How To Build a Web 2.0 Government?

UltraAyla writes "With the announcement that President-Elect Obama will record his weekly address as a YouTube video to be posted at Change.gov, questions arise as to how an Internet-fueled candidacy based in part on a platform of government openness can begin to use technology to make government transparent. Aside from popular Slashdot policies, such as Net Neutrality, how do you think government (either in the United States or elsewhere) can best utilize technology to engage the public and make government more transparent and accessible?" Reader Rick Zeman points out a related New York Times story about how Obama will have to give up some of his communications gadgets because of the Presidential Records Act. Despite that, he apparently hopes to be the first US president to have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office.

Comments

We've already got one!

[ColdWetDog]

Web 2 government?

Hot air, buzz words, no substance ...

I fail to see any substantive difference from what is going on now. Besides, since it looks like convicted felon Ted Stevens might actually lose the election (good work Alaskans - now we're one for 4), the tubes are right out.

Re:We've already got one!

[biryokumaru]

Psh, if you want to quibble over semantics, why not just say: If Obama puts his laptop on his desk, does it become a desktop, or is it still a laptop?

(Or is that just what Web 2.0 is? Everyone uses crappy laptops instead of desktops now?)

Re:We've already got one!

[Arancaytar]

The main differences between a laptop and a desktop are the mobility and the integrated battery powered UPS.

Oh, right, and the desktop can contain water-cooled blazingly fast graphic cards, which you need for high-power gaming, but not much else. I haven't used a desktop in five years now, neither at home nor at work.

Re:We've already got one!

[fat_mike]

Hot air, buzz words, no substance ...

Are you talking about the article or our new President?

Re:We've already got one!

[Zero__Kelvin]

You have obviously never sean my laptop :-)

The medium is NOT the message

[petes_PoV]

The problem with accessible government is that no-one's interested. Even where there are dedicated TV channels (e.g. in the UK) hardly anyone watches them. Why's that? Because the work of government is almost 100% pure tedium. No-one wants to watch what happens in committee meeting - even if that's where the laws are actually made, nor do are they prepared to sit through hours of televised debate.

If by accessible, you mean dumbing down the work of government to cartoon-form, with nothing more than a series of 5-second sound-bites, then good luck. But that's not government in action, it's a soap-opera.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[russotto]

Because the work of government is almost 100% pure tedium. No-one wants to watch what happens in committee meeting - even if that's where the laws are actually made, nor do are they prepared to sit through hours of televised debate.

But the laws aren't actually made there, either, except in a few rare cases. The laws are written by lobbyists and decided upon in behind the scenes deals; the committee meetings usually just ratify the deals already made. And in those rare cases, the committee meets in closed session.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[caramelcarrot]

I think the point is more that the tedium can still be documented on a medium that is ideal for large abouts of tedious stuff - the internet - and then the interesting bits can be found and talked about. See what the UK group OpenSociety has done with www.theyworkforyou.com , like the processing of The Hansard into accessable form http://www.theyworkforyou.com/search/?pid=10068&pop=1#n4

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[Anonymous Coward]

No-one wants to watch what happens in committee meeting

There are a few examples of committe meetings with really wide viewerships (e.g. the Bork confirmation hearings). Admittedly freak events.

Another extreme case is local government: suddenly debate over the most obscure bits of zoning regulation can fill a room when it has an impact on the neighbors....

But for virtually every committee meeting, there's going to be *some* people out there with an interest. Worth putting on broadcast TV? No. On youtube? Definitely. And opening them to more viewers could be interesting.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[Meccanica]

dumbing down the work of government to cartoon-form, with nothing more than a series of 5-second sound-bites, then good luck. But that's not government in action, it's a soap-opera.

I've always heard it called 'television news'.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[omeomi]

nobody is interested because 99% of it is BS anyway. Do you think listening to Bush's radio address will actually make you more informed about facts or about inane talking points that'll be repeated by news shows as "news" anyway? Give the public actual information and I think you'll find them more interested

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[Eil]

If by accessible, you mean dumbing down the work of government to cartoon-form, with nothing more than a series of 5-second sound-bites, then good luck. But that's not government in action, it's CNN.

Fixed that for ya.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Think of it like source code. Have I personally read the kernel code? Nope. Have other people? Yes. Did I gain a benefit from that? Yes.

Not everyone has to be able to sit through every committee meeting. But all it takes is one person pointing out the interesting point for everyone to tune in to.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[corbettw]

Sounds like you've never watched the Taiwanese parliament "debate" on C-SPAN II. That's comedy gold, right there.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, it allows interested people to get the information they need. That's always a good thing.

