.
Taken together, developed and perfected concurrently on an interactive
basis using an open source modality, a new Constitution fully reflecting
and embodying the refined democratic principles and ideals of our time
and the robust democratic mechanism for implementing those principles and
ideals can be complementarily created. The voting system might be called
Votin.
It would seem, at first, that the national input and voting system
should be designed, developed, put in place, tested and perfected and
then employed in the national collaborative democratic development of
the new Constitution. However, the final nature of the input and
voting system will be mandated, eventually, by the as yet determined new
Constitution and should embody the principles and ideals and advantages
of it. So it will be necessary to implement the electronic hardware system
with maximum flexibility for modification and to use the open source mode
to program it also. This will allow for a feedback loop of dynamic
reciprocal modification between the development of the new Constitution
and the input and voting system. Such a process of simultaneous development
through feedback and reciprocal modification involving the democratic participation
and collaboration of potentially every citizen, beyond science fiction to
the Founding Fathers, is clearly achievable through the modern electronic
modality. True democracy is intrinsically open. The essential key to the
project’s success is the “open source” mode, a major capability afforded
by the electronic revolution.
Open source computer programming is computer “source code” or, simply,
“code”, instructions written on a collaborative basis with all code known
and available to critique, enhancement and refinement, by individuals
and groups, informal or formal, often widely dispersed groups of
indefinite size.
Several well know examples of highly successful projects employing the
open source approach both for actual “coding” and data accumulation and handling,
are: the creation of the powerful Linux operating system; the 85,000 volunteer
Mars Global Surveyor mapping effort; The Human Genome project involving
hundreds of scientists working together to sequence DNA.
The open source mode, used in the conceptualization, development and creation
of a maximally, robustly secure, self policing voting/input/feedback system,
concomitantly with a second Constitution which mandates
is use is a quintessentially democratic process. The open source mode will
be employed in every phase from the submission of this proposal to the
finalization of a second Constitution and the continuation of the electronic
voting process thereafter.
Operating systems such as Linux for the computers required are already
deployed. The input and voting system will be developed as an open
source application system. Alarm systems will be built into the devices
and programs to guard against fraudulent manipulation and destructive acts
although the open source process tends to minimize such hacking. An integral
sub mode of the program should be dedicated to constructive “hacking” of
the system in the form of demonstration of vulnerability of procedure or
security during development or at any time afterward. It should allow for
demonstration of vulnerability without damage or corruption or causing
cessation of the system for open source evaluation and correction. Destructive
intrusion, hacking, causing damage, corruption, cessation or destruction
of the program or system may well be considered high treason. Conversely,
by ruthlessly competing, monitoring each other, attempting to
break every security measure propounded or implemented until a point is reached,
literally, where no one can succeed in breaking the system, the
hackers and crackers and programming geniuses become the true patriots of
our time. Conceivably, an adolescent could contribute
a key bit of programming that would solve the security challenge and become
a Founding Daughter or Son. The Founding Fathers would be proud.
A second major capability afforded by advanced computer technology
is the ability to process and communicate at a level of complexity beyond
that of ordinary human capability. This powerful feature provides
the potential to address and accommodate the will and desires of each individual
citizen whereas, previously, only huge constituencies of citizens represented
by a single official could be managed. This capability will afford the
means to process the input suggestion, request, or statement of position
which will constitute the new form of “vote” of each citizen,on a 24/7/365day
basis, evaluate the input, incorporate proportional urgency, integrate all
input from all regions, etc and feedback critical news, data, responses ideally
in real time. It will take us beyond antiquated representative government.
An open source data base containing the record of every input, discussion,
decision and implementation from the advancing of this proposal
onward, as a subordinate part of the process, will naturally evolve into
a dedicated expert system. A powerful open system of this type, continually
added to, will provide civil servants, scholars, experts, lawyers and
judges and the individual citizen continual direct access to topics and
data encompassing historical, legal, scientific, cultural and national
elements directly and through real time links to other data bases and libraries,
national and international.
The logical extension of this expert system will be its evolution into
an artificial intelligence system whose prime directive would be to serve
the people in all things Constitutional. It might be called Consul. It will
be the logical tool used to determine when a third and further evolved
Constitutions will be necessary, and contribute to their creation with accumulated
knowledge and indicators.
