Could nano-opinion polls and nano-referenda save the world?

As a kid, I fell in love with computers. I couldn’t believe the magic. Unlike every other machine, a computer was a soft machine. It could do an infinite number of different things depending on how you programmed it. Then I fell out of love with computers for a few decades as I learned how IT manifested in business. The magic seemed to have been throttled, stymied and hobbled by corporate realities – governance, budgets, regulations, politics etc. My multi-coloured digital dreamcoat turned into a grey business suit. The current wave of innovation including Gen AI is rekindling my enthusiasm. I know there are scary issues to be worked out, but for me the magic has returned a little. The opportunity to unthink/unask whole industries and the way we run our countries and communities seems possible. Education is an often-cited example. The endgame isn’t digitally assisted studying. Digital + AI asks much bigger questions like: Does full-time schooling/ uni make sense any more? If we have GenAI assistants permanently at our fingertips/ in our ears/ our glasses, do we need to learn and remember stuff anymore? Or is it more about learning to work together, think critically and access knowledge-on-demand. Government is similarly exciting. As a layman, it seems to me so broken how we make decisions as countries and communities. Each country/ issue has different problems. Sometimes it’s plain old corruption. Sometimes governments don't listen to the people’s will. Sometimes governments/ others overly shape the people’s will. Often digital has made things worse by scaling and democratizing malinformation and hacking. The Brexit kerfuffle was a standout negative example. I love the idea of taking advantage of digital to radically change government. Maybe offer people the non-mandatory ability to learn, share their opinions/ vote on small issues through nano-referenda. And people having to take a test to show their understanding of issues before providing their opinion or voting. Not necessarily to exclude them if they don’t know enough, but to understand why they hold ther opinions they have. Some people don’t love this idea because they believe a government should be voted in for 4/5 years without continual back-seat driving/ micro-managing by the populace. And making people take tests to vote may sound elitist/ non-inclusive. And there are issues of bias in creating the education/ setting the questions/ interpreting answers. Such large-scale systems would also present new attack surfaces for bad actors. But can’t we try a few new things? Maybe we can move the needle on some of the perennial challenges of government. Digital possibilities both make experimentation more necessary and more possible. #unthink #unask #government #governance #community