Posting Financial Bailout Bill Online Big Step for Democracy

I just saw House Speaker Nancy Pelosi discuss some of the details of the Wall Street bailout bill - the one that most people think Senate and House Democrats and Senate Republicans will approve, but some House Republicans may not - and announce that the bill is available for everyone's scrutiny, the American people and well as elected Representatives and Senators, on the Web.

I want to take a moment to record the importance of posting this legislation on the Web. Regardless of what we may think of the bill - I think it's necessary to help the American people, to keep unemployment from burgeoning, etc - we are certainly taking a very significant step in democracy when such important, controversial, urgent legislation is so swiftly placed online for lawmakers and everyone else to see. (Bills are of course posted online all the time - but not with this speed, as they are almost literally being voted upon.)

Democracy has been intimately tied to modes of communication and dissemination of information ever since ancient Athens, and the view of its leaders that the best size for a direct democracy was no larger than the number of people who could gather in a stadium and hear a speaker, and each other speak. Our representative democracy in America was clearly created with newspapers as a bedrock - the reason that Jefferson thought a First Amendment and freedom of the press was so crucial.

Ever since the 1980s and the dawn of online communication, I and other media theorists have been urging that the Internet play a more crucial role in our democratic process. (See my The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution and Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium.) Someday, we may well decide to have more of our decisions - such as this very bailout legislation - voted up or down by the people, via computer, not our representatives.

But in the meantime, the immediate putting of important legislation online for everyone to see is a big step in the right direction. The financial crisis is not good for America. But the placement of legislation that seeks to provide a remedy online for all to see certainly is.

PS - The bill is at financialservices.house.gov - but you may have trouble getting on the website to see it, since the site is being flooded with viewers. Whether in-person or online, congestion is always a problem.

Obama's Acceptance of Nomination in Stadium Resonates with Democracy

Good for Barack Obama for deciding to accept the Democratic Party nomination for President this August in a huge outdoor football stadium in Denver.

Stadiums are usually thought of nowadays as platforms for sports and celebrity concerts. But they have a history that hearkens back to the very roots of democracy.

In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy as far as we know, the ideal size for a democratic state was thought to be the number of citizens who could sit in a public arena or stadium and debate the issues.

Ancient Athens put Socrates to death - they had no First Amendment back then - but not every aspect of our democratic system is better than theirs. In place of the direct democracy of Athens, we elect representatives who debate and vote on our behalves. Rather than seeing our speakers in person, we see them on television, where members of the press - another kind of representative - ask them questions for us.

YouTube has taken some of the press out of this process, and put videos in our own hands (or, at least, laptops and cell phones), but we still do not get to see candidates, or each other, in person, as we all pursue the democratic process.

Obama's decision to move his acceptance speech from inside the convention to Invesco Field at Mile High, in Denver, is a powerful and important symbolic move. Like JFK, who also accepted his party's nomination in 1960 in the big outdoor Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, Obama's nomination in Denver will be a crucial step in moving our democracy a good mile higher in responsiveness to the people than it is today.