I have the feeling that we can all agree that we're moving towards a new model of the state and society. But, we're absolutely clueless as to what this is or what it should be. It seems like we need to have a conversation about democracy
我想我们都会同意 我们的国家和社会面貌 正在发生改变 但是 它应当是怎样 将会变成怎样 我们却毫无头绪 看来我们需要 对我们这个时代的民主制度
in our day and age. Let's think about it this way: We are 21st-century citizens, doing our very, very best to interact with 19th century-designed institutions that are based on an information technology of the 15th century. Let's have a look at some of the characteristics of this system. First of all, it's designed for an information technology that's over 500 years old. And the best possible system that could be designed for it is one where the few make daily decisions in the name of the many. And the many get to vote once every couple of years. In the second place, the costs of participating in this system are incredibly high. You either have to have a fair bit of money and influence, or you have to devote your entire life to politics. You have to become a party member and slowly start working up the ranks until maybe, one day, you'll get to sit at a table where a decision is being made. And last but not least, the language of the system — it's incredibly cryptic. It's done for lawyers, by lawyers,
进行一场讨论 不妨这样考虑 我们是 21 世纪的公民 尽最大的努力 与基于 15 世纪的信息技术设计 设计于 19 世纪的机构体系打交道 让我们看一看 这个体系的特点 首先 它所基于的信息技术 已经过时 500 年了 基于此 能设计出的最好的系统 也只能是少数人 以多数人的名义 进行日常决策 而多数人 只能每隔几年投一次票 其次 参与这个体系的成本 非常高 要么 你非常有钱 非常有影响力 要么 你终生投身政治 你必须加入政党 然后慢慢的往上爬 也许某天 你终于有资格 坐在桌前 参与决策 还有啊 这套体系的术语 异常的晦涩难懂 它是律师写给律师看的
and no one else can understand. So, it's a system where we can choose our authorities, but we are completely left out on how those authorities reach their decisions. So, in a day where a new information technology allows us to participate globally in any conversation, our barriers of information are completely lowered and we can, more than ever before, express our desires and our concerns. Our political system remains the same for the past 200 years and expects us to be contented with being simply passive recipients
普通人很难读懂 在这样的体系下 我们倒是能选择代表 我们却无法得知 他们会如何决策 现在我们的信息技术高度发展 我们可以与世界上任何角落对话 信息的壁垒前所未有的低 我们比任何时候 都能更好的表达需求与担忧 而我们的政治系统一成不变 已经有200年了 还指望我们能安安静静的
of a monologue. So, it's really not surprising that this kind of system is only able to produce two kinds of results: silence or noise. Silence, in terms of citizens not engaging, simply not wanting to participate. There's this commonplace [idea] that I truly, truly dislike, and it's this idea that we citizens are naturally apathetic. That we shun commitment. But, can you really blame us for not jumping at the opportunity of going to the middle of the city in the middle of a working day to attend, physically, a public hearing that has no impact whatsoever? Conflict is bound to happen between a system that no longer represents, nor has any dialogue capacity, and citizens that are increasingly used to representing themselves. And, then we find noise: Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico Italy, France, Spain, the United States, they're all democracies. Their citizens have access to the ballot boxes. But they still feel the need,
看着政客们表演 毫不奇怪 这样的系统 只能产生两种结果 沉默 或是喧嚣 沉默 就是公民懒于参与 对政治没有兴趣 我非常不喜欢这种陈词滥调 说我们天生漠然 说我们拒绝承担公民责任 怎么能这么说呢? 就因为我们没有 在上班时间 走到城市中 亲身参加政治活动吗 就因为我们没有参与毫无影响力的听证会 当这个体系无法代表大众 或是没有对话空间的时候 冲突就会发生 大众就会站出来 自己代表自己 这就产生了喧嚣 智利 阿根廷 巴西 墨西哥 意大利 法国 西班牙 美国 都是民主国家 它们的公民有选票 但这些民众仍然觉得
they need to take to the streets in order to be heard. To me, it seems like the 18th-century slogan that was the basis for the formation of our modern democracies, "No taxation without representation," can now be updated to "No representation without a conversation." We want our seat at the table.