In essence, this is a practical rather than abstract project,
defined and delimited, not impossibly complex, not beyond the
comprehension and participation of the ordinary citizen. It has a great
deal of precedent and experience and history to draw on, of both good
and bad usage, fortune and consequences and values. Opening the process
of determining a new Constitution through input and voting by every citizen
will allow all opinions, philosophies, belief systems to input their convictions
about what the content of the new Constitution should address and how it
should address it. Opening the determination of the nature and operation
of the input voting system will assure confidence in the adequacy, security
and facility or the system. The opportunity for participation by each
citizen will stimulate ---- indeed, provoke ---- a breath and depth
of study, creativity, idealism and redefinition of patriotism that could
well profoundly revivify this country.
Minimum initiating assumptions for maximum freedom at base of this
proposal:
A democratic form of government is not only still the preferred kind
but a far better kind beyond the representative form is now attainable,
maximally conducive to the direct, continuous involvement by each
individual citizen and the addressing of her or his needs
harmonized with all others’. No other than a generically human, true democracy
is allowed. Oligarchy, theocracy, racial supremacist, fascist, as only
several examples, would not qualify.
The open source approach is key. It should be used fully from the very
inception of the project. Critical electronic voting system components
manufacturing should be nationalized as is the U. S. Mint
Perhaps the only rules which should be applied are:
1. Maximum individual freedoms should always be the goal but the
exercise of any freedom or act that would destroy the system itself
which guarantees and protects those freedoms should not be allowed. This
fundamental criterion would apply in all phases of the project, to any
principle, rule, prohibition or mechanism suggested; to any law which
would subsequently be enacted.
2. Any exercise of a freedom or action by an individual or
entity which prevents the exercise of any freedom by another individual
or entity allowed under rule 1 should not be allowed or, depending on
its nature, should be considered invasive crime.
3. Invasive crime should not be allowed; non-invasive acts,
even though not acceptable to others, between consenting adults or upon
ones own person, should not be considered criminal, subject to rule 1 and
2.
Carried out successfully, a new Constitution by the full
citizenry will restore and revitalize the sovereignty of the individual.
It will take us beyond the dangerously archaic Constitution written in
and for a pre-mechanical, horse-power society, when land-holding determined
the right to vote, women could not, minors were excluded and slave-holding
was permissible. The slow and cumbersome representative form of government
by strangers was necessary when it took two weeks for the news to travel
from New Orleans to Boston. Government by law is an unworkable cliché
in our time when a senator, elected every six years, represents two million
people whom he or she has never met and the vast number of whom do not even
know his or her name.
The political democratic model should be, and now can be, through
the electronic medium, based on the neurological system: twenty billion
neurons each hooked to an electric network. Electronic communication
makes possible direct participatory democracy. Every citizen has
a voting card which she or he inserts in a voting device from palm to desktop
computer, cell phone, interactive TV, perhaps devices not yet invented,
and central computers register and harmonize the messages from every component
part. Neuro-electric politics eliminates the outmoded parties, politicians,
campaigns and campaign expenditures. The citizen votes like a neuron fires
when it has a signal to communicate. The voices of the citizenry continually
inform civil service technicians who carry out the will, not of the
majority (a vicious and suicidal elevation of the mediocracy) but of each
citizen. The central computer is open source programmed to make everyone
as free and happy as possible. Everyone will be educated by the system itself
to understand how the open neural network works and have access to it. Each
person will be an “interest group” of one. The potential, promise,
challenge and new glory of techno-neurological democracy is simply this:
the power to accomplish it is here and society can no longer allow one person
to feel abused, persecuted, ignored.
The restoration and enhancement of the sovereignty of the individual
citizen and the evolved ideals and principles of the second Constitution
may well restore America to a position of respect and example to the
rest of the world.
This concept paper is offered respectfully and freely to all as the initiation
of an open discussion and evaluation process leading to the actual open source
project. The anticipation is that those who have the capabilities and
interest, from the citizen with an idea to scholars, scientists, politicians,
computer scientists, political scientists, historians, programmers,
whomever, will determine first, perhaps, a focus point, perhaps,
a website, or some suitable media mode (Linus Torvalds would be a good
person to consult on this and related matters) where the project could be
initiated. Undertaken and completed independently of the current Constitution
and political mechanisms, the system and proposed Constitution would
have to explain itself to all citizens, demonstrate itself as superior
and obviously attractive and beneficial, and then be accepted by the
citizenry as the logical next step in our evolving social environment. Mr.
Jefferson would be pleased indeed.
This paper is copyrighted
by Neil Freer, but it may be freely downloaded, by the author's permission
granted here, translated, printed, copied, quoted, included in any relevant
work, distributed in any appropriate media providing only that it not
be altered in any way in text or intent and the author is properly credited.
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