Opinion | How democracy can evolve and flourish in the digital era

Name: Indian farmers threaten weeks of protests as talks with government continue
Uploaded: 2021-02-09T17:15:26.000Z
Duration: 3 min 13 s
Description: Indian farmers threaten weeks of protests as talks with government continue

As virtual communities erase national borders and information barriers dissolve, democracy needs to move away from its industrial-age roots if it is to flourish in this new age of social media and Big Tech

Reading Time:3 minutes

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Liu Jun

Published: 1:15am, 10 Feb 2021Updated: 1:46am, 10 Feb 2021

What has happened to democracy, or at least the democracy that Western countries advocated and fought so hard for? After the recent political chaos that swept Washington, law and order has returned but the conviction for democracy appears to have faltered.

Theoretically, much like music and other art forms, democracy is bound to progress with social advancement. Long before Donald Trump became US president in 2016, society was undergoing a paradigm shift driven by technology and innovation. Online business and the internet in general spurred a big leap forward into the second millennium.

Digitalisation brought about by big data, the internet of things and artificial intelligence has been an even bigger leap. Human behaviour and society are constantly being reshaped by tech-driven productivity improvements, and so is democracy, a central construct of many political regimes.

During the first Industrial Revolution, people were tied to physical premises such as farms, factories, houses and offices. Information did not flow freely and was often limited for ordinary people, making it difficult for them to make important decisions. The realistic choice then was for a well-informed elite to represent the masses and make those decisions on their behalf.

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Indian farmers threaten weeks of protests as talks with government continue

Electoral democracy became a natural choice and consequently, when a government was needed and came to be formed, it relied heavily on this elite minority to function, represent and serve the people.