Ken Auletta Quotes

A short exposure to the convention convinced me that the Internet may save the Democracy in that it is a way for the people, for the citizens, to have some direct influence on the government.

The Internet has brought democracy to so many other things. It's about time the Internet brought democracy to democracy.

The Internet is changing the way we think of our relationship with government; it has the potential to bring to life what Abraham Lincoln said about the presidency being an instrument of the people.

What we are witnessing is the birth of something I call 'Polisdigitocracy.' This is a form of government that counts participation and transparency as its cornerstones and uses technology as its guide. The digital revolution is allowing democracy to recall its foundations and evolution is modernizing and reinforcing our fundamental values.

The relationship between citizens and government is increasingly mediated through the Internet.

Democracy, in brief, requires government by parties because the citizens are too numerous, too ill-informed and too preoccupied to come together spontaneously to choose the policies and leaders they wish to prevail. Political machinery has to be worked. The parties work it.

Once a citizen feels he is not powerless, he can aspire for more change. ... First, the Web democratized commerce, and then it democratized media, and now it is democratizing democracy.

Whereas the constitution of … Holland is in its principles a popular representation, it is necessary that the right of the people be duly ascertained; that the members of the States be rendered responsible to them for their conduct and be precluded from taking any decisive step without their consent …

… in order to emerge from a state of nullity, the [Dutch] bourgeois are asking to take part in government; the most extreme among them wish to participate in all deliberations on public matters …. The more moderate ask only to elect their regents and to have representatives to watch over the maintenance of their rights …

What I was excited about was the opportunity for punters to be part of politics. The whole idea was to allow the voices of people outside this weirdo palace of Westminster to be heard. I thought the whole social media thing might be really positive.

I do not want to abandon representative democracy. I want to see it balanced by popular sovereignty, especially the variety known as deliberative democracy.

I'm all for experimenting with sortition - randomly selected representative bodies of citizens. But I don't favor direct democracy. We're busy. We have lives. There is reddit. Who has time to work out the right answer to the thousand policy choices a gov't must make all the time?

When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.

The Paris Commune was first and foremost a democracy. The government was a body elected by universal suffrage.

India is at the vanguard of figuring out how to exploit technology and innovation on behalf of democratic accountability.

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

Through a blog, an ordinary citizen such as myself can use the Internet, this thing invented by Albert Gore, to talk from my house to the U.S. capital and to make use of my right to point out to government officials and to the media when they are wrong.

Everything in our foreign and domestic policy is a question of issue for the American people to vote on.

Governments must ensure that the power of blogs is cultivated and implemented in collaborative ways, with a view to preserve peace and human dignity.

Eventually I foresee voting on the Internet, which will lead to much more direct democracy.

Having elected a government, we will be best advised to let it govern and to let it speak for us as it will in the councils of the nations.

Internet referendums will not, in the beginning, have any legally binding effect, but they will be politically binding.

Logically, in a society ostensibly grounded on representative government, it would seem reasonable that a majority of the people in a State would elect a majority of that State’s legislators.

The government is just us.

Polling can undermine the ability of officials to lay out, debate, analyze, and implement their plans. By turning to instant [electronic] polls we would eliminate the captain and the officers and leave every shipboard decision to the passengers.