Hacking Egypt For Better Democracy

from the not-just-the-outsiders dept

Tue, May 31st 2011 10:09pm — Mike Masnick

Having already covered how hackers from Anonymous have been taking part from afar in various middle east uprisings, it's probably worth noting that some other folks are doing some cool hacking projects as well, including a Hackathon for Egypt effort, that brought together hackers and activists to see if new technologies could be built that might be useful to implementing a more democratic system in Egypt. For example, some folks put together a platform for crowdsourcing the creation of a Constitution:

The conference's most intriguing result was a platform for crowdsourcing the new Egyptian constitution. The platform, which appears to have drawn inspiration from a similar project in Tunisia, allows users to simultaneously browse constitutional texts from multiple countries, propose articles and ideas online and to collaborate on compiling the ideas into a workable text. Owing to Egypt's special circumstances, the platform also contains extensive provisions for off-computer use--many Egyptians simply don't have regular access to either a computer or the Internet.

Who knows how effective these efforts will be (my guess is that, initially, they won't get much use), but it's still nice to see, and hopefully as we see projects like this grow, they'll become more effective and useful.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: democracy, egypt, hacking

11 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 1 Jun 2011 @ 12:03am

I Look Forward To Seeing ...
... the foundation of the national legislature with [citation needed] scattered all over it ...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chris in Utah (profile), 1 Jun 2011 @ 1:45am

May be interesting. A Next Gen culture in thee oldest culture alive.

History lesson for the day. The Phynx is 8000 years old but the Qur'an holy words detail out the age of man is only 6000 years old so it goes against there religion to actually detail this out. Look it up :) Then we wonder why Egypt doesn't want to find out whats in the chamber under its foot.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Jun 2011 @ 7:11am

Re:
What the hell is the Phynx?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
hegemon13, 1 Jun 2011 @ 7:17am

Democracy is a ruse
How about starting with a constitution that protects individual liberty? Building a better democracy doesn't matter if you allow the majority to usurp it. If they really want to improve the world, they need to quit worrying about implementing a specific form of government and start worrying about promoting liberty. There's a reason that the US always promotes democracy in our occupied countries: it's easy to control through propaganda and manipulated elections, and it keeps people calm by giving the illusion of control over their government.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Hephaestus (profile), 1 Jun 2011 @ 11:36am

Re: Re:
I think he means sphynx
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Jun 2011 @ 2:48pm

What is Democracy?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Lorianne Updike Toler, 1 Jun 2011 @ 3:05pm

reposting your blog
Can I repost this on my blog about constitution writing?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Ben Rowswell, 1 Jun 2011 @ 11:20pm

Re: reposting your blog
Lorianne, I don't have the right to speak on behalf of the Techdirt blog but we in Cloud to Street would certainly be happy to have you talk about our Hackathon. More details at www.cloudtostreet.org.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike Masnick (profile), 2 Jun 2011 @ 12:49am

Re: reposting your blog
Can I repost this on my blog about constitution writing?

Sure, of course.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
SaulD, 3 Jun 2011 @ 5:11pm

Hi, Mike Masnick, I heard you are an Ashkenazim going way back to your first dwarf-like ancestor who climbed out of a tree. If you don't know what an Ashkenazim is, ask Sergey Brin, he married one. Do you know your breed is infected at an alarming rate with all kinds of genetic diseases that don't affect the general population? It's a good thing you're gay, Mike, because we wouldn't want you inbreeding with another Ashkenazim and producing more cretin-like defectives. The fact that Sergey Brin and his Ashkenazim wife already did that is scary enough!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
lrobbo (profile), 12 Jun 2012 @ 10:13am

Hackathon for egypt - cracks me up!
[ link to this | view in thread ]