Social Media and Goverment

Rheingold's talk reminded me of one I had this summer with a friend. Just as he discussed the impacts of social media and collaboration on business, we discussed its impact on government, specifically the United State's government.  During its creation, congressmen were elected as a plausible way for each state to be given fair representation since the communication abilities of the time would never of allowed for each person to voice their own opinion.  However now, as we have discussed multiple time in class already, people are constantly connected to their phones, their facebooks, and twitters. My friend argued that social media has provided us with a new form of independence that would ultimately be the death of democracy. I argued the opposite, that social media could be used as a way for every one's voice to be heard, not just lobbyist, not just campaign contributors but everyone. Just as easily as we set up surveys online, political topics of all kinds could be posted to online community sites. Online participants could be separated by town or state and votes could be tallied and the individual voice could be heard not just the largest one.