By Dennis Polhill

Alvin Toffler describes these changes as "waves," with the agricultural age being the first, the industrial age the second and now we have entered the third wave of information and technology. To say that the scale of social change associated with the transition from first wave to second wave was gigantic is an understatement. The American Civil War was as much a result of the confrontation of the first and second wave, as it was a war over slavery or states’ rights.

Transition from second wave to third wave will be equally seismic.

The seeds of this new age were planted about 1950. Its impact has accelerated with the introduction of the personal computer in 1980, and now the Internet. Already more than one thousand individuals in the Denver metro area have set up personal bulletin boards on their home computers. It is predicted that Internet servers such as CompuServe will be obsolete in less than a decade, television in five years. Clearly transition trauma from the current age to the next will be greater because the time line has been compressed. Individuals will feel the world shift under their feet in their lifetimes.

The move to an information society cannot be stopped, slowed or steered. Individuals and institutions with a vested interest in the second wave will do all in their power to resist change. Industrial society gave both economic freedom and personal freedom to individuals. The information society will produce even more economic and personal freedom for most people.

Our political system is as vulnerable to the effects of the information age as is our economy. Education, labor, capital and corporations must change. All of the systems that were made to look and function like factories for the industrial age must now be reshaped to respond to the unique needs and demands of individuals. The entire thought process upon which we built regulation, legislation, political parties and political processes is no longer relevant.

However, transition solutions have yet to be visualized and articulated. The new paradigms for the third wave are up to those who have the courage to innovate, to lead and to implement.

There is an augmented risk to society that our political systems and our political leaders seem to be the most inflexible. Instead of acknowledging that present systems, like taxation for example, no longer seem to be working, our elected officials move to restrict the spontaneous urges of the people to fix things themselves. For example, they take steps to make petition and referendum more difficult. However, the trend cannot be thwarted. There will be more not less democracy in the future.

I am going to speculate on what I believe will be four major changes in the political process as we know it. They are Minority Power - Majority rule is obsolete. Various forms of public policy implementation such as proportional representation and systems of conflict resolution will replace it.

Semi-Direct Democracy - The form of democracy (representative democracy) invented by the Founding Fathers was appropriate for their time when 90% of the people were illiterate. And since direct democracy carries the weight of "tyranny of the majority" which is obsolete, a moderate and reasonable middle ground is semi-direct democracy. Although now under attack from the political establishment, the initiative and referendum process will eventually gain momentum. People will demand the right by petition to propose a bill, to modify a bill, to bind the vote of their legislator, to set up public hearings, to establish a legislative committee, or to make a formal expression of priorities to the legislature either for policy action or spending.

Decision Division - As the amount of information grows and as the pace of decision making necessarily accelerates, it becomes functionally impossible for decision making to be dominated by central control.

Political Information (PI) Systems - Officeholders voting records, ratings, etc. will soon be readily available to everyone on the Internet. Slanted coverage, spinning by political parties and management of the news will be overcome by the sheer volume of information available to everyone. Already independent candidates and splinter third parties are mounting attacks against rules and procedures that discriminate against their involvement in the process. Predictably, the powerful interests that are threatened by an expansion of democracy are digging in their heels.

Abraham Lincoln said, " We must disenthrall ourselves from the past. Otherwise it becomes a barrier to the future."

Dennis Polhill is a Senior Fellow with the Independence Institute, a think tank in Golden, Colorado.