Psiphoning Democracy

Every so often you come across a technology that has profound democratizing effects on society, with the Internet as an obvious example. There's P2P file sharing, which (legal issues aside) democratized the distribution of music, video and other artistic media, or the democratization of editorial expression with the proliferation of blogs, or the democratization of political fundraising with Howard Dean's presidential campaign web site. The list goes on.

One of the most recent technologies to fit this bill is a project out of University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. It's a technology called Psiphon that's doing its part in the war on freedom of information against countries like China, Iran and North Korea, who are collectively spending billions of dollars on firewalls and means of censoring information that would otherwise be freely available on the Internet. Psiphon is a software application (although I'm sure that's not doing it justice) that propagates information by breaking down technology barriers to the freedom of both expression and access to information.

(You've probably read about Google's recent agreement to conform to China's stringent censorship requirements, a move that drew some heavy criticism and questions about whether Google is living up to one of its corporate value, to "do no evil.")

With Psiphon as another role model, what's the next democratizing technology going to be? Could we use a peer-reviewed, collaboration technology to develop a real global solution to climate change? Will new wireless communications technologies engage Canada's youth more in the democratic process? What about a supply chain management system that automatically, and profitably, directly excess food supplies to global communities in need?

I'll tell you one for sure (more on this later)...an actual, fun video game about Canadian History!