26 September 2021 by Mondo2.0

Digital Referendums

We describe the evolution of our society toward digital technology. Over the last year and a half we have explained many times, through different examples, how the pandemic and the spread of new digital services have produced, and would produce in the short term, very strong accelerations toward new and unprecedented directions.

The forced and sudden access by millions of Italians to digital authentication services, SPID and CEI, confirms our thesis.

Thousands of people decided to use this new source of knowledge by digitally signing a referendum.

In a digital society one can actively participate in political life, contribute digitally, with just a few clicks.

An important change that, as often happens, required immediate reassurance: “don’t worry, everything will remain as before, signature-collection tables and gazebos will not disappear”.
A lie to reassure us: after every sudden, unexpected digital change, we need to recover our certainties; it is in our nature.

But it will not be like that at all. With the digital signature much less will be spent, signature collection will last days or perhaps hours or, more likely, minutes (driven by a single hashtag), and the same energies deployed by volunteers can be used for other purposes, equally useful and less expensive. There will no longer be signature-collection tables and gazebos, just as there are no longer Blockbuster stores or CD shops.

Who knows whether this type of use of the digital signature, unprecedented in this massive and popular form, will remain limited to specific contexts or whether it will encourage participation in political life among very young people, reversing a long-standing trend and reducing indifference toward laws and the political class.

In the past, in different ways, the Internet has often bridged a gap in terms of social, emotional and even institutional communication. Who knows whether the new methods of digital communication and dissemination, following registration for vaccination lists and the use of the green pass, will lead us toward a more digital society in terms of political interaction and debate.

What if requests for digital referendums increased exponentially?

What if it were possible, in just a few minutes and through a single hashtag, to propose popular-initiative laws and obtain immediate mass support through the network?

Do these scenarios lead us toward a profoundly democratic society in which citizens play an active role? Or toward entropy, toward “fake laws” signed by everyone?

Will it be enough for the political class to raise the signature “quorum” to one million or two million in order to contain the phenomenon of “Digital Referendums”? Or has an unstoppable process of “digital popular participation” been set in motion?

We have applied “real time” to e-commerce, streaming, smartworking, crowdfunding, distance learning, and now also to “Digital Referendums”.

We order our dinner online with one click; why not sign a referendum with one click?

Until today Politics has used the Internet to polarize support, to involve people through web trends and buzzwords (words linked to fashionable “catchphrases”), to steer cyberusers as elections approach. Today, perhaps for the first time, it is the Internet that reaches politics and not vice versa. The communication channel suddenly becomes two-way. Who knows whether our politicians will know how to listen to the network.

We do not know what awaits us, what the next digital step will be, how the relationship between Politics and the Internet may change.

Of one thing we are certain: we are all online and we are increasingly connected, for many hours a day. The network, with its nodes—us—expands rapidly, reaching inefficient, cumbersome aspects and services of real life that do not communicate, and rapidly transforming them into something radically different, much faster and more widespread. Not better, not worse, different. Often irreversibly different.

The dynamic, not always aware, “online” population will increasingly act in a massive, impulsive, popular and digital way on movements, political parties and ethical issues.

Who knows how the political class will react to these new “digital challenges”.

Are you still not convinced that you are in a World 2.0? Then sit at your table in your gazebo and wait, pen and sheet of paper in hand; sooner or later someone who explains how to make a digital signature will pass by …

Mondoduepuntozero