Educated by a combination of relentless curiosity, unlimited imagination and Google’s search engine, we’ve learned how to share our ideas, find new solutions and become keenly aware of what occurs in the world around us.

We are the outspoken citizens of the Internet. We are Internet Nation.

OUR ULTIMATE FORM OF FREEDOM

On March 12, 1989, the World Wide Web (aka “The Internet”) was invented in a proposal written by a man named Tim Berners-Lee.

His revolutionary idea could have been patented and sold for a fortune or to gain political power, but instead released it to the public for free to create a more connected world.

I think we can all agree that his actions were a huge success.

Now, over 25 years later, the Internet is filled with data submitted by people all around the world and the best part is that anybody can access it and use it for self-expression, education, entertainment, networking, commerce or whatever we (as its citizen users) choose to use it for because it’s our ultimate form of freedom.

MORE THAN JUST FREE SPEECH

Thanks to the Internet, we can all exercise our freedom of speech to the entire world and be heard within seconds. In fact, it’s been successfully used many times by people in different nations to bring awareness and change to flawed political policies. Outside of national governments’ jurisdiction and authority, the Internet is the perfect place to augment your freedom of speech and raise global awareness of controversial issues to win against government control and oppression.

Every day many of us log onto this global network of people to complain about our national governments’ mistakes and to share ideas of change because it allows for anybody’s voice to be heard, but what if we used this system for more than augmenting our freedom of speech? What if we created a system where exactly what we say became exactly what the government does?

Think about it, this global network of people we’re connected to is a self-regulating system that allows all of its users to express their freedoms and ideas without any government restriction. Not only that, but the Internet is a user-driven, globally available source of media and information that is truly “for the people, by the people.”

It’s a beautiful system that we are all a part of that many of us take for granted.

So, what if our nations’ governments were more like the Internet?

POWER, EGO & CORRUPTION

A government is a form of “higher power” that is designed to protect its citizens from chaos and encourage economic growth, but how can we entrust that kind of power in the hands of other people? The fundamental problem with a government that is run by people is that it is prone to human error and most dangerous of all—the human ego. When people are given the power to decide who lives and who dies within the criminal justice system, who succeeds and who fails within the economy and which beliefs are correct and incorrect, corruption in some form is inevitable within that system, no matter how noble the people in charge claim to be.

The key to running our government is merely a question of:

“who can be corrupt in the most inconspicuous manner?”

TECHNOLOGY, POLITICS & HACKTIVISM

I believe that the government is aware of the fact that their jobs can be replaced by today’s technology and they’ll do whatever is in their power to convince their citizens that they are needed.

That’s why I propose that we, the Internet Nation, create “an open source user-driven digital system of government with full open access for its citizen users” to prove to the world that a system like this could really work.

I strongly believe that this is the ONE true system of checks and balances that is free of corruption and truly expresses the needs of the nation without distortion from the government.

It’s time we utilize ourselves and technology to reform our outdated political system and make this world into a better place for all of us within Internet Nation.

It’s time we launch Government 2.0

“AN OPEN SOURCE USER-DRIVEN DIGITAL SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT WITH FULL OPEN ACCESS FOR ITS CITIZEN USERS”

…or you can call it “Government 2.0" if you want to save your breath☺

This may sound like a bunch of technical mumbo jumbo that I casually threw together to appear intelligent, so I’ve decided to break down the key terms for you in the following manner:

“OPEN SOURCE”

When you Google the definition of “open source,” this is the first result:

denoting software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.

This means that if you’re using a program that is “open source,” then you’re free to look at all the files and code that make up the entire program so that you may see how it works, modify it and share your modifications to the open source community to make the program even better for everybody else. This development model is the reason why the Internet has become as functional, versatile and uniform as it is today — because people around the world within the open source community wanted to work together to make better programs and offer the world a better Internet, free of charge.

For more information about open source development, visit opensource.org.