Good metaphor with the kernel.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[Roxton]

Absolutely. The beauty of the community model is that there is always a small number of people willing to digest, integrate, and increase the availability of valuable information. Like Wikipedia, 90% of the contributions come from 10% of the participants, but the 90% still reap the benefit. That's known as the power law.

It's off-topic, but let me just say that this is why I want academic journals opened up. I know there's a case to be made against it, and we'll have to deal with those concerns. But I want a world where this community mechanism applies to science, where the operations of different graduate labs across the country are understood in context in an accessible way.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[TeXMaster]

Good metaphor with the kernel.

You must be new here. Good metaphors only have cars in them.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[Anonymous Coward]

non-sequitur:

The problem with accessible government is that no-one's interested. Even where there are dedicated TV channels (e.g. in the UK) hardly anyone watches them. Why's that? Because the work of government is almost 100% pure tedium. No-one wants to watch what happens in committee meeting - even if that's where the laws are actually made, nor do are they prepared to sit through hours of televised debate.

Anybody taking part in this discussion is by definition at least interested enough in accessing our government to want to discuss how we might be able to do that. Because some will not exercise the option does not mean that anybody, and far less that everybody, should not have the option to take more active roles in self-representation.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[BlahBlahWhatBlah]

TV is a sequential access medium and therefore totally inappropriate for direct democracy access by the masses. In the medium of TV, the message would indeed be tedium. It all needs to be search-able, cross-linked and able to be interactively commented on. Once we can all directly get to the thing we really care about to comment and vote and influence, the medium and tedium will not be associated.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[MilenCent]

The problem with accessible government is that no-one's interested. Even where there are dedicated TV channels (e.g. in the UK) hardly anyone watches them. Why's that? Because the work of government is almost 100% pure tedium. No-one wants to watch what happens in committee meeting - even if that's where the laws are actually made, nor do are they prepared to sit through hours of televised debate.

This is, strictly speaking, not true. It's not that no one is interested, it's that almost no one is.

And that's not practically the same thing, either. Transparency makes it so the good journalists and bloggers, those who actually somehow like sifting through all that tedious data, can, and then report the upshot to us. Transparency allows the press (when it's working correctly, which one could argue, I admit, it isn't right now) to do its job.

But it is not true that this necessarily renders everything down into sound bites. There's a world of differences between insightful commentary and five seconds of video.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[Verity_Crux]

"100% pure tedium"

I don't think they have 100% of anything posted on the internet.

Here are some things I'd like to research (aka, put this on the internet): how many employees are there in the various government departments, particularly the IRS? Can I get this data for the past 150 years? How much money goes to each department? Can I do a word search on all our current laws? Which bills are currently active and which are not? What's the constitutional basis for each bill currently in effect? (O wait -- like that will ever happen...)

I've been thinking a lot about starting my own political party that is entirely web-based in its voting and block meetings. This is looking to be an ugly challenge. In the first place, most states require a paper voter registration. The voter party registration data isn't available online and isn't updated often. Second, what is a good method to verify address for voters? Or, assuming you can get the party registration record and it's up to date, can you really trust the address on the voter registration?

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[ITEric]

Right then - take the brake system on a car as an example...I don't need to know how the entire system works in order to press the pedal and stop. On the other hand, I should know enough to check the fluid level and add fluid as necessary to keep them stopping in the future. Without access to the reservoir, I'd never know when the whole system would fail and cause a fiery crash.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[mcrbids]

Two points I'd like to address here, GP and Parent posts...

The problem with accessible government is that no-one's interested. Even where there are dedicated TV channels (e.g. in the UK) hardly anyone watches them. Why's that? Because the work of government is almost 100% pure tedium. No-one wants to watch what happens in committee meeting - even if that's where the laws are actually made, nor do are they prepared to sit through hours of televised debate.

In order for open government to work, it doesn't have to be watched by everybody, or even most people. Most of gov. work *IS* tedium, it's dry, boring, highfalutin stuff. But by making it open to everybody, it's open to the few people that are paying attention, the few that make a difference.

And don't think that it takes more than a few. Take a look at the heroic work done at Black Box Voting - seriously, she's a middle-aged, overweight mom with no particularly special credentials. Google images for Bev Harris - yes that's her - and you'll see what I mean. But she's paying attention and she's making a difference. In my book, she is one of the greatest heroes there are, today, in the United States.

