Internet, democracy and freedom: The pursuit for an open society

Victor Becerra
Jul 20, 2017 · 4 min read

We believe that the world changed with the Internet. However, there are still structures of central and vertical power which cause the current deep social crisis. We believe that using the principles of open data, further than technology, we can create a culture that shares more, be more transparent and collaborative allowing all people to empower. In this essay we will go through the culture of openness and its importance for democracy, the way that Internet allows true participation of citizen and the actions we are taking in Venezuela to transform the society.

In Venezuela we witness many social and political problems every day. Traditional mechanisms of expression, such as political parties and traditional media, just point the problems and have inefficient proposes to solve the issues. In this situation we have two options: complain for the bad luck or propose emergent ways of expression. The Net Generation of Venezuela chose the second.

Access and share of information was massively allowed to people with the penetration of Internet. Since people use communication societies have shared ideas, but it has been through the Internet that the information era arrived. It changed centralized and vertical structures to decentralized and horizontal ones. The net not only connects electronic nodes, it opens the possibilities for the people to connect with other people and create offline nets. This new social structure has been named “Net Society”, and the first generation of this society is known as “Net Generation”.

This generation who growed with the Internet are considered users of the net, but most of them do not realize the true potential of the tool. The average user of Internet stays with basic services of it, sending messages, making e-commerce, finding dates and occasionally publishing some message of protest in facebook or twitter. At the same time, the capacity of computers rises exponentially, making the net more powerful.

Now then, if the cellphone we keep in our pockets is more powerful than the Pentagon’s computer 15 years ago, surely it can be useful for something more than finding a couple. In the net, people with interests and common problems can associate in macro projects of global collaboration which are able to solve massive needs. The success of this projects goes through transparency of data and possibility that users have to share information.

This new interaction in which groups of people join to collaborate with the solution of a problem, sharing the knowledge with transparency allowed a true empowerment of many. These principles in the net are creating new values in the society. They are rescuing lost values and finally giving shape to a new culture: a culture of openness. Is is a culture in which interconnected citizens in the world actively collaborate in the construction of effective solutions to their day to day problems, using the whole knowledge available in the net.

The greek model of democracy allowed free access of all citizen to the Senate assemblies, where law and public policies were debated. This means that the government of a great nation was not left under the hands of a few, but all citizen had the right and the duty to participate, sharing ideas, information and knowledge to run their own destiny. All opinion should be considered in the governance of a nation. And the Internet is the solution for it. It applies similar structures for the governance, but this structures must be defined in a clear, free and accessible way for all citizen of the world.

We are currently developing a platform for participation and discussion of draft laws in the venezuelan parliament. This platform, based in the Internet, will offer citizen the possibility of online participation in the policy making process. Furthermore, it will enable an option for common citizen to vote in favor or against policies proposed in the parliament. This tool, if appropriate disseminated and used, will make an important pressure to politicians to take in count the opinions of different people and do their will. This will be the return of greek democracy.

We are also implementing this democracy system in the Universidad Central de Venezuela, one of the main universities of the country. Here we look for the empowerment of all students to debate, vote and pressure on the university policies based on the Internet platform. This will enable students to be aware of all discussions taking place in the council’s, share information, propose alternative solutions for the problems and impact the decision making process. This whole process will create a culture of participation and empowerment on the students.

We have four years working hard in creating a more open society in Venezuela. We reached this conclusion after having seen and participated in dozens of protests in the street manifesting against a government that we consider corrupt and greatly limiting freedom of expression of all Venezuelans. It was thanks to the internet we could meet others who thought like us, who were able to access large amounts of information to learn about the philosophical principles of a new society. We could organize events to disseminate these ideas and ultimately is the mechanism we use to work in creating a better country. We believe that implementing this culture of participation and openness deep in the society, we can reach a true democracy for our nation and our world.

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Victor Becerra

Written by

Psicologo Social, firme creyente del codigo abierto como modelo para crear una sociedad mas transparente y empoderada. Organizador de TEDxUCV

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