With an “open source” digital system of government, corruption is impossible because everything that created the system itself (aka “the source code”) will be accessible by the public to see. So, if you’re worried that the program was manipulated in some way that doesn’t benefit its user citizens, you can investigate it yourself by finding what could be causing the issue and present it to the open source community to create a solution.

For example, if you (as a citizen user) were concerned about where your tax dollars were going, you could simply look through the source code to see exactly where all your tax dollars are being used. If you don’t agree with something you find, you can simply share your finding with the open source community and then everybody can work together to make improvements to the system.

The Main Point: A Government Should Be 100% Public

Corruption usually occurs behind closed doors, but when you put the government in full view of the public, how can they get away with anything that is profit-driven or won’t benefit the nation? By making the system “open source” we remove the locked doors of government privacy that lead to corruption and we leave it open for innovation by its citizen users.

“USER-DRIVEN”

In a way, this is just a fancy term that means “for the people, by the people.” A car without an engine is just a chair and the Internet without its users is just a bunch of wires and computers.

User-driven refers to a system that is driven by its users, duh!

This is an attribute that the democratic system of government claims to possess, which grants authority to those in office. Democracy claims to make all their policies based on majority population consensus, but when you really think about it, do you really know how much of an impact your electoral votes have? And do you even know what the electoral college really does or is? (because I don’t!) And think about how much money is wasted by all those “political candidates” who try to get our votes for office… I mean, what is the point of all that media propaganda nonsense?! We just want a system that works!

…Is there really a need for a Presidential Hunger Games every 4 years?

By creating this digital government system in a way that won’t function unless everybody participates, we are essentially creating an unbiased, unified “voice” of a nation of citizens to make its executive political decisions for them. Imagine if every month, the government emailed you a survey that you (as a citizen user) must fill out that asks what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong. Then, imagine that the government would post the results of everybody’s surveys online and made policy changes according to those public results. We have the technology to easily make that happen and isn’t that what Democracy is supposed to do, anyways?

The Main Point: We Need A System Where Our Votes Count

Why should we trust this “electoral college” when we can just create a public online polling system that shows people’s votes, thoughts and opinions in real-time? We already have a massive social security database that we can be utilizing so that we can verify that each poll vote came from a real citizen and not a fake user or “bot.”

The beauty of this user-driven program is that every citizen user truly does play a part within the system — because without their input, the government program would produce no output and simply would not function.

We have come a long way on the Internet and so many successful programs have been created that are user-driven. Look at social media and how widespread it has become. We can go on Facebook and “like” our favorite artists and companies, but why not be able to choose what government policies that we “like” ?

What if our “likes” could actually do something to better the world?

“DIGITAL SYSTEM”

I’m a fan of this common saying: “Pobody’s nerfect!”

In case you didn’t get the joke, it’s a play on words of the phrase “Nobody’s perfect,” which further proves the fact that… well… nobody’s perfect.

So, how do we compensate for human error? Simple. We leave it to our technology. Tell me, would you hire an accountant who didn’t believe in calculators? And would you work in a dangerous factory or would you rather let machines take care of that? And when’s the last time you made your own light bulbs? Exactly.

People may be reluctant to the concept of a “digital system” running our government because it’s “prone to hackers” and “lacks the human touch,” but our government already has a lot of digital systems in place to handle the large amount of information that they have to process—these digital systems create the infrastructures for our military, communications departments, banks, population data centers, and many other major parts of the government system. So, all we are really doing is introducing another digital system to our current government infrastructure (that is already made up of several digital systems) to replace the executive, judicial, and legislative branches with a system that is run by its citizen users rather than a bunch of old people.

Also, there is no need to worry about hackers because the open source community is comprised of some of the world’s best hackers and they’ll work together to ensure that the system remains secure. Plus, why would hackers want to disrupt a system that they are truly a part of? Hackers will hack into a corrupt government system for political or financial motives, but where is the motive when its a system that they really contribute to and improves the world? As for taking away the “human touch” from our government offices, I see that as a primary benefit because removing them means subtracting human error, human greed, human manipulation, human impulsiveness and most importantly, human ego from our government formula.