As a private pilot, I recently attended a meeting of my local City Council regarding the handling of traffic and fuel at the local airport. It's a meeting dryer than the Sahara in August, small-time politicians discussing a matter that's fundamentally small-time in a small town, in a meeting where the decisions to be made were made elsewhere. Yet it concerned me enough to speak, to be present, and to be heard. I was not alone. And although 99.99% of the local community didn't care, the fact that I did was enough.

If you want govt. to be as interesting as an episode of Survivor, please, pray tell, don't live in or have influence in my community!

But the laws aren't actually made there, either, except in a few rare cases. The laws are written by lobbyists and decided upon in behind the scenes deals; the committee meetings usually just ratify the deals already made.

Yes, it's a soap opera. And to believe that merely attending a meeting will make a huge difference is naive. It won't. But the meetings are the "action points" - they let you know how hard you have to work, and with whom, in order to coordinate your activities. In my previous example, discussing airport politics at the local city council meeting, do you not think that I'd discussed the issues at hand numerous times with other people involved? Why do you think that I was brought in, except for being known as somebody who's fairly noisy and politically active in my community?

Meetings are for coordination, not for decisions. This is true in business as much as it is true for government. Which is why: always be wary of a meeting for which no agenda has been published - it's very possible you are going to be ambushed.

And in those rare cases, the committee meets in closed session.

Thus, the cry for an open government. For the most part, you *have* an open government, if you are willing to get involved. See example of political hero Bev Harris above for how to do this.

When you realize that the power to influence government is actually wielded by a precious few who are paying attention, you will be stunned at just how much power you really have! Just pay attention, and put in the time to learn the rules of the game.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[TeXMaster]

(OTOH, the kernel metaphor was way better, and more to the point, so good for me I was just joking.)

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[tk702000]

I tend to agree with you, God knows I've never rushed home to watch anything on C-Span. I do think though, that part of the problem has been that the information made available to the public was half-duplex. With the Internet so widely used now a days, the ability for citizens to actually weigh in on issues is possible. Just a thought, but if they design Government 2.0 to be interactive, I think that a lot more people will want to get involved. Hell, Obama's campaign in and of itself is a testament to that.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[russotto]

But the meetings are the "action points" - they let you know how hard you have to work, and with whom, in order to coordinate your activities.

You understand you're speaking a foreign language from most of Slashdot's perspective, yes? I can no more "work with" politicians and the like than your average politician could write a Quicksort routine in 8086 assembler.

When you realize that the power to influence government is actually wielded by a precious few who are paying attention, you will be stunned at just how much power you really have! Just pay attention, and put in the time to learn the rules of the game.

You need more than that. You need time, a lot of time, often more than a full-time job will allow. You need basic charisma, both to obtain supporters and to be able to talk to the players. You need connections, to get you access to those people in the first place. And you need to not have an opponent who simply outclasses you. It's not enough to learn the rules to the game; you have to be able to act on those rules.

Re:The medium is NOT the message

[mcrbids]

You need more than that. You need time, a lot of time, often more than a full-time job will allow. You need basic charisma, both to obtain supporters and to be able to talk to the players. You need connections, to get you access to those people in the first place. And you need to not have an opponent who simply outclasses you. It's not enough to learn the rules to the game; you have to be able to act on those rules.

And you know this because.... ????

Please, please take a look (again!) at Mrs. Bev Harris. She's a mom - no particular political connections to begin with. She had plenty of classy and well-oiled salesmen opposing her. She had to learn the rules of the game, and she has a distinctly "Roseanne" air about her - not exactly polished, charismatic "leader".

Yet, she's managed to turn the tide of history. She is an unsung hero, somebody who changed the world in a very real, subtle way that few really recognize but is appreciated by many. Her actions have resulted in, among many other things: parody by the infamous Simpsons. Small victory? Perhaps not - Obama won by a landslidein an election closely watched in no small part due to her efforts.

Say thanks to Bev! Throw her $100, or $50, or $10 if that's all you have. Be glad you did - your $10 will go farther than $100 you'll pay in taxes, and she deserves it! (I donated - several times over the past few years!)

Oh, and in case you are watching: thanks Bev!

That is soooooo... 2006

[plopez]

What we need is a cloud computing government on a morph best-of-breed solutions platform to exploit efficient initiatives to envisioneer synergistic opportunistic public-private partnership solutions to national and global issues.

Let's for a joint public-private-faith based coalition to design a mutual framework and pray that it works.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[dreamchaser]

I find your new paradim aligns well with my plans. I would like to subscribe to your blog.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[curunir]

You jest, but Government really is a legacy system, written ~230 years ago by developers who have long since moved on. The people who came after them have been generally fearful of making any substantive changes, opting instead for minor revisions and, when new features became necessary, generally attempting to follow the techniques in the original framework without really understanding why those development strategies were used in the first place.

