Talk is cheap, time is valuable. The internet's greatest failure is its inability to design applications that waste less of people's time.

Social media is terrible because of terrible design choices. One of the more important terrible design choices is the choice to let anyone say anything about anything at all hours of the day. There are billions of people on this planet who love to yap endlessly about everything (it's human nature), and I am very sorry, but time constrains me from listening to each of their viewpoints in depth. I will literally die before I have the time to listen to everyone, so forget responding in a constructive manner.

Our representative democracy was designed to combat this problem where no one has the time to listen to everyone's input before making decisions. The constitution was the best they could come up with in the late 18th century. Several technological revolutions later, some people still worship this old document as if it is the best of all possible governing methods.

What I aim to do with this series of leaflets called "Democracy on the Internet" is challenge people to think of new ways to use our new technologies to improve group decision making, consensus building, and governance.