Democratic Community Informatics

Posted March 20th, 2008 by Taran

I wrote an email to a list this morning that I invested a lot of time into - about 1/24th of the day - and I believe it ended up being a gem. I have edited it for sharing with a web audience who would be unfamiliar with the thread of discussion I was participating in (this was my last post of many in a long thread):

Governmental democracy is one aspect of democracy, and we all know (or should) that present governmental democracies are less than perfect. One way to put it would be that dictators are sometimes democratically elected. Another way to put it is that sometimes someone with the popular vote doesn't win an election because of technicalities - a number of seats, etc. Putting aside the obvious example that most are familiar with due to the media (the United States), I'll point out that the last election in Trinidad and Tobago had 3 parties running. 1 party won the most seats. 1 party won the least seats. 1 party won the popular vote. The party with the most seats won the election. The party with the least seats is in Opposition. The party with the popular vote didn't even win one seat.

So yes, there are issues of governmental democracy. The core principles of democracy seem a little lost when we look at implementations of democracy. That is why I try to avoid discussing democracy with government as the example of democracy. Jacques is right about today's governmental democracies. Anyone who thinks that they are working properly probably hasn't really looked at the world lately.

In the context of community informatics, though, discussion is imperative. In fact, the very core of community informatics revolves around communication - discussion. It could be said that communities loosely apply the principles of democracy. There are no ballots that people line up to, no politicians kissing babies, etc. But there are issues, and there are community responses to these issues. Community responses typically go with the majority of what the community wants. Some things are predictable. If you offer a starving person food, they are quite likely to accept - it is a basic need. If you give a cold person a blanket, the same thing. If you give someone who has neither a mobile phone or a laptop options of either a mobile phone or laptop for free, you can bet that they'll take the more expensive one because of a culture of 'more expensive is better'. If you give a person options, their choice will be as good as their options.

This is where informed discussion comes into play. In many places where a laptop is seen as unattainable, people may well jump at the opportunity to select the laptop - as well they should. They are being told it is the best thing for them; "xyz says so!", "xyz showed it to the UN", "xyz is from "... but there is little discussion.

Unfortunately, this falls back to democratic implementations of government also being imperfect - in most parts of the world that I know of, people elect politicians instead of leaders. Politicians like staying in power, and when the people ask for cake... "Let them eat cake!". Politicians typically don't like too many options, because it widens the playing field. A politician does not want competition. That is not why people go into politics. I do not know why they do, but I do know that most that do are not interested in allowing more competition to themselves. It is natural. And so, when presented with an opportunity to look really good, the politician is going to do the best that they can to stay in power. It might mean promising lower taxes, more jobs, or little laptops. Politicians, again, do not typically think of things that could possibly last longer than one term because they want that next term - so that is the focus. This may be one of the reasons why infrastructure is so poor in some parts of the world - because infrastructure is a long term investment. The long term benefits are there, but rarely will a politician do something that one of his/her competitors will take credit for. But then you put a shiny package on a shelf for them, and say "this will help". A politician sees, "Something I can get credit for now". But the community was not involved with that decision. The politicians were. Like most issues in modern day democracies, politicians decide without consulting the public.

So it is with technology adaptation. The $100 laptop/OLPC/XO/whatever-it-will-be-called-next targeted politicians instead of people. It bypassed a community adoption process. The community may do better with it when compared to nothing, but they had no part in informed discussion of their options. What if - hypothetically - a few farmers were asked whether they wished the government to build better infrastructure or if they preferred the laptops? What if they were asked whether they wanted mobile phone infrastructure so that they could communicate across distances for a lower price? Surely, that is a form of democracy - but we do not practice it. If anything, my contention is that the marketing of the OLPC abused the flaws of democratic implementation in government - the same flaws that made the OLPC something that a relatively small group of people thought was necessary for the entire world, no matter what the world thought.

I spent 6 years in the US. Navy, working with the USMC as a corpsman. There is a line from a movie with Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington - and Hackman, playing the commander of the sub, told his XO (Washington) "We are here to protect democracy - not practice it.". That is true of the military, and there is a brutal honesty to it in the context of War. But we are not a military here. We are not at 'War', per se. We are, as someone said, trying to make the world a better place. But we cannot make the world a better place in this context by steamrolling democracy and forcing things down people's throats. It might work for a short period, but the community is not dumb. They will take what they can get and see if it works. They may even see the laptops as 'free', but they pay for it one way or the other. But were they given a choice?

We need to be honest with ourselves first, then be honest with the community as well. We will never err in giving options, but we will always err in taking them away. Despite my serious misgivings with the way the OLPC crowd has used tactics that magnify the same flaws that made their premise possible, it is an option. I am interested in seeing how it plays out. But I will always take the way that the OLPC was handled to task, I will always point out that there were other options that have been adapted at a lower cost by people who *had* options, and I will always follow a principle of 'self-help' when it comes to solutions because, at the end of the day, a technology that cannot be supported locally is simply a liability and
expense to a developing nation - but more importantly, a developing community.

I think this was worth sharing, and archiving so I can refer back to it... (this saves me from typing and saves me money on keyboards).