DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN TELEAREA

By Demosthenes Kyriazis

Excerpts of the Book , 

DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN TELEAREA

  Prologue of English Version

“Direct Democracy in Telearea” was published in 2005 by “Patakis Publications” in Greek.

The main target of this book is the Presentation of the idea that the digital technology is an opportunity and a vehicle for the re-orientation of today’s democracies to the principles and to the spirit of the ancient Greek democracy.

Some colleagues and friends who are interested in this issue but they do not speak Greek, encouraged me to translate “my Telearea” in English.

Thus, it was created the English Version of Telearea which also has two new subjects (intelligence of the citizens and political systems – Democracy and modern Physics) and some further footnotes related to the Greek edition.

The translation of all the above texts was carried out by the young lady Katerina Kamakari.

Ms Kamakari worked with interest and enthusiasm in order to translate in English a difficult text. A text that includes, many meanings and terms taken from political sciences, applied sciences and technology.

I would like to express to my friend Katerina my deep appreciation and my warm thanks for her effort.

Many people consider that any effort has its own value independently of its results.

I wish that this would also stand for the writing and the translation of this book.

                                    Athens, July 2007

                                     Demosthenes Kyriazis

PROLOGUE

This book, which could have also been suitably titled “Elpida in the land of Telearea”[1], constitutes an extension to the previous book titled “The Regeneration of Democracy, the Vision of Direct Democracy in the era of digital technology”

Both books aim to present and to argue the idea that the new digital technology of computer science and telecommunications can be used as a vehicle that will transform the passive “coach potato citizens” into active citizens.

In our days, where new technology has actually become the eye and the ear of “Big Brother” causing the justified feelings of terror when facing the possibility of the complete disappearance of personal freedom, this book, which introduces the vision of a digital Pnyka sends a message of hope.

The new digital technology has followed the same historical course as all the other new technologies in the past. An historical course which is exactly the same as that of the technology of simple machines, of levers.

It is absolutely certain that the first time man used a lever, he did not do it in order to carry a block of stone but, instead, because he wanted to break someone’s head and grab his quarry or his wife. Thousands of years passed since that moment until to understand and to use the levers for our own good. It was until Archimedes said the historical phrase: “Δος μοι πα στω και τα γαν κιν�σω” (Give me where to stay and I will move the earth).

The writer presents his ideas using the ancient Greek inductive methodology through the discussions of a team of young students in the imaginary land of Telearea. The symbolism of the name that he is using is obvious and in my opinion a successful one.

The students that form this team were gathered together by Elpida. She is the highly intelligent and beautiful girl with the “blue-green eyes and red hair” that we met in his first book.

The important feature of these discussions is that they allow to the reader to formulate his thoughts and to give them a concrete sense regarding his possibly confused and very general views on the contemporary democratic political systems. The reader suddenly sees the obvious and wonders: Why I was not able to see it all this time?

In this book, the writer for once more is trying to find out an analogy between political ideas and physical magnitudes in order to make them countable. This is necessary in order to objectify these ideas and to avoid the potential result of a situation where two contrary opinions can be equally right or equally wrong.

This effort, although indispensable, is still in pre-embryonic stage. It is still at the process of conception. We have not even reached yet the equivalent experiment of John Locke which is described in the book.

Nevertheless, the writer is seeking the means that can be used so as to be able to face the notions and the magnitudes described in the sciences of sociology and politics with the logic of the applied sciences. The energy conception of political power is an indicative proposal which may in the future be proved to be something more important than coherence equivalence.

Athens, July 2005

Nikos Alexandropoulos

Professor Emeritus in the University of Ioannina

Corresponding member of the Academy of Athens

Free download (pdf) E-book: “Direct Democracy in Telearea” 

http://www.solon.org.gr/downloads/Telearea_Dimosthenis_Kyriazis_Teliko.pdf