Below is a link to download our final paper.http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AXU6Z8uAVtrWZGc2dHo5a2RfM2hkOXE1OXFo&hl=enSee More

How the System WorksOur system of voting works like most voting systems, where a voter participates by voting of course. The first difference in our system is that the voters do not have to go to a polling place, and sit in abooth in order to vote. With our proposed form of democracy, every person inthe country that is eligible to vote is able to. The voters are able to vote onany issue they feel like voting on, all from the comfort of where ever theyfeel like voting from, whether it is at…See More

Here's the link to our VOTE website:http://www.utdallas.edu/~jrw051000/democracy/democracyMain.htmlSee More

Electoral college reading:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_electoral_collegeSee More

Democracy and Data Dissemination: The Effect of Political Regime on Transparency, p.1-28http://homepages.nyu.edu/~bpr1/papers/BPRJRV.pdfThe End of Secrecy, p.1-14http://www.derechoasaber.org.mx/documentos/pdf0043.pdfSee More

Here's the link for the PDF for one reading titled 1754-1783: Government and Politics: Overview.See More

Copyright Laws. To me, just another aspect of our government that’s completely ridiculous. I understand that the artist has some right to protect their creative content, but I think the current legal restrictions go well beyond what is necessary.Being an advocate for small government, I’ve always had this view on most of our laws. Take for example the current the drug laws in this country. The average sentence for a first time, non-violent drug offender is longer than the average sentence for…See More

Watching this, I liked the points brought up, and while I was watching it, I thought about writing and how ideas are shared and remixed all the time when coming up with a story.In fiction, many people believe that there are only X amount of plots a story can have(I think I was told it's 27 one time, so lets go with 27 total possible plots)So, obviously, after a short amount of time, all of these original plots have been exhausted, so every story afterward would be a "remix" or rehashing of one…See More

About halfway through the movie the discussion reached DRM, and my first thought was about EA's Spore. While the use of DRM was nothing new, somehow EA crossed a fine line that went too far into controlling the user's ability to access the product they purchased. By the time they addressed the problem, Spore had already earned the title of "…See More

As I was reading this, the section I found the most interesting as related to our group's possible project ideas would be some of the sections inside of chapter 3. Oh page 7 in chapter 3, when I read "...we are seeing the phenomenon of peer production of information scale to much larger sizes, performing more complex tasks then were possible in the past for nonprofessional production." I thought to myself, hey this probably can have some significant influence on democracy and politics in…See More

"Following this work and rooted in the deliberative strand of democratic theory, I suggest that the networked information environment offers us a more attractive cultural production system in two distinct ways: it makes culture more transparent, and it makes culture more malleable. ... In these senses, we can say that culture is becoming more democratic: self-reflective and participatory." The Wealth of Networks, p15"Here and there throughout this book you will encounter instances where I…See More

This book covers how information has been stored and organized throughout the course of history. We have always been restrained, prior to the digital world, by lack of space and inability to label sufficiently. For example, a file folder has room for about two or three words on its tab. Now, however, we can label a digital folder in a very limitless way. The idea is that, in the new era, everything can be miscellaneous - more or less in a big pile out in the metaphorical nowhere - but still…See More