A political science professor will tell you that direct democracy was possible in Ancient Athens most likely because of their small number (2000 or so participants). Nowadays we live in multi-million citizen countries (also multi-billion), making direct democracy unfeasible. It's hard to "listen" to that many people.
However, our technologies allow for the following - we can easily have anyone vote through connected electronic voting polls. Furthermore, in this day and age it is rather simple to gather citizen's opinion through all sorts of interfaces - mobile phones and computers being at the forefront. Our ability to analyze data - and more importantly written text - and assign some sort of meaning to it is remarkable, and better yet bound to become more sophisticated. This can be used to an advantage in the following way:
1-Set up interfaces (or terminals) where properly identified citizens can express their opinions for change, and concerns. Data entry can by type or voice.
2-Analyze each entry for content.
3-Cluster entries by content.
4-Create framework where most prominent concerns are brought to the political representative, who will then proposed a policy to solve the issue.
5-Have citizens vote on the proposal through interfaces.
