Noveck on the Promise of Technology for Collective Action & Governance

Beth Simone Noveck is rapidly becoming known as one of the most innovative electronic democracy theorists. She is an Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Information Law and Policy and the Democracy Design Workshop (http://dotank.nyls.edu) at the New York Law School and Co–Editor of the Ex Machina: Law, Technology and Society book series, published by NYU Press. Her blog, the Cairns Blog, can be found at http://cairns.typepad.com.

In A Democracy of Groups, published by First Monday, Noveck argues that small (community) groups are wielding power for themselves independently of formal structures because of emerging tools for "collective visualization." Accordingly, Novek argues "that law must ... recognize the way people are coming together, not just to create content, but also to create power." The mission therefore is to explore ways to structure the law to defer political and legal decision-making downward to decentralized group-based decision-making.

In such a decentralized environment, would not the information providers traditional role as authenticators be crucial?