Forum Post: to a quorum and beyond

The mission of wiserearth.org is "To help the global movement of people and organizations working toward social justice, indigenous rights, and environmental stewardship to connect, collaborate, share knowledge, and build alliances in order to strengthen their ability to address and solve the world's problems."

I wrote an article, "to a quorum and beyond," to contribute to the discussion of WiserEarth strategic goals for 2012. Since the article is fairly brief, and may be of general interest, I am copying the full text into this message. Regards, John Kintree

** begin article ** In a decision making body, there is typically a minimum number of members who must be present to be legitimately authorized to make decisions. This is called a "quorum." Frequently, a quorum exists when at least half of the members of the decision making body are present.

Sometime during 2012, it is possible that the number of people who have Internet access will reach half of the global human population. It is also possible that by the end of 2012 there will still be less than half of humanity that has Internet access, but we will be close.

According to Internet World Stats, as of March 31, 2011, there were 2,095,006,005 Internet users. Estimates of the number of Internet users from previous Internet World Stats reports can be seen in the WiserEarth resource "World Internet Users and Population Statistics."

A WiserEarth article, "Global PC, Tablet, Smartphone Sales," contains estimates of the number of Internet access devices that will be sold in each of the next few years. It is a rapidly growing number from one year to the next, with close to a billion Internet access devices, not including cell phones, projected to be sold in the single year of 2012.

The total number of people who have Internet access does not indicate the speed of their connections; a dial-up connection is not fast enough for decent quality video. Nor does it indicate the quality of the information that can be accessed; vital information might be censored or blocked behind proprietary barriers. Nor does it indicate the literacy or perspective of the people who are accessing the information; people tend to believe what they want to believe, or what they have previously accepted as the truth.

Those concerns would not apply uniquely to a self-organized global decision making body. All deliberative assemblies must deal with the diversity and limitations in abilities, knowledge, and perspectives of their members. The greater the number of people involved, the greater the diversity, and the greater the capacity to fill in for each other's gaps.

We may or may not reach a quorum of humanity with Internet access during 2012. We are close enough to a quorum that it is not too soon to begin thinking about what we will do when it happens. * end article **