Others’ Solutions

For some time now, large international political organizations have partly leveraged new information and communication technologies. They have maintained websites to publicize their goals and initiatives; widely used email to rapidly and cheaply share information and broadcast Newsletters for their members; used the Internet to find information, news, data and partners.

More recently, the same organization have created, with great expectations, web and/or email-based discussion spaces, through simple online forums or mailing lists. Such spaces, though useful to promote discussion in specific phases and contexts, have revealed great limitations and difficulties

	Only users with access and ability to use email or internet can participate;
	Users can interface only with same-language users;
	Difficulties in sorting and reading through large amounts of messages;
	Inability to build consensus and agreement except for simple issues;
	Inevitable struggles around unclear moderation powers;
	Important authentication, security and privacy problems;
	Often chaotic and pointless discussions;
	Often dominated by non-representative demographic groups;

These technologies have enabled people to establish contact and find similarly minded people in remote places, but have done almost nothing to fill the great democratic and efficiency gap created by their great geographic distances and different languages.