Interview with Allison Fine on Rebooting America: Ideas for Reimagining our Democracy

Thanks, David, it's a pleasure to have an opportunity to "talk" about our exciting anthology project at Personal Democracy Forum!

Like all good ideas, the Rebooting America anthology was hatched over a cup of coffee. Micah, Andrew, Josh and I were talking about how great it would be if we could replicate the passion and energy that is driving the use of social media in making political campaigns more democratic, flatter, participatory for governance. What needs to change about government to take advantage of all the new technologies and unleash the power of participation that we see shaping comemerce (E-Bay), politics (Obama campaign) and knowledge (Wikipedia)? So, we decided to ask the smartest folks we know to answer the question of how they would reshape American deocracy in the Internet Age and asked folks online to share their ideas. And over forty amazing essays were born!

I was really hoping that someone would tackle the idea of having non-geographic representation. Wouldn't it be cool to have a new legislative body, or maybe an addition to the House, of at-large representatives elected by issue area! So, we'd have our environmental reps, and our health care reps, and anti-terrorism reps. Or whatever the categories that we could all choose together online.

We hope more will come in. My suggestions for essayists is to focus on one specific solution or idea. For instance, Ellen Miller's essay focuses on the need to get rid of the Freedom of Information Act, and Newt Gingrich writes about the need for transparency in government.

Sure, Dave. Millennials are fascinating because they are such a large generation, over 70 million of them and larger than living Boomers, and because they are immersed in causes but aliented from government. They are very idealistic and passionate about changing the world one house, one donation, one dollar at a time, but really have no understanding or interest in public policy. We are seeing an increase in their interest in politics through the increased number of young voters in the presidential primaries, but whether and how they stay involved beyond this one campaign is unclear. The paper that I wrote for the Case Foundation about Millennials called Social Citizens is now available to be downloaded at the Case Foundation website.

The deadline is May 1st for essays, so hope folks are writing furiously right now!

Absolutely! I read the essays for content and then we have external copy editors who put commas and periods where they're supposed to be and then the essays go back to the authors for their approval. It's a very collaborative process to try to help authors best convey their ideas. We've only had a few people jump out of their office windows when they've seen our edits, and we've been able to slot in other authors in their stead. :)

Sure! Esther Dyson is writing the foreword. Matt Stoller, Clay Shirky, Jeff Jarvis, Susan Crawford, Craig Newmark, Beth Noveck, Julie Barko Germany, Harry Boyte, danah boyd, Yochai Benkler, Marie Wilson, David Weinberger, Kaliya Hamlin, John Bonifaz, Avery Knapp and Tennyson McCalla, Brad Templeton, Mike Turk, Tara Hunt, Morra Aarons, Ellen Miller, Scott Heiferman, Glenn Reynolds, and Marty Kearns. Oh, and Lance Bennett, Doug Rushkoff, Howard Rheingold. And did I mention Newt Gingrich, too! I am totally biased, and totally jazzed about the array of interesting people from all political stripes and points of view who shared their provocative ideas.

And I hope we'll be able to add one of your readers to the list, too, Dave!

Interesting question, Dave, thanks! What has been most interesting to me is that without any guidance from us, essays with polar opposite points of view have been submitted. So, we have essays that argue for the need to break through online echo chambers (boyd) and the importance of echo chambers to democracy to strengthen democracy (Weinberger.) We have essays on the need for more open government (Miller, Jarvis) and another on the need to create more open people (Smith)The need for citizen action outside of institutions (Heiferman, Crawford) and the need for citizen action inside of government institution (Kearns.) And, of course, we have the radical libertarians saying the hell with government altogether!

So, I think the essays are interesting individuals, but really provocative in juxtaposition to one another.

All of the essays will be available in PDF format on, well, in PDF (Personal Democracy Forum!) They will be free and easily downloadable for anyone who wants to read them online. We are using a Creative Commons license, also, to aid in the distribution and sharing of the essays by us and the authors with attribution.

Nonetheless, there is still something very powerful about holding a hardcopy book with the essays intentionally organized in a particular way to create a great experience for the reader. People always ask me about the future of newspapers. And I, for one, don't think they're going to go out of business. They're going to be different, maybe smaller and they will all need to think of readers as community members who have opinions and will participate in discussions online. Our desire to hold a book in our hands, carry it around, mark it up and put it on our shelves isn't going to go away. At least until Amazon's Kindle is easier to use and read on!

Ben Binswanger and Kari Dunn asked me last fall to write a paper for the Case Foundation on all the wonderous ways that Millennials, 15-29 year olds, are using social media for social change. What great fun for a geek like me! I really wanted to go beyond what Millennials to get to the why and what it means societally.

The final paper, Social Citizens (beta), ended up asking as many questions as it answered - a reflection, I think, of the nascent stage of Millennial activism. I really don't know what it means that Millennials aren't engaged in public policy, and how we engage them more in government, and what measure we should be using to capture the network effect of online activism.

So, rather than call it a white paper or concept paper, we decided to call it a discussion paper and use it as an opportunity through the social citizens blog to talk about and learn more about the idea of social citizens -- young people who view their role in a larger community solely through an activism lens without regard to government or public policy. I don't know the answers, the folks at Case don't either, so we want to learn more by engaging a community of activists, experts, young people and others to wretle with these issues.

Super, thanks, Dave, I've really enjoyed the discussion. I'll let you know when the Rebooting America anthology is available. I look forward to continuing our conversation after the anthology is released!