Future of Teledemocracy

Drawing on the new physics as the scientific foundation of transformational politics, Becker and Slaton write compellingly about teledemocracy, social energy, and democratic quanta. They outline their quantum political theory in rich detail, demonstrating how we have entered a phase of highly charged, erratic, and sometimes self-contradictory packets of social political energy that appears to occur with a rough regularity but with differing levels of velocity and force.Becker and Slaton explore the current state and future of televoting, electronic town meetings, and other initiatives designed to put the public back into public affairs. This book will prove to be a fascinating read for scholars, students, researchers, and policymakers interested in new political paradigms, politics, and public administration.

"Impressive in its scope...written clearly and engagingly...bound to be a very influential and inspirational book."-Jim Dator University of Hawaii, "Stunning. I couldn't put it down."-Hazel Henderson world renowned author and lecturer, "The book The Future of Teledemocracy is one of the most important contributions available today for readers of modern democracy. The contents, with its historical comments, its different models for intensified democratic participation, its descriptions of citizen empowerment systems, its theoretical fundament, and its look into the future of practical democracy using the Internet, makes it a must for large groups of readers."-Tomas Ohlin Professor Institute for Economic Information Systems Department of Computer and Information Science Linkoping University, Sweden, "What a fabulous writing style...I've been looking for a text that combines the theory of participatory democracy with practical examples of this theory...this book does that and more."-Lyn Carson Department of Government and Public Administration University of Sydney, "What makes this book unique is that it shows how the actual developments around the world provide empirical evidence for these theories'. This is the contribution that will make The Future of Teledemocracy one of the classics of teledemocracy studies. This is also a reason why the book is a valuable tool for those involved in designing and evaluating teledemocracy experiments."-Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko Professor Department of Local Government Studies University of Tampere, Finland

TED BECKER is Professor of Political Science at Auburn University. The author of eleven earlier books, including Quantum Politics (Praeger, 1991), he is also a political activist, trying to link teledemocracy, direct democracy, and environmental sustainability.CHRISTA DARYL SLATON is Director of the Masters in Public Administration program and Professor of Political Science at Auburn University. Among her earlier publications is Televote: Expanding Citizen Participation in the Quantum Age (Praeger, 1991).