Accelerating Democracy

Author(s):  
John O. McGinnis

Successful democracies throughout history have used the technology of their time to gather information for better governance. Our challenge is no different today, but it is more urgent because the accelerating pace of technological change creates potentially enormous dangers as well as benefits. This book shows how to adapt democracy to new information technologies that can enhance political decision making and enable us to navigate the social rapids ahead. This book demonstrates how these new technologies combine to address a problem as old as democracy itself—how to help citizens better evaluate the consequences of their political choices. As society became more complex in the nineteenth century, social planning became a top-down enterprise delegated to experts and bureaucrats. Today, technology increasingly permits information to bubble up from below and filter through more dispersed and competitive sources. The book explains how to use fast-evolving information technologies to more effectively analyze past public policy, bring unprecedented intensity of scrutiny to current policy proposals, and more accurately predict the results of future policy. But he argues that we can do so only if government keeps pace with technological change. For instance, it must revive federalism to permit different jurisdictions to test different policies so that their results can be evaluated, and it must legalize information markets to permit people to bet on what the consequences of a policy will be even before that policy is implemented. This book reveals how we can achieve a democracy that is informed by expertise and social-scientific knowledge while shedding the arrogance and insularity of a technocracy.

Author(s):  
Rasoul Namazi

This chapter studies the influence of the Internet and new Web 2.0 technologies on the process of democratization in authoritarian regimes. The objective is to show that the new information technologies are not necessarily helpful to dissident movements and have even some negative impacts on the process of democratization. The author questions the capacity of Internet to transmit political information discusses how the new technologies contribute to the depoliticization of societies by creating passive citizens in authoritarian regimes. This chapter also shows how authoritarian regimes use new information technologies as instruments of control and repression and questions the effectiveness of the new cyber-activism by explaining the structure of the Internet and discussing the capacity of the new technologies in creating political community.


2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Gaia Bernstein

AbstractNew technologies often create novel social tensions that induce legal change. Two new information technologies: genetic testing and the Internet exert pressures on our normative conception of identity. Identity related tensions underlie a broad range of social and legal controversies. The article argues that the ubiquity of these tensions creates a need to elevate the legal interest of identity from the shadows of legal discourse to the center of the stage. Identity interests should be incorporated into our legal discourse in order to improve the social accommodation of the two information technologies through the resolution of these identity tensions. Part I of the article examines the conception of identity as a life narrative and its importance as a zone of normative concern. Part II of the article fleshes out the abstract identity argument by providing concrete legal examples involving the physician’s duty to warn in cases of genetic testing and gay anonymity on the Internet. Part III explains the failure to protect identity interests with traditional privacy tools and argues for the need to incorporate identity interests into the legal debate.


Author(s):  
Aleksandr Mitin

The article discusses the possibilities of automation of legal activities. Special attention is paid to the new branch of the business LegalTech, which allows providing legal services using information technology. Some projects in this area are briefly described: FreshDoc document designer, VideoContract app, and electronic trading platforms such as Legal Space and Pravoved.Ru. Although the legal community is not quite ready to work in such conditions, higher education institutions are already reforming their curricula, developing disciplines that allow gaining professional competence in introducing technologies that automate legal work, and so on. The author, in turn, offers using chat bots in legal clinics, gives examples of new disciplines for master’s degree programs, considers the idea of passing final examinations outside universities in certification centers, etc. It is emphasized that in jurisprudence there are a lot of typical situations in which typical decisions need to be made, and here artificial intelligence will be a good helper, and scientists will have more time to undertake a comprehensive analysis of law. Thus, even with the advent of new technologies, the creative work of lawyers will always be in demand.


2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-119
Author(s):  
A.B. Sadvakasov ◽  

A consistent approach to improving the quality of draft of normative legal acts contributes to the development of socio-economic relations in the country, reducing bureaucratic procedures and generally improves public administration. The quality of rule-making and its effectiveness largely determine the implementtion of a particular state policy task. Kazakhstan has created all conditions for the development of legislation and its improvement. Moreover, measures are being taken to introduce new information technologies to adjust existing legal norms. The article describes the existing system of state rulemaking, as well as the prospects for using new technologies.


Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362110592
Author(s):  
Lars Bo Kaspersen ◽  
Liv Egholm

We are living in a world which is severely crisis-ridden and faces some major challenges. The fact that we are currently facing a genuine global pandemic (COVID-19) brings about even more uncertainty. The social and political institutions, which emerged and consolidated during the 20th century, and which created stability, have become fragile. The young generation born in the 1990s and onwards have experienced 9/11 and the ‘war against terrorism’, the financial crisis of 2008, changes to climate, environmental degradation, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. The generation born between 1960 and 1990 have had the same experiences along with severe economic crises in the 1970s and 1980s and the Cold War. Some of these challenges are in different ways intertwined with capitalism and its crises, while others are linked to the rapid development of new technologies, in particular innovations within communication and information technologies. This introduction lists the most important grand challenges facing the world as they have emerged more recently. The five articles following this introduction address some of these challenges, with particular attention to the problems of capitalism and democracy and the relation between these two areas. Most authors agree that climate change and the destruction of the environment are the biggest and most pertinent problems to address, but it is their stance that we can only meet these challenges if democracy is functioning well.


