Democracy 2.0?

In my house when I was a kid, there was a rule at dinner time.  If you didn't like what was being served, then you could make your dinner yourself.  It may seem harsh, but when there's 5 kids in the house, mom ain't Burger King and no one get's it "their way."  Luckily for me, my sainted mother is an excellent cook, but every once in a while, I could be found in the kitchen availing myself of the "If you don't like it, do it yourself" rule.  

I'm interested now to see that my mother's old rule is showing up on the Web and in a very powerful way.  We all know that the Web changed us forever by providing a superabundance of connectivity.  Many of us also know that the Web is in the middle of a pretty significant change in which the average Web user moves from information consumer to information provider.  Applications like spaces, wikis and blogs have formed what is being called "Web 2.0" and the 2.0 designation is well deserved because this is a significant change.

However, we are only at the beginning of the 2.0 lifecycle.  Early 2.0 phenomena have been largely recreational and social.  Try reading most MySpace pages and you'll find that early Web 2.0 data is mostly about sharing music preferences and making friends.  And yet we began to see how Web 2.0 presented humanity with an enormously powerful tool for grassroots collaboration on issues and challenges of a higher order.  Wikipedia gives us a glimpse of this, but I believe there are even greater things in store for those with vision.

Then along comes the New Zealand police department.  They understand that the relationship between a police force and the community it serves is vital and they have a vision of how that relationship can improve.  The police force is drafting a new policing bill for 2008, and they're doing it WITH the community through a Wiki Policing Act 2008 site.  Here, the citizens of New Zealand can do more than voice opinions through unstructured channels.  They can work directly with the police to craft a bill that has their concerns bake-in.  If any New Zealanders don't like the new act, well they should've been in the kitchen with their fellow citizens who decided to help cook it themselves.

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