他们需要走上街头 表达诉求 在我看来 这就像是 那个十八世纪的口号 促成了现代民主的那个口号 “若无代表 不要缴税” 现在可以套用成:“若不对话 不要代表” 我们想要决策权
And rightly so. But in order to be part of this conversation, we need to know what we want to do next, because political action is being able to move from agitation to construction. My generation has been incredibly good at using new networks and technologies to organize protests, protests that were able to successfully impose agendas, roll back extremely pernicious legislation, and even overthrow authoritarian governments. And we should be immensely proud of this. But, we also must admit that we haven't been good at using those same networks and technologies to successfully articulate an alternative to what we're seeing and find the consensus and build the alliances that are needed
我们有权参与 但若想参与决策对话 就需要知道下一步做什么 因为 政治决策就是 从震荡 走向建设 我们这一代人 非常善于使用网络技术 来组织抗议 通过抗议 我们影响政策 终止恶法 甚至推翻独裁政府 我们应当为此 深感骄傲 但我们也承认 我们没能好好利用 同样的网络技术 来根据所见 提出改进方案 并找到共识 凝聚力量
to make it happen. And so the risk that we face is that we can create these huge power vacuums that will very quickly get filled up by de facto powers, like the military or highly motivated and already organized groups
促成实践 所以 风险在于 我们能创造巨大的权力真空 但却迅速的被权力占据 比如军政府 比如有目的有组织的
that generally lie on the extremes. But our democracy is neither just a matter of voting once every couple of years. But it's not either the ability to bring millions onto the streets. So the question I'd like to raise here, and I do believe it's the most important question we need to answer, is this one: If Internet is the new printing press, then what is democracy for the Internet era? What institutions do we want to build
极端群体 但我们的民主 既不是每隔几年 来投一次票 也不是把民众拉上街头 在此 我想提出一个问题 我相信 这是我们需要回答的 最为重要的问题 那就是 如果互联网是新时代的出版社 那么互联网时代的民主应该是什么样的 我们能为 21 世纪的社会
for the 21st-century society? I don't have the answer, just in case. I don't think anyone does. But I truly believe we can't afford to ignore this question anymore. So, I'd like to share our experience and what we've learned so far and hopefully contribute two cents
建造出怎样的体系 我没有答案 我承认 可能谁都没有 但 不应该继续视这个问题了 所以 我打算分享我们的经历 以及我们的体会 希望能对这个问题有所启发
to this conversation. Two years ago, with a group of friends from Argentina, we started thinking, "how can we get our representatives, our elected representatives, to represent us?" Marshall McLuhan once said that politics is solving today's problems with yesterday's tools. So the question that motivated us was, can we try and solve some of today's problems with the tools that we use every single day of our lives? Our first approach was to design and develop a piece of software called DemocracyOS. DemocracyOS is an open-source web application that is designed to become a bridge between citizens and their elected representatives
两年前 和一帮阿根廷朋友们一起 我们想 怎么能让那些代表 我们亲手选出的代表 代表我们说话呢 Marshall McLuhan 曾说 政治 就是用昨天的工具 解决今天的问题 这使我们想到 我们能否用今天的方法 日常的技术 来解决今天的问题呢 我们的第一个尝试 是研发了 一个叫做 DemocracyOS (民主操作系统) 的软件系统 DemocracyOS 是一个开放源码的网络应用 我们期待它能成为 选民和代表之间的沟通桥梁
to make it easier for us to participate from our everyday lives. So first of all, you can get informed so every new project that gets introduced in Congress gets immediately translated and explained in plain language on this platform. But we all know that social change is not going to come from just knowing more information, but from doing something with it. So better access to information should lead to a conversation about what we're going to do next, and DemocracyOS allows for that. Because we believe that democracy is not just a matter of stacking up preferences, one on top of each other, but that our healthy and robust public debate
让我们更方便的参与政治 首先 议会上提出的每个议题 都会通知到你 并被写成了 大众能理解的文字 但是 我们都知道 并不是我们掌握了信息 社会变革就会发生 还需要有所行动 掌握信息之后 应当促成谈话 讨论接下来改做什么 这就是 DemocracyOS 所提供的功能 我们相信 民主 并不是喜好的排列 谁比谁好 谁比谁坏 民主的核心价值
should be, once again, one of its fundamental values. So DemocracyOS is about persuading and being persuaded. It's about reaching a consensus as much as finding a proper way of channeling our disagreement. And finally, you can vote how you would like your elected representative to vote. And if you do not feel comfortable voting on a certain issue, you can always delegate your vote to someone else, allowing
应当是健全的公共讨论 所以 DemocracyOS 关乎如何劝说 关乎如何听劝 关乎达成共识 关乎找到更合适的方法 来沟通彼此的分歧 最终 你可以投票 来告诉代表们 你希望他们怎么投票 如果你不方便 就某事进行投票 你可以把你的投票权 委托给别人
