1985

“… Landed in London, with eternal gratitude to a friend I never fully understood, Peter Farrell, who was gone too soon, who burned bright and was always the better gentleman. While he was in Poland touring with a band called ut, I was alone and without distraction for the first time in my life. We shared a tiny freezing attic in a boarding house in Brixton, me the last begrudged lodger in a house already full headed toward Christmas and a world and culture away from home.

As the first snow came down, first came hyperthermia then there was a “Lightbulb moment”, 3 days and nights transported to a future where we, as a humanity, as individuals, quietly governed our communities with care and patience in a world of finite resources and necessary equilibrium between all the species we compete with or consume for resources.

I am the son of a computer engineer who has seen the rise of computational power from my earliest days and it is for a reason, beyond hyper-consumerism and easy, endless entertainment. This is the most complex and distributed communication network to have existed on this planet in the period of our genetic and technological existence. It is the nervous system of a Democracy, the ability for all of us to easily engage with the important things that do have a direct effect on everything around us.

It was also apparent, from early on, that Democracy is something more than just a leader, it’s an actual change in the pattern and thinking of us all, claiming the right to have a say, have a vote, and be in there with a chance of seeing the thing you believe in becoming a reality, or not. There will always be another day if the Issue is important and the harms or losses too great.

Here we are 36 years later, millions of words, posts, articles, comments, tags later with a proposal to make the switch from the powerless voter to the empowered voter, create an economy that thrives on honesty and good reputation powered by voting, utilising the existing network of banking.

Democracy is very simple: we have an issue, there’s a proposal, some discussion and contribution, development, then you have a vote. You use it when you want or need and between us, we make a decision, every time.


The first concept of using the Internet to introduce democracy
- Birth of Pollee - December 1985