So what we have now is a maintenance nightmare. It was bad in 2000, but over the last 8 years, the government has relied almost entirely on contractors who have generally ignored any existing infrastructure and have re-written many things from scratch in languages that they've basically made up as they've felt the needed to. They've done this without any regard for stability, performance or maintenance going forward. They knew they'd be gone by 2009 and the problems they were leaving behind would have to be solved by other developers. As a result, we have one of the most resource hungry governments in the world, and the performance is pretty crappy. For example, there's a job that's been running for 6 years and still hasn't completed yet. No one is really sure what the job is supposed to do, but so far it seems that the only thing it's done is used a ton of resources to hack into another system and try to install another copy of our system in its place. The newly hired lead developer has indicated that he's planning to kill that job, albeit without the necessary '-9' flag, so that's hopefully going to free up some much needed resources.

It's at this point that the managers in charge should start looking at best-of-breed solutions from the rest of the world and trying to implement them. There are much more efficient ways to get things done that what we currently have, and we should begin by choosing a much more proven, stable and performant platform on which to build our government. And we should shift our security focus partially away from the external threats that have so far been our main focus. Instead, we should look at trying to eliminate at least some of the viruses running in our current system.

We need to face the fact that we've got the Windows Vista of governments. We had the Windows XP of governments before the last administration tried to entirely re-build our systems. They placed a priority on DRM and the appearance of security and generally built a system that requires more resources to run than we have. They've made cosmetic changes to distract people from realizing that the underlying infrastructure is pretty crappy. It may look current and modern, but at its core, it was written for an entirely different time and for an entirely different target audience. And its fundamentally unable to deal with the viruses that exist today (*cough*lobbyists*cough*).

We should be looking at ways to run Socialism (the OS X of governments...very user-centric, less gets done but people are generally happier, though it's hard to figure out exactly why that is considering how much they're paying for it) or Libertarianism (the Linux of governments...almost nothing is done for you, but if you're determined enough, you can make it exactly what you'd like and have a lot more resources left over for doing the things you want to do). Both of those platforms hold more promise going forward.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[Anonymous Coward]

bravo! well said.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[Reality Master 101]

You've got the right general idea, but the wrong analogy.

The proper analogy is that the original government was like Unix -- small, elegant, efficient, and decentralized. As society has gotten more complex, we've grafted on more and more onto the basic framework, making it far more complex. But at the core, it's still the right way to do things.

Windows Vista is Socialism -- an attempt to "cast off the past legacy of Unix" (analogous to Capitalism) and rewrite things to be all things to all users. And what you get is a gigantic resource hog that barely functions, but convinces people through pretty, shiny colors and pretty, shiny marketing that you have total freedom (e.g., "life without walls" or whatever their propaganda slogan is this month). And through ever increasing processing CPU power (/ever increasing debt spending), people believe that it works.

OS/X is the freedom of Unix, but with an attempt to add a user friendliness to the process -- kind of like Obama (though the jury is out on how much he actually believes in freedom, but let's go with it). Linux is more like a Libertarian government -- total freedom, but total responsibility as well, and only a geek's view of taste and beauty (in other words, little taste at all).

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[plopez]

The proper analogy is that the original government was like Unix

Wrong still. The original platform was formed by committee, with compromises over features, scope and departmental subsystems roles (i.e. state's rights). It was based on compromises and feature creep. 10 new features, called the bill of rights, were added at the last minute when some user balked at adopting the platform as not user friendly enough. Since original deployment, the platform has been modified an number of times with features being officially added and removed. Other features have been extended, added or deprecated in often creative ways by super users (often referred to as "presidents" or SCOTUS). See previously mentioned bill of rights. There has been a growing tendency for the super user to have root access without sharing the password other power users, even though the original program called for decentralization of roles.

HTH

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[Zero__Kelvin]

What, no Beowulf Cluster?

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[Reality Master 101]

Wrong still. The original platform was formed by committee, with compromises over features, scope and departmental subsystems roles (i.e. state's rights). It was based on compromises and feature creep.

You think Unix wasn't? Unix had plenty of compromises and plenty of modifications over the years to fix various things that weren't done right at the beginning. But at it's core, it had the right *philosophy*, which was what was guiding and influencing the features that were added.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[Zero__Kelvin]

I'm sorry to hear that you have no experience with modern Linux distributions. If you had, you would have seen a real world example of Linux kicking Vista's anaemic ass in the GUI/Prettiness/Usability domains. (And this video is OLD. The disparity is MUCH greater now that KDE4 w/ Compiz-fusion has matured.)

