Does technology – specifically highly-interconnected members of a democratic republic – offer a realistic means to wrest the control of the republic away from “They who have corrupted it”?
To answer that requires that you accept the premise that the republic is corrupted in some way. That is a multifaceted argument of some passion that isn’t going to be solved any time soon. Let’s just say it is and move on.
Presumably, any good argument in favor of the corruption will say some or all of the following:
- There is too much power held by too few;
- The corporations and special interests have too much influence in a zero-sum competition for political power and federal funding;
- The gap between rich and poor is growing and the middle-class is shrinking;
- The “regular” people are locked out of the political process, as evidenced by low voter turn-out and disenchantment;
- Corporate ownership of big media, plus the proliferation of partisan news outlets, has made objective political journalism a thing of the past;