Good luck with that. If you even tried to convince drivers to do that, they'd scream about a conspiracy to track everyone's movement (beyond the tracking that already exists).
Er... you think you're startup (microcosm), which is glorified forum software, will change "political systems, the structure of them and how populaces engage with them?"
Take an interest in anthropology and observe how communities interact and shape the environment (and systems of hierarchy and control) around them, and then consider how software can influence interactions.
Not that I'd argue with you with where we're at today. The destination may be over the horizon, but the first milestone is right in front of us and looks like we've barely moved. Which is true.
The internet does rewire the fabric of society. Facebook has a big role in modern revolutions. I'm just skeptical that the forum format has the potential to bring further material advances.
I guess a question could be asked about whether Hacker News has had any impact at all. Has it brought people together, in ways that has fostered new innovation or the creation of companies or approaches to ideas, or resulted in any political lobbying whatsoever on any front?
Almost regardless of how impact is quantified, the answer is going to be yes.
Looking at any influential forum within any given vertical, that same pattern is repeated over and over.
Impact is material and real, when enough people with a shared interest come together.
Could the impact have been more measurable if the technology that powers forums been more supportive of the users needs? Again it's hard to answer that software that more easily helps pull people together in the real (as well as in the virtual) world and strengthen those bonds within a community wouldn't have more impact than software that didn't.
Forums are impactful, and do bring about advances. But currently only in small groups and without the impact or advances being accessible to other groups. The question isn't whether this happens in forums, but whether it's possible to encourage it to happen and what may emerge if it happens more often in similar ways. Could forums be used as a testing ground for new political structures within large groups of people, could they be used to evolve and prove those structures, and could the mechanisms of self-organisation within a forum be mapped back onto the real world.
It's not as crazy a thought as you might imagine, the seed is there and the tools do not support the way people are already trying to work. The tools today hold people back from what they naturally try to do, but if the tools supported people better things could be different.
Both HN and Facebook are not regular forums (they have distinct features). If you are trying to change politics with software, perhaps a good way to approach the problem is to try solving something specific, then build the community and write the code to do precisely that. One example is gathering support for specific campaigns. I live in Bulgaria, we have active protest movement against the current government, and a lot of the coordination and debate happens on Facebook. I had a specific campaign in mind that didn't happen for legal reasons, but it would have been very interesting otherwise. Send me a mail if you want to know more.
I think it's a mistake to think about real and virtual world as separate things. We live in a single world, and the online part grows more important with time. There are bits that are quite independent from the offline part, like interacting on HN with pseudonyms. Other bits, like Facebook, are typically much closer and interconnected with our offline life. Some mobile apps are even more integrated with the real world, although they are not very social.
I have found it is next to impossible to get more than 0.01% of my contacts to do that...so until someone figures out how to make pgp as easy as gmail, i'd like an alternative
You know what, if we want to attribute the state of Pakistan and its conflict with India to the British occupation, I'm fine with that too. I'm not spoiling for an argument over this.
"After a stalemate in negotiations between the Nizam and India, mass killing and rape of the Hindu population by Razakars, and wary of a hostile independent state in the centre of India, Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Patel decided to annex the state of Hyderabad."
Wow, good thing that genocidal Nizam was forcibly put down...
Er, how about the section of the article titled "Aftermath"
"After having received information that widespread communal violence against Muslims in reprisal for previous atrocities against Hindus,[17] Prime Minister Nehru sent congressman Pandit Sunderlal and a mixed-faith team to investigate. Reporting back the team estimated that between 27,000 and 40,000 civilians have died and that some members of the Indian army and police force participated in violent acts.[18]" I wouldn't call that a minor overreaction. My grandfather didn't leave Gulbarga in 1948 because he was sick of the climate.
From the cited BBC article: "The investigation team also reported, however, that in many other instances the Indian Army had behaved well and protected Muslims.
The backlash was said to have been in response to many years of intimidation and violence against Hindus by the Razakars."
It's clear we each have our biases, and this discussion could go on.
I only brought up the wikipedia article in the first place to show that violence against Muslims resulting from the annex of Hyderabad wasn't unprovoked. Both sides were wrong in some of their actions though.
>It is much more civilized than many nations and has much of the institutions that make a modern nation. Just that the military and religious extremism
Given that the Pakistani military and ISI control so much of Pakistan's government, is this a worthwhile distinction?
Quoting from the article: "Apps for Education is used by K-12 schools and institutions of higher education throughout the world..."
Go to the Apps for Education page at Google, select "Customers", choose "K12" and it lists 10 primary and secondary education school systems as profiled "customer stories".
For example, "Saline Area Schools is a suburban/rural public school district of 5,450 students K-12 located in southeast Michigan, about 50 miles west of Detroit." ... "Encouraged by the success with faculty and staff, the Saline IT team will soon roll Google Apps out to their 3,200 students in grades 5-12."
That is "not the full list". That is a list of "customer stories", and certainly a subset of the full list.
In fact, it's the site I suggested you visit. Next, use the pull-down under "all types" to see that the three targets are "K12", "Organization", and "University".
Rephrased: it is a feature, but it implies a tradeoff: people who are considered more important than you control your money. One which I don't consider worth it. I've never had a problem with stolen assets of any kind other than in the physical world, and I consider my physical assets that were stolen fair, I would not want a God government who can see every single thing that happens in any place and any time so they can recover my physical assets.
Good luck with that. If you even tried to convince drivers to do that, they'd scream about a conspiracy to track everyone's movement (beyond the tracking that already exists).