A Construction Manual
for the
Post-Modern World

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

Surfing the Third Wave...7

Something New Under the Sun...7
New Bottles, Old Wine...10
The New Realities...12
Finding Acceptable Solutions...16
Many Paths, One End...18
Define Yourself to Define the Net...20
Teledemocracy...25
Reform Now...39
Controlling the Agenda...42
Computer Illiteracy...46
Securing Communication Lines... 50
Heterarchical Anonymity...53
Birds on a Wire, Cash On The Line...55
Revolution or Reform?...58

CHAPTER 2

On the Nature of Paradise...61

Change Is Not The Same Anymore..57
A Slow Boat to Paradise?...65

CHAPTER 3

The Internet, Power, and Political Reform...83

Power to the Person...83
Understanding Power...86
The Power Segue...92
Reform...93
The Mystery of Democracy...95
Periodic Renewal...95
Independent Election Councils...98
Compulsory Participation...99
Limited Terms...100
Campaign Financing...101
Media Reform...102
Counting Ballots...105
Democratic Education...107
Automatic Review...107
A Summary and Overview...108
Direct Democracy...115
Advancing the Internet...117
Parsing Political Communication...118
Virtual Democracy...119

CHAPTER 4

The Creation of New Democracies...123

Introduction...123
Creative Politics...126
The Syntropic Solution...136
The Motivational Dilemma...140
Creating a New Politics...145
The Party of Change is NOT a Party...162
The Idea of a Distributed Community...164
The Syntropic World System...171
Small Syntropic Systems...178
Stages in the Evolution of Virtual Communities...180
Description of the Syntropic Community...187
The Evolution of Individual Personality...227
Co-evolution of Personality and Politics...240


Bibliography...243

Some Useful World Wide Web Addresses...247

Index...251