What could possibly go wrong here! Facebook, the same place where people drunkenly message their exes and solicit assassins, is now going to birth Iceland’s next constitution. The government wants user feedback while they make a new one. Prudent.
So the Icelandic people will pitch ideas on The Book, The Guardian reports, and the drafters will (potentially) incorporate these ideas into their fresh founding document. Is this a bad idea? The country’s government pretty much collapsed in the wake of the global recession, so things probably can’t get much worse. Now I’m sure the Icelandic are a wonderful bunch, and as two thirds of their population uses Facebook, this is potentially a good way to inject some democracy in the regime’s jugular. Nonetheless—I can’t help but shudder at the idea of Facebook being used toward anything that might affect the future of an entire country, given the internet’s tendency to yank out the most jerk-y and looney tendencies in us. I wouldn’t look for a wife on colour, and I wouldn’t look for a government on Facebook. [Guardian via Motherboard]
Callie R
Friday, June 17, 2011 at 6:51 PMmy in-laws are from Iceland and they’ve all made sure to add their opinions to the pool and on the whole they all seem very excited to be able to so actively have a say and the beautiful thing about using facebook is that even children can contribute…so for once, the opinions of the people that will be most-effected by the documentation and the laws that come about out of this will have a say.
their economy collapsed, but no, their political system never did. their government was salvaged thanks to their President using his supposed to never be used veto powers to shut down the parliamentary voice of the political party responsible for offering the banks kickbacks and is going strong because the Icelandic have a very “f*** you” attitude to anyone that doubts them or stands in their way. this wouldn’t work with somewhere like the USA, but Iceland only has a population of approximately 300k people and they have one of the highest rates of education in the first world; of that population, they have a higher rate of university graduates than countries in mainland Europe.
you can see them already using facebook to help the people have a say in their governance through the small-scale operations of Jon Gnarr and the Bestiflokurin / Dagbók borgarstjóra. the guy is a COMEDIAN (an awesome one at that) and through simple community and common sense, he and his party have done a great job in the mayorship of Reykjavik. also worth noting, their prime minister is not only female, she’s an out and proud lesbian that married her long term girlfriend and the Icelandic love it. they are THAT kind of people – they’re SO receptive to new ideas.