I'd say we're entering that era. Still, both Democracy and its help from technology have a long way to go. DemocracyOS is trying to shorten the distance between citizens and representatives, by letting the formers debate and vote on the same bills that are treated in parliament, prior to them being actually voted, so the formers may take their opinion and actually carry the people's voice into the House.

That's pretty good for starters, IMHO :)

The most important part of democracy isn't the tally at the end of the decision-making process, but the process itself. I'd like to see more tech work done on the discursive aspects of democracy: not only being able to voice your opinion, but to be able to cross-reference parts of your opinion with factual studies and opposing opinions and aggregate opinions into general feelings on subjects.

Yeah, I know we have Gallup polls. I think we can do better with better tech. I don't have a strong vision for it or I'd be building it myself, but it's something I want to see.

ETA: Not to detract from the current achievement, which is really awesome. It's just the easy part, which is the right thing to take care of first.

The problem with direct democracy isn't technical, it's that most people have lives of their own to live and don't want to have to cast a ballot on every issue a government has to deal with. Have you seen the lengths people will go to in order to avoid jury duty? Now imagine if we all were on permanent jury duty, every day, all year. People (including me!) would hate it.

There's also the problem that most people aren't familiar with the intricacies of every single issue. If you're a baker, you've spent your life learning the fine details of baking bread, which is great if a bread-related issue is up for debate but not so much for anything else. The result is that you'd either get lots of people casting completely uninformed votes at random, or opinion leaders would emerge who people would blindly follow to avoid having to research every issue.

Representative democracy avoids both these problems, by letting the vast majority delegate their votes to someone who manages them full-time so they can go about their own lives, and by putting that full-time representative in a position where she can learn independently about the issues, and hire a staff to help her do that.

I think a lot of people would enjoy being asked whether they want their tax dollars to go to another contract for a defense company, or whether education or medicare should be cut. Presently I think many people feel it is the large funders and lobbyists that dictate policy.

And I understand not wanting to worry about issues deemed not important. But then you can abstain from participating in such polls.

I think this would provide a natural check and balance -- important issues draw a crowd, smaller issues are handled by the bureaucrats. Don't you think?