Photo by Tech.Co (formerly Tech Cocktail) 
Americans didn’t invent the idea of the “wisdom of the people”. More than two thousand years ago Aristotle drew attention to it by favorably contrasting “a feast to which all the guests contribute” to “a banquet furnished by a single man.” Just as a potluck makes for greater variety, Aristotle was suggesting that more minds make for greater diversity of knowledge and insight.
Still, among modern nations we may be the most enthusiastic fans of the notion that there is wisdom to be found in the people. In his Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman wrote that “The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.” Google “the wisdom of the crowd” today, as I just did, and you’ll get upwards of 4.8 milllion hits, some related to the recent controversy over the TV show of the same name, but millions more to devoted to real world crowd-sourced solutions to social problems, from catching a ride to the movies and fixing your kitchen drain to which neighborhood pizzeria or roofing outfit is best.
Unfortunately, the sophisticated technology that’s led to so many useful crowd sourced solutions in the economic realm is failing in the civic and political realms. In stark contrast to the collaborative and user-responsive companies, management, and app’s we find in the private sector, the digital revolution has multiplied bogus information channels and echo chambers while opening the door to acrimony and distrust on social media sites.
Why the contrast? More to the point, how might we recapture the web’s ability to enable “all the guests to contribute”, as Aristotle put it—not just to our shared economic life, but to our shared public life? At EnCiv we believe that the answer, to stick to the feast analogy, is to ensure that digital “guests” feel welcome, enjoy themselves, respect each other, and have multiple civic and political needs met all in the same place. We are convinced that if citizens are invited to that sort of online encounter, they will take advantage of it to inform themselves and each other.
So that is what we at EnCiv are building—an online civic network for information, discussion, making trade-offs, and proposing solutions: the biggest potluck this country has ever seen. We hope to be inviting the country to join in soon.
Photo by Tech.Co (formerly Tech Cocktail)
