I'm a big fan of opening things up, but direct democracy sucks. Representative democracy is here to stay. Sadly, the fact remains that the 'masses are asses', and I'm one of them. I'll gladly let the masses elect some representatives, but I'm not going 'town hall style' for every single management decision. Can you imagine the apathy?
The time it would take people to get educated, discuss, and even vote on things would be an awful waste of time, and many decisions would lack a clear mandate. Someone needs the power to take decisive actions without submitting everything to a poll. Let me focus on my life, not having to read through a bunch of arguments and vote on ten things every day. At the end of a reasonable period of time, I'll decide if I like the job my representatives are doing.
It's just like baking my own bread, blacksmithing my own tools, or completing my own tax returns. Sure, I can learn the skill and do it at an acceptable level of quality, but if I'm doing all those things all the time, I ain't got time left to live my own life. That's why human civilization decided long ago that it's more efficient to specialize into different occupations: let cobblers be cobblers and farmers be farmers. I live in California, where we have to educate ourselves every two years to vote on these 'direct democracy' ballot propositions. Most of them are shit and bought by special interest groups. But the time it takes to sort through all the pro/con arguments, misleading advertising, etc...trust me, you don't want direct democracy on a regular basis!