The Main Point: Trust Technology, Not Politicians

Like I said before, we simply cannot entrust the “higher power” of governmental roles in the hands of other people. It belongs in the hands of an objective system that has no ego, human error or ulterior motives.

Technology is continuously evolving the way we do things and the way we live our lives, so isn’t it time that we start applying that same philosophy to the way we govern our society?

*On a side note, please don’t think that a digital government system will lead to an uprising of the machines like the Terminator movies. As I mentioned earlier, this system will be open source, so I’m pretty sure that our brightest people will be willing to work together to ensure that the system doesn’t end up wiping out humanity.

“FULL OPEN ACCESS”

This refers to unrestricted online access to information/research/legal articles and documents. This is a critical attribute to include within our digital government system because it’s vital to give our citizen users full access to any knowledge or information that we’ve come across that could help them benefit themselves or others. Knowledge enables people to empower themselves and each other, so it’s crucial that our government shares every bit of it.

In order to explain the importance of “full open access” more in-depth, I will tell you the story of one of my biggest inspirations, reddit’s co-creator, Aaron Swartz.

Aaron Swartz was dedicated to enriching the Internet with a vast library of academic knowledge and cultural history that was previously kept private by large corporations like JSTOR. (who wouldn’t allow access to their documents unless users paid an expensive fee.) He was a brilliant programmer from Chicago (just like me!) who believed that access to valuable information belongs to everybody in order to empower them to create a better world, NOT in the hands of greedy corporations.

In July 2008, he wrote what he calls the “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” and it goes like this:

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier. There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost. That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable. “I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal — there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back. Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends. But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies. There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture. We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access. With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us? Aaron Swartz July 2008, Eremo, Italy

After writing this manifesto, Aaron became a well-known “Hacktivist” who constantly fought the government for the right to free knowledge by creating programs and organizing people for action. On January 6, 2011, he was arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges after his laptop computer was found connected to a MIT server to systematically download a large database of academic journal articles from JSTOR.

When he appeared in court, Federal prosecutors charged him with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release. (All that for downloading academic journal articles that should’ve already been free to the world?!)

Aaron refused a plea bargain under which he would serve six months in federal prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer by Aaron, he was found dead in his Brooklyn, New York apartment, where he had hanged himself.

The “old world” didn’t agree with Aaron’s revolutionary perspective of free information and prosperity and they killed the man who later became known as “The Internet’s Own Boy.”

The Main Point: Not Sharing Useful Information Is Evil

To understand the significance of what Aaron did for the world by sharing all that hidden academic information before his death, I will tell you about another brilliant young man named Jack Andraka.

Jack, now a 17 year old high school student, is known worldwide as the “Teen Prodigy of Pancreatic Cancer.” He developed a new method for detecting the lethal cancer by researching medical documents that were previously locked away by JSTOR until Aaron made them public. Because of Aaron, prodigies like Jack Andraka all over the world can now access this academic information and educate themselves to become the world’s next biggest innovators and game changers. Aaron paved the way to unlimited enlightenment and empowerment for the entire world.

Yet, the fight between open access information advocates and government policy still continues.

Information is power, and it is meant to be shared with the people for the good of mankind, NOT locked away by any form of institution.

“CITIZEN USERS”

Always save the best for last.

My fellow Internet Nation citizen users, we have finally come to the last key term of the digital government system idea that I have proposed to all of you. You may have noticed that I have been using this term throughout this article as well. That’s because the “citizen users” are simply you.

A “citizen” is a legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized. A “user” is a person who uses or operates something, especially a computer or other machine.

When you combine these two definitions, it becomes:

A “citizen user” is a legally recognized subject or national of a state or commonwealth, either native or naturalized who uses or operates something, especially a computer or other machine.

If Facebook had no users, it would simply be a blue bar and a blank page. Without its citizen users, this user-driven system would be empty and meaningless.

The Main Point: A Government Should Be Run By Its Citizens

You see, you are not only a citizen of this digital nation.

