Our Research
Online Democracy
Computer networks enable individuals to interact and exchange information with any other individual at any time. We consider it likely that this will change the way humans agree on binding rules and norms. The interdisciplinary NRW Graduate School „Online-Participation“ (www.fortschrittskolleg.de) investigates technical, political, social and juridical aspects of a self-organizing society. In this context the members of the chair for computer networks are particularly interested in two issues: how should distributed systems for self-organizing societies work, in order to be robust against failure and attacks? And: how can we provide functionality for distributed collaborative work that enables hundreds, thousands, millions or even billions of persons to participate in the discussion and creation of norms and rules?