P. S.: Post Scriptum

The two talks I gave at the: International Workshop on Challenges and Visions in the Social Sciences, this summer, are now available at videolectures.net.
Not the best talks of my career, and hopefully not the last either. But the guys at VL did a great job in recording them.

One of the talk was about Tags, and the second about Democracy of the 21st Century.

In the one about Continue reading My first 2 talks available online: Tags & 21st Century Democracy

The problem is not that there are too many elections for Europe, but too few. And the people feel they are not controlling a process that is bigger than them.
When people vote No at the battlecry: when in doubt vote No, how else would You interprete it?

Now, it can be that the United States have given a help, under the table, to finance the advertisments against the treaty. After all they have all to gain from being the only superpower. But the advertisments found a fertile land to sprout.

When 95% of the irish parliament said to vote Yes, and the clear majority of people voted for No… something must mean.

Calderoli for one time (the only!) is right in noticing how from when Europe had to ratify its constitution have lost every time.

Now, here, they want to call again for a second referendum, and again, and again, until the Yes wins. Strange that the constitution permits it.

I am not against voting again, but I think it should be done right.

When there is a referendum, and the result expressed is more than 20% different from what the parliament has suggested, it is obvious that the parliament is no more reppresentative of the people. And so it should be considered automatically delegitimised. New elections should be called immediatly, to renew the parliament. And after this a new referendum should be called. Referendum at which the new parliament should give indications of vote. And again if the results are more than 20% different, we should vote again, and so on. Until the fracture between the people and its representatives has been healed.

This would mean that the power truly belongs to the people, and the parliamentaries truly represent the people.

With the new technologies we could have one new election every other day, and a new referendum in between. Within one week we would have a new parliament, and a result of the referendum, that agree with each other.

Some time ago I remember reading a comment.

La Repubblica, one of the first italian newspaper, holds a big internet website. As part of their initiative they have La Repubblica TV, which is a sort of television, just recorded for the net. You can download it when you want, and see it at your leisure. It includes everything: advertisments, opening music, interviews, etc.
Well the comment was discussing how that internet TV is quite dumb. Not really using up the powers of the net.

It took me as a really smart comment, and later I thought that also the lessons from the universities who are being recorded and released are still part of the old way of doing things.

And today I saw something which I thought might be part of the new way: The lessons on history from Lars Brownworth,
12 Byzantine Rulers.

Lars is a professor at a private high school, and if I got it right not even a professor in history, but history is his passion, and so in his free time he started investigating the middle ages. His lessons in pocast format really had success, and now his podcast is among the most followed on the net.

Why do I think his podcast is part of the new wave of education, and not part of the old wave:

• The lessons are not produced by a University. He did was not advertised as being an expert, and yet his succes came because of how interesting they were. How often have we followed a lesson at the university (or at high school), thinking the professor was not that good, and probably some students were actually better. Universities need to cover every class. But with podcasts there was no class to cover. He was an expert in something, he spoke about that.
• There is a great desire for real high quality content. We all recognise the power of the internet, but experts that blog about their area of expertise are still few. It is easy to find blogs and discussion forums where many amateurs discuss a topic. We are moving toward a time where the real experts start to use the internet to share about their topic. This will take away space to the amatour (it was nice to be the expert in a Taoistic forum, but am I really an expert), but real knowledge will start to flow more easily.
• It uses podcasts, and website. Cheap but high quality technology. Available to everybody
• His expertise was so great that he manage to induce an interest even in people who had no natural interest for the subject

And the conclusion of all this is that more and more material will start to flow. Up to now we have mostly seen amatours discussing subjects. While the experts would write books in the old fashion way, copyright them, and make themselves unavailable. Essentially putting a higher and higher distance between them and their public. Now an expert can teach, and if he is really good he can share not only his knowledge, but his burning passion too. The tools are available, and soon the best lessons on a subject will not be from the universities, but directly from the expert website. At that point universities will start pointing to them, and this will induce a great change in society. Maybe we might even reach the point that some website will offer lessons worth a certain number of credits. A fully decentralized university.

Paolo Rossi, an italian comedian, made a wonderful job, in taking an old discourse from Pericles, and presenting it to the modern public as part of his personal show: Il Signor Rossi e la costituzione (mr. Rossi and the constitution- but, as Rossi is the most common italian name, could be translated as mr. Smith and the constitution). The speech is so precise, so moderne, that it was censored by Berlusconi controlled state television. After confronting the italian version from Paolo Rossi, with the original which we have in the project Gutenberg, I translated Paolo Rossi’s speech in English, trying, as much as possible to use the expression of the original translator in English. What follows here is first the translation, then the whole original speech is copied, with the parts that have been taken by Paolo bolded, to clarify the context in which they originally were. In the translation there is also a phrase in italic, it is a phrase that was absent in the original text, but that fitted perfectly both in the original text, and in the italian situation. It was inspired to Paolo Rossi by the ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Here in Athens we do like this, our government favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called democracy.
Here in Athens we do like this, the laws, here, afford equal justice to all in their private differences; but we never ignore reputation for capacity.
When a citizen has shown himself worthy, he will be, upon others, favored to serve the state, not as a privilege, but as a reward for worth, and poverty doesn’t bar the way.
Here in Athens we do like this. The freedom which we enjoy, extends also to our ordinary life.There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes. We are free, free to live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. An Athenian citizen does not ignore public affairs, when he is following his private life, but, upon all, never uses public affairs to solve his private problems.
Here in Athens we do like this: we have been taught, to respect magistrates, and we have been taught to obey the laws, and never to forget those who have been injured. And we have been taught to respect that code which, although unwritten, is based upon the universal feeling of what is right, and cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.
Here in Athens we do like this: we see him who takes no interest in public matters not as unambitious but as useless, and although few are able to originate a politics, we all athenians are able to judge it. We don’t look on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way to democracy.
We believe that happiness originates from freedom, but freedom only originates from courage.
In short, I say Athens school of Hellas, and that every Athenians shows in himself a happy flexibility, self trust, and readiness to face any situation. And this is why we throw open our city and never by alien acts exclude foreigners.

What follows is the original discourse from Pericles, from The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Continue reading Here in Athens we do like this