Those very different assets and organizing principles previously alluded to are embedded in the design of the country and now — given the routine nature of networked communications — our everyday lives. By connecting that design directly to the citizenry and the source of their power and authority, the environment of special purpose is enabled. It starts with the humble voting district, our most powerful (and forsaken) form of organization; capable of shrinking a gigantic nation into its local components and making its multitude of constituencies visible and manageable. By mapping the spectrum of offices/officeholders within our vast landscape of local/state and federal districts and connecting them to their voters – their selectorates and electorates – and these citizens to each other, visibility gives rise to an ever more informed citizenry capable of action. These dynamics of citizen control will be accelerated and strengthened by the information the Citizens Access Network’s user-member will both build and have access to in this eco-system; that will go beyond the office and office holder. The confusing hodgepodge of local rules that necessarily results from the decentralized and democratic-republican nature of the nation can be tamed with deeper mapping and simple documentation; providing the citizenry more and more command of their country:

• Rules, procedures and distinguishing characteristics for various elections; particular offices, non-partisan or party affiliation etc.
• Election dates, locations and voter registration methods
• Rules and procedures for candidates seeking office: ballot petitions, deadlines, dates, costs

The foundation of authority that will drive these actions, and make them effective, are confirmed by the power of open ballot access and ownership of the nomination; which makes visible and unquestionable the citizens ability to grant or deny every aspiring/elected official their seat of office. Now, the citizen is both informed and has the authority to deliberate and act. Never again will public action depend on others empowering or permitting it; a power shift of significant proportions to say the least. The nature of participation in this electoral system ensures the numbers required to create these dynamics are easily quantifiable and always very small. These few will encourage many more as this visible power and purpose transforms our current failed model of an Election Day into an electoral landscape as they:

• Stimulate electoral competition and extract all its vast potential
• Manage the electoral process; define its means and ends
• Can swing any election and force all politics of the constituency through this network
• Produce the knowledge/media necessary to explain the stakes and set the agenda

Putting these assets to work would mirror the decisive capabilities of elite networks and easily enough do these things:

• Create subgroups that can focus on specific problems
• Leverage the specialized expertise that exists within the population
• Incentivize the participation of other and/or publicly known experts
• Operate within a framework that is publicly owned, priority focused and solutions oriented
• Organize the creation, sharing and use of a truly new form of media

This form of genuine collaborative media will:

• Originate from the initiatives, deliberations and priorities of the people.
• Be focused on public policy - from local matters of stops signs to national and international matters of war/peace, money etc.
• Be backed by their fully realized powers as nominators and electors; which is no fiat!

However, the clarity that we face a crossroads is required because:

• Failure to make these connections will ensure our long-standing and failed media model will go on - or follow its current path to its logical end.
• Experience should indicate that it will be unquestionably impossible to resolve our political and social difficulties without an approach to media that accounts for these failings.

This is not to say that our media can count no accomplishments but that persistent fragmentation combined with the domination of a few siren platforms - built for very different purposes than powerful citizenship - has ensured these outcomes. Personal and entertainment matters are one thing, but the domain of civic affairs is another and necessitates a separate track. http://www.karlalbrecht.com/downloads/Albrecht-IR-BrokenPromises-WorldFutureSociety.pdf There will be no civil society - in any sense of the term – without a specifically purposed civil media. Here again there is pivotal interdependence:

• To drive the creation of this media form means those who participate must have full confidence that its product will have immediate and powerful impact
• No positive change can be effected without a form of media that is connected to spontaneous authority and the possibility for impactful action

There are other considerations as well. With many mushrooming problems, some clear and present dangers - all of a specialized nature - we face not only a crossroads but also the need for a great unraveling; there is a lot to do. But, with it obvious that our elite jet setting people, their institutions, and meetings are not up to that task, it falls to the capable people. Failing their intervention, we can expect the imposition of more sweeping changes, some perhaps commanded by “emergency”, which will affect everyone on the planet. As is typical, they will be:

• Established in impenetrable, multi-thousand page laws with more multi-thousand pages of regulations to come
• Directed and carried out by the same authorities and institutions responsible for the crisis in the first place - however reformed they may claim to be

To avoid this fate and master our own destinies we must begin by assembling with the correct knowledge as to our powers as citizens of a very unbroken system.