Saturday, March 15, 2003

Source: The Scobleizer Weblog; 3/15/2003; 2:09:35 PM. I'm reading Joi's "emergent democracy" paper. Instead of thinking about his ideas in a political context, I am thinking of them in a business context. Imagine what the world would look like if all new products needed to be voted on by existing customers. We would never get any innovations. Innovations require leadership. Require coming up with something that no one knows they want. Go back to Woz. Remember the Apple I? Remember the Altair? How many people wanted those things in 1977? I can tell you: not many. Woz offered the Apple I to his bosses at Atari and Hewlett Packard and was turned away. So, this is what I don't get about "pure democracy." If we had pure democracy, we would never have banned smoking here in California. It took some smart people to do something new. To take a new approach. I will never live in a place that allows smoking indoors again. That idea radically changed life for the better here. Has it affected property values? Yes. Since the smoking ban began housing prices have continually gone up (even after the dotcom bust). Next time I see Joi, I'm going to ask him how his emergent democracy idea will help get radical new ideas into political life. Letting the masses run things is OK, but you don't get the radical innovations that only a small wacky minority sees at first. Remember, 50 years ago most Americans thought it was OK to discriminate against blacks. It took a radical minority to push the idea through that that wasn't OK. [The Scobleizer Weblog] 2:21:46 PM    trackback []     Articulate []