By Matthew Carpenter-Arevalo Sometimes in life we become so accustomed to the absurd nature of certain things that we fail to recognize them as absurd. Nowhere are these absurdities more prevalent than in how we manage to govern ourselves with a system designed for a very different reality some 200 years ago. In my own […]
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Archive | May, 2012
Digital Democracy Series: Can ubiquitous connectivity make political parties obsolete?
May 25, 2012 
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If I think ahead into what I want the world to look like in 30 years, one of my hopes is that connectivity will be so ubiquitous that we no longer need political parties to act as the primary means through which we practice democracy. I say ‘practice’ democracy because democracy is, like the act of […]
Continue readingEnabling Economies of Sharing Through Social Media
May 15, 2012 0 Comments
One of the reasons why I get excited about social media and ubiquitous connectivity is because of the potential to develop economies of sharing. Whether you realize it or not you already contribute to economies of sharing: for example, what finances many of the websites you visit is your ability to share information about yourself with advertisers […]
Continue readingTaking Steps Towards Digital Democracy
May 6, 2012 1 Comment
The single most difficult concept for many people to grasp when discussing the possibilities of the future is the idea that as our innovations evolve so too does the context that enables those innovations. For example, when Google made public its self-driving car a lot of people scoffed at the idea that such a machine-driven […]
Continue readingRe-thinking Public Post-Secondary Education Funding in Quebec and Canada
May 2, 2012 1 Comment
The recent students’ movement in Quebec formed in response to the provincial government’s plan to raise tuition fees has sparked a much needed debate on how we should fund post-secondary education. Given that my own opinion on the matter has shifted substantially since I graduated almost ten years ago, I’d like to add my voice […]
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