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There are countries and governments who understand the importance of the internet, and one of them is Iceland. In this article who’ll find out about a brilliant idea that is executed in a brilliant way. Iceland needs a new constitution, and the way it is written is amazing!

Relatively seldom does Iceland produce a blip on most people’s radar screen. The island isn’t all that big, neither is the population, the national soccer team doesn’t strike fear in many opponents’ hearts, and the country’s general demeanor on the international stage is rather reserved.

Volcanic eruptions have earned Iceland—or at least its natural environment—a reputation for disturbing the peace in global aviation, even if Niki Lauda maintains there was no cloud of ash. When we look back a few years, we recall the looming and barely avoided state bankruptcy, which demonstrated that even on a tiny island two days by ship from the European mainland, bankers understood how to transform hot air into money and, when the bubble burst, how to avoid the blame and the tab. Fans of pleasant but quickly forgotten pop music fondly recall entries to the Eurovision Song Contest that usually were not that embarrassing. Iceland is a great place to eat fish. Oh yeah, and there are geysers there—you can take really impressive photos when they erupt. The Icelanders take advantage of their geothermal resources very cleverly to produce energy and to heat their homes.

What most people probably don’t know is that Iceland is one of the global trailblazers when it comes to using the internet. Together with other Scandinavians, people here were quick to recognize that the internet was no evil monster and that paper trails, excise stamps, restricted opening hours of government offices and other such joys of daily life are not absolutely necessary and that quite a few things can be taken care of electronically in a way that is convenient and even elegant. But what this tiny nation has conjured up this time is truly impressive in numerous respects: They aim to come up with a new constitution, one that’s more in tune with the facts and circumstances of modern life than the old one was. Besides, the old one actually came from Denmark, and there were repeated calls to revise it, but you know how it is with provisional solutions sometimes …. Now, since writing a constitution is a pretty major step, they decided to let all citizens of Iceland have some input (at least, all who wanted). They set up accounts on Facebook, Twitter,YouTube and Flickr, and let the people participate in the deliberations of the 25-person committee of elected representatives. The entire process is going forward with total transparency—you see who wrote what, who made a comment, what was deleted and what was accepted. And every couple of days, there’s an interview with the members of the committee, which provides further insights into the work. And these interviews appear on YouTube.

There will no doubt be some skeptics and naysayers out there who will argue: “Sure, with that small of a population, it’s easy. There are so few of them, you could almost do an opinion poll of each one.” Which is certainly true, of course, but it’s not an argument against taking this approach. Another objection might be: “Shouldn’t the fundamental rules governing people’s peaceful coexistence or interpersonal conflicts in everyday life as well as under extraordinary circumstances be more or less timeless?” That is certainly a valid objection; nevertheless, anyone familiar with what went into the writing of a modern constitution for the European Union knows that going about this very involved process in a comprehensive way can easily take more than a few weeks. Needless to say, this doesn’t mean that this potentially new constitution will be the vector sum of all the ideas and thoughts of the whole Icelandic people. But this undertaking will definitely produce a pretty comprehensive and nonetheless effective indicator of what citizens consider important, and this is certainly a desirable outcome. And these things can always be tweaked over time.

In any case, it’s impressive that a state—even a relatively small one—takes the internet seriously and has launched a sincere initiative to take advantage of the channels that, if they are exploited by politicians at all, then usually only for purposes of dumbed-down populism. After all, there’s lots of talk about the influence of Twitter, Facebook & Co., but it doesn’t always have to be in the context of a revolution. A state can also use this instrument in a very constructive way. And if it doesn’t do so and is equally negligent in performing the other tasks entrusted to it, then the resulting situation will soon come to resemble what we’ve been seeing in North Africa, where citizens have taken the available means of networking into their own hands.

A good example of how these channels can also be reversed is currently being provided by China, where the central government is now also trying to figure out how regional officials could have run up billions in debts without federal officials’ getting wind of it. There, the state has developed considerable competence in dealing with the internet to censor and persecute rebels and troublemakers, and they have years of experience doing so. In China, even giants like Google have a tough time keeping their foot in the door. Information is good. Information is evil. Ways and means of disseminating it will be discussed in “Democracy” speeches at this year’s Ars Electronica Festival.