The revolution will be retweet!

The road to the European parliament is over, although this election wasn’t noticed by many, judging by number of people that got off their asses to gone vote. Is the voting process obsolete; is voting to hard for our fast-tracking society; are we too fat and lazy to do it or is the EU just not in our hearts (started as an elitist communion) ?
Maybe it’s a mix of all these ingredients… well.. much probably. Nevertheless, we start seeing real changes on democracy. First with the election of Obama, that really broke the normality of the electoral “system” and gave hope to many and now, maybe as important (although, we must remember that we are talking about a north european country) a “pirate-based” (not those on Somalia) just got elected, getting two spots on the European parliament.

Pirate Party

The Pirate Party is the hot stuff to all Sweden youth. Some say that they got votes for defending free file-sharing that might not be all that good: people that produce contents should have their fair share (although a huge crib and 5 Bugatti’s may not be consider fair) . But, actually, I think they won over their fight for a more free and private web with less government surveillance. As paradoxical as it may seem, we use the web to share all our privacy with blogs, social networks, twitter, facebook, flickr and other more “parental control”  sites but still, the internet is manly used to protect and to communicate our most private issues. Trying to block the government right to see our mail (at least in Sweden) is probably the main reason they got their vote and rightly did.

But for me, the most important aspect of these two European sits is that they came from the web, from the internet comunity, from blogs, networks, social sites, from the buzz. Almost exclusive from these sources. This is a big change on the game! And the first of many that I think is fair to foreseen in the near future.

The web is taking over the democracy, actually accentuating on the “demo” part of the word. First, making people more active, more pro-active and aware. After it, more organized and clustered in ideas and movements. Thirdly, by having massive voting with near zero abstinence once the voting is “cheap”, available, being it on mobile or web. On this not-so-distant level, people will be more informed; citizens decisions will be more representative (we’ll see if more responsible or plain right ), but what is decided will give people a more direct sense of participation and responsibility to change the future.

This all seems to be great and it is, but when it will come all together and in all levels: national, local, regional, and “real-time” is when democracy will be more pure. This would be a revolution, having people being able to organize themselves and giving them the power to decide and execute directly. It will be positive in many ways: the catchphrase “they
‘re not doing anything right” would not be that valid anymore, people could really feel that they are making a change and that they have the power to actually make it, even if on a very local level. Most importantly, the interest of what happens, what is decided and done would not of any small group of interest but from the people; not meaning that this would be better every time, but would be definitely less perverse.

I’m talking about this like it’s 2099 but it’s already happening in several parts of the society. Take a look at this film that someone shared with me over the web, maybe you’ll be inspired and change something.

Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.

I don’t know the future, but the revolution will be retweet!