Urban Pulse

Crowdsourcing has been used to create an encyclopedia more accurate than the Encyclopedia Brittanicca, Wikipedia, help companies create advertisements, and grant the wishes of a 15-year-old with a terminal illness. Now, Iceland is using crowdsourcing to draft a new constitution. The constitutional council made a draft of the document open to the public and citizens are free to leave suggestions for amendments via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. Recommendations must be approved by local staff before being passed on to the council and posted for discussion. Once the council approves suggestions, they are added to the draft of the document. Kudos to Iceland for taking democracy to the next level by not just having citizens vote on whether or not they agree with a constitution, but actually play a part in creating it. I hope that this is the direction that countries begin to take moving forward. Imagine, what would you suggest if given the chance to truly make a difference in how your country operates? I’m sure that citizens of Iceland will also feel empowered, even if their suggestions are not taken or the constitution doesn’t look exactly as they imagined, because they played a crucial role in shaping their country. With new technologies, anyone and everyone can be a founding father.

-Merany