  Though successive generations of digital technology have become increasingly
powerful in the past twenty years, digital democracy has yet to realize its
potential for deliberative transformation. The undemocratic exploitation of
massive social media systems continued this trend, but it only worsened an
existing problem of modern democracies, which were already struggling to
develop deliberative infrastructure independent of digital technologies. There
have been many creative conceptions of civic tech, but implementation has
lagged behind innovation. This essay argues for implementing one such vision of
digital democracy through the establishment of a public corporation. Modeled on
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the U.S., this entity would foster
the creation of new digital technology by providing a stable source of funding
to nonprofit technologists, interest groups, civic organizations, government,
researchers, private companies, and the public. Funded entities would produce
and maintain software infrastructure for public benefit. The concluding
sections identify what circumstances might create and sustain such an entity.
