Translator: Translate TED Reviewer: Denise R Quivu
It's time to innovate
where no one is innovating:
in the political system.
Because our democracy is terribly stalemated
and is no longer able to answer the demands of a society
that is becoming more and more complex
and is being transformed by new technologies.
Working in politics is not easy.
In fact, I gave my first steps in the world of civil society.
But I think we need a better distribution of power,
to share knowledge and create spaces for dialogue
so that we can produce better solutions with more consensus.
Politics is the best tool that we have to do it.
So, a couple of years ago, I decided to take a leap of faith;
I began working on a political campaign in the province of Buenos Aires.
And I didn't like at all what I saw.
First of all, no one was discussing ideas.
They were only discussing people.
I remember that on one occasion
I saw how they used Photoshop to erase a mustache and whiten the teeth
of a candidate because he had to look younger.
It didn't matter if his ideas were from the past century.
Pretending was all that mattered.
I was in a city warehouse once,
in Greater Buenos Aires,
and it was fully stocked with sheets, mattresses, and building materials
they had never delivered.
When I asked what the materials were doing there,
and why they didn't deliver them, they answered me lightly:
"Don't you realize? We're storing them for next year, for the elections."
Of course. That year there were no elections.
People weren't voting; did it matter
they had no roof over their heads or a place to sleep?
That year they weren't being consulted.
And that's the problem.
We live in a political system that responds
to a 400-year-old information technology:
the printing press.
When the ones who were considered citizens
could no longer participate in the decision-making spaces
nor have access to the information needed to make those decisions,
then a system based on intermediaries was designed.
Those representatives were intermediaries between citizens and those spaces
where the decisions that impacted their lives were made.
And that's the same democracy we have nowadays.
But society has changed. Look at this.
This is the papal inauguration ceremony back in 2005 and the same picture in 2013.
Today, if we want to know about any subject,
we've just got to go to Wikipedia
or we can even search for some TED talk about it.
Who hasn't been informed first by a Twitter user
about some event in any place around the world
rather than by the traditional media?
Who hasn't posted, or seen posted, something like:
"I'm looking for a partner," "This is my CV,"
"I need to rent an apartment"?
Today, it's more likely to get a job through Linkedln
than through an agency,
and an apartment through Facebook than through a real estate broker.
Not to mention how connectivity transformed
the culture and entertainment industry.
Even our perception of property is changing.
Do we want to have the actual CD
or to listen to the music?
Do we want to have the DVD stored on a bookshelf
or to watch the movie?
The Internet dramatically lowers the barriers of access to information
and makes us both producers and consumers of information.
The Internet sets us up on a peer-to-peer network
with no intermediaries,
and we can all participate in the large virtual global conversation.
The Internet turned that few-to-many conversation
into a many-to-many conversation, it democratized it.
And we are seeing that in every field:
in culture, in education,
in work organization, socially, and even in the economy.
But... what about politics?
The political system insists on excluding us
from the decision-making spaces.
And the consequence, worldwide, is this:
it's a clash between a system
that doesn't represent anymore
and has no capacity for dialogue
and a lot of citizens that are getting increasingly used to
representing themselves, without intermediaries.
Look. Occupy Wall Street,
the Spanish indignados, the Chilean students,
the Arab Spring,
they are all examples of this global representation crisis.
I saw all this steam
that our political system's valve can't contain
and I couldn't help asking myself:
how are we going to go from agitation to construction?
Because it seems that we can use social networks, at a very low cost,
to organize massive demonstrations.
But what's not debated is what we want to do afterwards.
What institutions do we want to build for this new network society?
So, if the Internet is the new printing press,
the question we have to ask ourselves is:
Which is the democracy of the Internet era?
Together with a group of people we started, here, in Argentina,
a foundation called "Democracia en Red",
that aims at thinking how we can transform all this noise
into a signal with a direct influence on the system.
And we started to see many examples all around the world
and decided to create a new way of citizen participation
and social thinking for the local legislatures.