for a dynamic and emerging social leadership. It suddenly became very easy for us to simply compare these results with how our representatives were voting in Congress. But, it also became very evident that technology was not going to do the trick. What we needed to do to was to find actors that were able to grab this distributed knowledge in society and use it to make better and more fair decisions. So we reached out to traditional political parties and we offered them DemocracyOS. We said, "Look, here you have a platform that you can use to build a two-way conversation with your constituencies." And yes, we failed. We failed big time. We were sent to play outside like little kids. Amongst other things, we were called naive. And I must be honest: I think, in hindsight, we were. Because the challenges that we face, they're not technological, they're cultural. Political parties were never willing to change the way they make their decisions. So it suddenly became a bit obvious that if we wanted to move forward with this idea,
从而产生动态变化的领导者 这样 就可以轻松地比较 代表在国会的投票 是否合乎民意 很显然 仅靠科技 无法做到 还需要找到 愿意利用这项科技 获取分散在民众中的意愿 并依此做出更公平决定的人 于是 我们找到了传统政党 我们把 DemocracyOS 给他们 “嘿 这有一个系统 你可以用它” “与选民进行双向沟通” 是的 我们失败了 大失败 像哄小孩一样 我们被请了出去 我们被人说“幼稚” 我也承认 事后看来 我们确实够幼稚 因为我们所要解决的 并非技术问题 而是文化问题 政党不会愿意 改变他们做决定的套路 于是 很显然 若想推广这个点子
we needed to do it ourselves. And so we took quite a leap of faith, and in August last year, we founded our own political party, El Partido de la Red, or the Net Party, in the city of Buenos Aires. And taking an even bigger leap of faith, we ran for elections in October last year with this idea: if we want a seat in Congress, our candidate, our representatives were always going to vote according to what citizens decided on DemocracyOS. Every single project that got introduced in Congress, we were going vote according to what citizens decided on an online platform. It was our way of hacking the political system. We understood that if we wanted to become part of the conversation, to have a seat at the table, we needed to become valid stakeholders,
我们只能自己上场 我们开始了尝试 去年的 8 月 我们成立了自己的政党 网络党(El Partido de la Red) 就在布宜诺斯艾利斯 我们继续尝试 参加了去年十月的选举 秉承这样的理念 若想获取席位 我们的候选人 将始终依照 DemocracyOS 上 选民的决定来投票 议会上每一个提案 我们都将按照 这个网络平台上的意见来投票 这是我们颠覆现有政治体制的方式 我们明白 如果想参与对话 如果想参与决策 首先得获得席位
and the only way of doing it is to play by the system rules. But we were hacking it in the sense that we were radically changing the way a political party makes its decisions. For the first time, we were making our decisions together with those who we were
我们只能遵守现行规则 但我们也在颠覆 我们彻底改变了 政党决策的方式 这是史上首次 决策会影响到谁
affecting directly by those decisions. It was a very, very bold move for a two-month-old party in the city of Buenos Aires. But it got attention. We got 22,000 votes, that's 1.2 percent of the votes, and we came in second for the local options. So, even if that wasn't enough to win a seat in Congress, it was enough for us to become part of the conversation, to the extent that next month, Congress, as an institution, is launching for the first time in Argentina's history, a DemocracyOS to discuss, with the citizens, three pieces of legislation: two on urban transportation and
我们就与谁一起做决策 对于一个在布宜诺斯艾利斯成立仅两个月的政党 这个举动很大胆 但人们注意到了我们 我们赢得了 22000 张选票 占总票数的 1.2% 在当地排名第二 这个票数不够获得议会席位 但 它足够让我们 参与到对话当中 接下来的那个月 阿根廷史上首次 在 DemocracyOS 上 国会就三个法案 与民众展开网上对话 其中两个 是关于都市交通的
one on the use of public space. Of course, our elected representatives are not saying, "Yes, we're going to vote according to what citizens decide," but they're willing to try. They're willing to open up a new space for citizen engagement and hopefully
另外一个 是关于公共空间使用的 诚然 代表们并不是 完全按照选民的意愿 做出决定 但他们愿意尝试 愿意打开讨论空间 让民众参与
they'll be willing to listen as well. Our political system can be transformed, and not by subverting it, by destroying it, but by rewiring it with the tools that
希望他们也愿意倾听民众的声音 政治体系可以被改变 并非打翻 亦非摧毁 而是利用互联网
Internet affords us now. But a real challenge is to find, to design to create, to empower those connectors that are able to innovate, to transform noise and silence into signal and finally bring our democracies
重新连接政治的参与方 真正的挑战在于 设计一个系统 连接彼此 让沉默的人 喧嚣的人 可以好好表达意愿 最终促进民主制度
to the 21st century. I'm not saying it's easy. But in our experience, we actually stand a chance of making it work. And in my heart, it's most definitely worth trying. Thank you. (Applause)
走向 21 世纪 这并非唾手可得 我们的经历证明 我们确有机会 让这一理想实现 我从心底认为 值得放手一试 谢谢 (掌声)