It's Time to Reboot America!

The Personal Democracy Forum presents an anthology of forty-four essays brimming with the hopes of reenergizing, reorganizing, and reorienting our government for the Internet Age. How would completely reorganizing our system of representation work? Is it possible to redesign our government with open doors and see-through walls? How can we leverage the exponential power of many-to-many deliberation for the common good?

INTRODUCTION
our greatest risk, we felt, when we began this project was that all our essayists might somehow respond to our challenge with exactly the same answer.

Much to our relief, and hopefully your enjoyment, the answers are enormously and uniquely diverse and interesting. The essays in Rebooting America reflect an array of experiences and political perspectives; they also reflect the themes, concerns and hopes of our Founding Fathers. We decided, therefore, to organize the essays around these themes.

We begin with a quote from Tom Paine, “When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.” Zack Exley embraces this idea in his very entertaining essay, a memo written to Personal Democracy Forum editor Micah L. Sifry from the future that suggests that what we need most to reinvent America is selfless leadership. ...

Visit Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age Download Page

You can download Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age in PDF format.

PREFACE
this project began as so many good things do, over a cup of coffee. Our conversation wandered to talking about new social media tools like blogs and social networking sites and their important role in fostering an explosion of public participation in and around the national political campaigns.

We started wondering when we might see the rise of similar public energies and optimism about government and governing. For it’s clear we’re living in a new age, where millions of people can participate directly in governance and policy making, not just in ratifying the results on Election Day.

The Internet is putting individual voters, and networks of activists, in positions that used to be the sole reserve of professionals. Today anyone can be a reporter, a fundraiser or a community organizer; all it takes is an Internet connection and a compelling message. And so we wondered: as the Internet revolution hits the institutions of American democracy, how might it change things for the better? ...

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