We asked ourselves how we could make the most of this new technology
to make our representatives represent us.
There are two reasons why we chose this path.
The first one is that we believe participation costs are too high.
If participating in politics means
to be an active member of a political party since college
so that some day, we might have our seat at the table of some political party
that takes some decision;
If participating in politics means to put a table in a corner,
collect 4,000 signatures, propose a bill,
and then wait for our legislators to look at it;
if participating in politics means having to be a lawyer
to understand what the laws that regulate our lives are about,
well, then clearly only a few will want to participate.
But, what if we make it easier for the citizen?
What if we can create a space
where even those who have only one free hour a week,
but care about their city and have something to say, can do so?
The second reason why we chose this path
is because we believe that we make better decisions
when we listen to as many voices as possible.
Then why do we think that a legislator,
working alone will be better able to bring together
all the aspects involved in the drafting and implementation of a law
than if he works with those directly affected by that law?
Now, how can we put 100,000 ideas in a single legislative seat?
How can a legislator incarnate all those different points of view?
Well, once again, let's use technology to explore that path.
So, the system we designed has two components.
It's called Democracy OS
with an online and an offline component.
The online component is a social network for democratic participation.
It's a platform that will allow us to stay informed, debate, and decide
how we want our legislators to vote.
Informing ourselves is key.
Now I'm going to read a...
- well, a law, it's not a bill but a law -
"Remove from the future urban zoning district UF
of the urban planning code, fractions C and H of block 75A section 92,
subdivision 1 and affect it to district U, urbaniza..."
Well, you get what I mean.
This is not a joke. This is the way things are.
What this means is that they'll change
the zoning of two blocks in order to build high-rises.
Oh, well, that's something else.
If we knew that they're planning to build a high-rise at the corner of our house,
wouldn't we have something to say about it?
I don't know, we might be OK with it. Or we might not.
But if we don't get informed,
if we don't know, then we'll never be able to have a say in it.
So, the first thing we're going to do
is to list every bill that is being currently discussed,
and we're going to explain them so that everyone can understand.
And now, once we've found things out, we are informed and have an opinion,
what happens today with those opinions?
They end up in a coffee conversation
or find their way in the comments section of an online newspaper?
But, what if we can create a space that gathers all those opinions together?
Somewhere where they can be discussed,
where all those ideas end up in bills that really represent our community.
Where, if you feel comfortable on a certain topic, you can vote,
but if you don't,
you can delegate your vote to another person in whom you trust,
but only on that specific topic, not for two whole years.
Wouldn't you be interested in participating in a space like that?
Today, what options does the system offer us to participate?
A public hearing, on a Tuesday at 11 AM in the city's downtown area.
Which of you could make it to downtown at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday
to give an opinion?
Why do we have to be physically present to participate in these spaces?
And that is our only option.
Nowadays, we can take an online course
from a university we'll never see in our lifetime,
we can finance ourselves
through micro-donations from people all around the world,
we network with people we'll probably never meet,
but we can't tell our legislator
whether we want to fence off our local park or not?
Well, it doesn't make much sense, right?
And here is when this key offline component comes in:
the political parties.
And, why is it key?
Because in Argentina,
the monopoly of representation is held by political parties.
The only way for this collective intelligence
to have a direct impact on the system
is through political parties that run for elections, win seats,
and commit themselves to vote
according to whatever is decided on the platform.
Imagine a legislator who goes to the committee meetings
and films them for everyone to watch.
Or imagine a legislator talking with the citizens
in an online forum every Sunday.
It's not impossible.
It isn't sending a mission to the Moon, the tools are there.
So, the platform we've created is free and open source
because what we need are political parties
who dare change the old way of decision making,
stop doing it behind citizens' backs
and start doing it
together with those directly affected by those decisions, us.
Imagine all we could do if we dared to innovate
where no one has innovated yet: in the political system.
Imagine all we could achieve.
Marshall McLuhan says that politics is about
solving today's problems with yesterday's tools.
Well, it's time to solve today's problems with today's tools.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
(Applause)