I just read the piece on collective intelligence and I am intrigued but also noticed some potential problems. Pierre talks about how democracy is going to be expanded to the point where everyone can vote over the Internet and form mini centralized governments inside of each community that would constitute larger governments. These larger governments would then possibly construct one centralized government that would determine the best laws and policies for the whole human race. This would have an advantage to our current form of democracy because it would bind all actions of one country (assuming there are still countries in this futuristic view) with the reaction or consequences to the rest of the world. For example, America is content to accept low priced and generalized goods but is unable to produce most of these goods at these low prices. This has caused companies to set up in third world countries to supply the cheap labor to supply these goods. In the future Pierre describes, the central government will not only have to deal with the need for goods but will also have to deal with the poor working conditions and the meager few cent wages for the people in these undeveloped parts of the world. In that sense this future, this will bring the world together and hopefully achieve a greater common good.

I also see some down sides to the proposal of unified and easily accessed democracy. Democracy is designed for people who are intelligent enough to distinguish and decide between what they want and what society needs. Everyone wants poverty, global warming and problems in health care fixed, but how many of those people actually want to pay to have those problems fixed? When was the last time there was a strike to rally the people to raise taxes so the government could fund hospitals or schools? Combining the vote of the whole world to make laws would boil down to who has the largest population to determine who gets what they want. This would benefit a particular group while possibly hindering the rest of the people. This actually ties into the second problem I would like to address, the division of who gets to vote on specific issues. Stanford should not get a vote on our student government and I should not be able to vote on how laws governing some foreign country I have no affiliation to. Everyone should have a say in a government designed to benefit all of mankind, but it would be extremely difficult to determine a law that would apply to everyone everywhere. It is hard to picture this future working.
This started as a comment but I got a little carried away. I do like the concept of an expanded democracy, but I am a weary on how this government will establish. The idea of a collected intelligence that is based on democracy, theology and information provides an in depth look at the future of global interactions and the impacts they will have on everyday people. This will hopefully be the biases for a new and more efficient interaction between people and government and will allow for a united front for the human race.
Kevin Campbell