Author(s):  
Lesia S. Herasymiuk

The information, like human resources, capital, materials and technology, is one of the main resources used by the institution. Due to its increasing significance in today's society of informatization, more attention is paid to the methods of managing document processes based on documenting and documenting technologies, as well as the active use of computer technology and information technologies. Therefore, due to insufficient number of domestic works on the topic, the theory and practice of document management, in particular using the latest information technologies, is an actual and perspective direction of scientific research. The article deals with the concept of «documentation processes management».The urgency of the need of new information technologies implementation into the field of documentation support and their efficiency in administrative work has been highlighted. The objective of the study. To analyze the leading tendencies of introduction of the newest technologies in management of documentation processes in the conditions of information society. The tasks of the study are following: to disclose the content of the concept “document management”; to trace the impact of transition to electronic document management on the effectiveness of working with documents in institutions; to describe the main advantages of electronic document management systems for working with electronic documents. The results of the study confirmed that due to the continuous increase in the number of information the traditional methods of managing of documentation processes become ineffective. In terms of informatization of the society, the innovative information technologies are rapidly developing, which are rapidly being implemented into the field of documentation procedures.


Along with the shift from print to digital formats, information technologies are significantly affecting today’s libraries. New technologies and concepts such as mobile devices, social networking sites, communication and interactive tools, and other Internet technologies are changing how libraries serve their patrons as well as how users interact with libraries and each other. Each technology has impacted the library user and the user environment so much so that today’s library is said to be everywhere. Wherever the user can go with their mobile device and access the Internet, and therefore the library OPAC, it can functionally be said that they are at the library, for the collection, user services, and library databases is where the library is located, not the brick and mortar structure. This increased access also raises concerns over online information security and privacy, and the conscious Internet user needs to be aware of the dangers and take the necessary steps to mitigate them. The concept of change is another element of these new information technologies—embracing it, for technology is always changing as new ideas spark new revolutions in development and libraries must change along with them. All information institutions must learn to ride these waves of change instead of being pulled along, half drowning, by the undertow. Learning to both integrate and inform patrons on how best to use these technologies becomes an important part of being an information expert. Surveyed in this chapter is a selection of those important and driving technologies and changes.


Author(s):  
Gerardo Reyes Ruiz ◽  
Samuel Olmos Peña ◽  
Marisol Hernández Hernández

New technologies have changed the way today's own label products are being offered. Today the Internet and even more the so-called social networks have played key roles in dispersing any particular product in a more efficient and dynamic sense. Also, having a smartphone and a wireless high-speed network are no longer a luxury or a temporary fad, but rather a necessity for the new generations. These technological advances and new marketing trends have not gone unnoticed by the medium and large stores. The augmented reality applied to interactive catalogs is a new technology that supports the adding of virtual reality to a real environment which in turn makes it a tool for discovering new uses, forms, and in this case, spending habits. The challenge for companies with their private labels in achieving their business objectives, is providing customers with products and services of the highest quality, thus promoting the efficient and streamlined use of all resources that are accounted for and at the same time promoting the use of new information technologies as a strategic competitive.


2010 ◽  
pp. 2226-2238
Author(s):  
Almudena Moreno Mínguez ◽  
Carolina Suárez Hernán

The generalization of the new information technologies has favored the transformation of social structures and the way of relating to others. In this changing process, the logic of the social relationships is characterized by the fragility and the temporality of the communicative systems reciprocity which are established “online” in a new cybernetic culture. “Virtual communities” are created in which the interaction systems established by individuals exceed the traditional categories of time and space. In this manner the individuals create online social webs where they connect and disconnect themselves based on their needs or wishes. The new online communication technologies favor the rigid norms of the “solid society” that dilute in flexible referential contexts and reversible in the context of the “global and liquid society” to which the sociologists Bauman or Beck have referred to. Therefore the objective that the authors propose in this chapter is to try new theoretic tools, from the paradigms of the new sociology of technology, which let them analyze the new relational and cultural processes which are being generated in the cultural context of the information global society, as a consequence of the new communication technologies scope. Definitely the authors propose to analyze the meaning of concepts such as “virtual community”, “cyber culture”, or “contacted individualism”, as well as the meaning and extent of some of the new social and individual behaviors which are maintained in the Net society.


Logistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Camarero Orive ◽  
José Ignacio Parra Santiago ◽  
María Magdalena Esteban-Infantes Corral ◽  
Nicoletta González-Cancelas

The port system is immersed in a process of digital transformation towards the concept of Ports 4.0, under the new regulatory and connectivity requirements that are expected of them. As a result of the changes that the industrial revolution 4.0 is imposing, based on new information technologies and the change of energy model, the electrification of modes of transport from alternative energies and the total digitalization of the processes is occurring. This conversion to digital, intelligent, and green ports requires the implementation of the new technologies offered by the market. The inclusion of these enabling tools has allowed the development of automated terminals under a functional approach. This article aims to offer the responsible entities a new methodology (BOT) that allows them to successfully undertake the automation of terminals, taking into account the reality of the conditions of the environment in which they are developed. By quantifying the factors that facilitate or impede implementation, it will be possible to determine the strategy to be followed and the necessary measures to be adopted in the project; constituting, therefore, a novel management and planning tool.


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