You are also a user, which is a necessary part of the functioning system.

Every citizen user plays an equally important role within this system of government that is created by the input of each individual citizen user.

Thus, making this “open source user-driven digital system of government with full open access to its citizen users” a system that is truly “for the people, by the people.”

Let’s just call it Government 2.0☺

DEMOCRACY MEETS TECHNOLOGY

Look. I’m not saying our government is a complete failure of a system.

In fact, it’s a very solid system that has stood the test of time.

I find it astonishing that the US Constitution was written in 1787 and it’s still in use now. I just have trouble trusting government officials and I believe that citizens and technology can do a better job of governing themselves.

There is a long list of mistakes by government officials throughout history. For example, look at what happened to Aaron Swartz. (mentioned earlier) Sometimes they make examples out of citizens and it’s completely unjust because we lose extraordinary people in the process. I’m sick of being “bullied” by our own government and hearing about all the terrible mistakes made by people in office and our criminal justice system.

The Main Point: We Just Need To “Update” Our Government

It’s 2014 now—we have the internet, smartphones, electric cars, robots, virtual reality, and augmented reality. We’re even finding more affordable ways to send people to space! Our products and way of life have become so cutting-edge because technology is constantly updating. Isn’t it about time we update our government?

Here’s the thing. I actually love the US Constitution. It’s beautifully written and it hits the nail on the head when it comes to human rights, freedoms and how a government should operate for the good of the nation. It’s made America a great place to find freedom and it does a better job at enforcing those freedoms than a lot of other countries. However, the founding fathers of the United States wrote it at a time when ideas like the Internet were still far away.

I strongly believe that if the Internet was available in 1787, the founding fathers of the United States of America would have utilized it to create a more effective government.

All I’m proposing is that we use technology to improve our democratic system and to better enforce the ideals of the Constitution.

That’s all. ☺

GOVERNMENT 2.0: PROS & CONS

Here are some quick bullet points of the pros and cons of building an open source user-driven digital system of government with full open access to its citizen users:

Pros:

No privacy or corruption because it’s open source and public

or because it’s and Increased freedom because citizens are in charge of themselves in this user-driven digital system ( for the people, by the people)

because in this for the people, by the people) No government distortion of information (WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get)

(WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get) Removal of human error and human ego because it’s a digital system

of and because it’s a Increased accessibility to government information because it allows full open access

to because it allows Convenience of direct access to government program for all citizen users via web

of to government program for via Faster innovation of government policies (because everybody in the nation can work together to create the best new laws and policies)

(because everybody in the nation can work together to create the best new laws and policies) All the money that’s being used to pay government officials can be used to benefit the nation instead

that’s being used to can be used to Wouldn’t be too difficult to build ☺

Cons:

Possible lack of security and vulnerability to digital crimes

and What if the citizens don’t know what they want?

the citizens No more Presidential Hunger Games every 4 years ☹

As you can see, the pros outweigh the cons on my list. If you can think of any additional bullet points that I may have missed, feel free to send me an email: sam@elev8.solutions

THE POWER OF AN IDEA

The Internet used to be “just an idea.”

Now, it’s become our most massive public data archive ever made with a self-regulating global network of users that are constantly sharing new ideas, expressing their freedoms, educating the next generation of brilliance, spreading awareness and creating new innovations to better our society and way of life.

So doesn’t it just make sense to utilize this innovative system and its global network of users to improve our archaic and flawed government systems filled with corruption and error?

The Main Point: An Idea Is Just One Step Away From Reality

Government 2.0 is CURRENTLY just an idea.

The only difference between the Internet and Government 2.0 is that we took the ACTION to make the Internet happen.

Which leads us to the very last part of this article.

THE TIME FOR ACTION

Internet Nation, let’s make it happen!☺

The Main Point: If You Agree, Please Help Make It Happen

I started working on this idea by mapping out the infrastructure and designing the user interface after writing this article and now I’m looking for help. If you’re interested in joining me to create this Open Source Government Program, please send me an email: sam@elev8.solutions