And lest you seek to spread such an absurd myth that Windows is "easier" than Linux, handing the average user two laptops with no OS, a copy of Vista to install, and a copy of a truly great Linux distribution (like Mandriva, e.g.) they will have no more success with one than the other.

My 72 year old Mother has been using linux for more than 5 years. She is very vociferous about her joy in not having to use that horrible Windows anymore (and I'm NOT there to hold her hand.)

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[inKubus]

I would like to see some good version control. If you look at the congressional record, it's full of crap like "Strike out the sixth sentence of chapter 12, paragraph 348, replacing with: 'b. except where already addressed under USC 90.01.23'"

WTF? I would like something like Trac where you can click on ANY statement in the US Code and see instantly:

What changes have been made, over time
Who sponsored the changes
Who voted for, against, present
Links to related code, as needed
Public opinion related to the law
Press releases by public offices/personel about the law

All with a nice Google timeline kindof interface.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[Anonymous Coward]

I submitted an idea exactly like that for Google's Project 10 to the 100th, er, project. If it makes it to the next round, I would feel honored if you would support it with your vote to see it become a reality.

(Posting as AC for personal reasons related to my submission.)

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[magus_melchior]

Buzzword salad FTW.

I'm sure that scored a multi-bingo on Wally's buzzword bingo card.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[mu22le]

Mhmmm I'm confused, could you make a car analogy?

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[lawpoop]

We should be looking at ways to run Socialism (the OS X of governments...very user-centric, less gets done but people are generally happier, though it's hard to figure out exactly why that is considering how much they're paying for it)

I love these memes that have run rampant in the American psyche. In 1996, I was an exchange student in Finland for a year. Made a couple life-long friends. Now I'm thirty, have a job with no benefits. I pay my own health insurance, pay off my student loan, and invest in my own IRA. My car is older, it needs some repairs, and I am trying to decide if I should repair it, buy a younger used car. I'm worried about how I'm going to care for my parents when they get old. Nevermind me and a family !

Meanwhile my Finnish buddies had school paid for, have health insurance, retirement, public transportation, and 6 weeks of vacation. They complain about their life, for sure, but things don't look as bleak for them as they do for me and my peers.

Nothing gets done in a socialist country? Why, turn off Fox News and visit a socialist country. You'll have a wonderful experience in a modern, state-of-the-art civilization. Is it expensive? Yes. Like anything, if you want quality, you have to pay for it. I've been to several socialist countries in Europe, they're all wonderful, clean, and safe. I've been to South American countries, which I regard to be libertarian paradises. There are no rules, nobody pays their taxes. Politicians siphon of all the money anyways. The streets are unpaved, with raw sewers in them. Whole families, mom, dad, and kids, live on the streets. You can buy anything you want in the market -- anything. The whole place is a shithole, but the people really are free. No cop or anybody is going to tell you what to do. You might get beat up by a gang over $10, but you are free. It's kind of cool in a Mad-max way.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[deranged unix nut]

Add a Google Alerts type thing to that so I can be notified any time a bill is up for a vote by my representative and any time anyone proposes a bill on copyright law and I think we instantly make government a LOT more transparent and accessible.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[curunir]

Nothing gets done in a socialist country? Why, turn off Fox News and visit a socialist country.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but I was actually advocating the switch to either a socialist or libertarian mindset in this country. I just tossed in the nothing gets done bit to make it appear a bit more balanced (unlike the Faux News that you assume I watch). I've spent plenty of time in countries that are more socialist than the US, though I've never made it to any of the scandanavian countries (which I gather take it further than the western European countries do).

And, FWIW, I use a mac whenever I'm not being forced by my employer to use something else.

I've been to South American countries, which I regard to be libertarian paradises. There are no rules, nobody pays their taxes. Politicians siphon of all the money anyways. The streets are unpaved, with raw sewers in them. Whole families, mom, dad, and kids, live on the streets. You can buy anything you want in the market -- anything. The whole place is a shithole, but the people really are free.

Wow...hypocritical much? I actually lived in South America for a couple of years and I've been all over the continent and your blanket generalization is completely unfair. Yes, people are poor...but in what 3rd world country is that not the case? And stuff sucks everywhere, but that's a pretty universal condition as well, especially in the 3rd world. But calling it a shithole is completely unfair.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[lawpoop]

I'm not sure if you noticed, but I was actually advocating the switch to either a socialist or libertarian mindset in this country.

Sorry, your fairness and balance threw me ;)

Wow...hypocritical much? I actually lived in South America for a couple of years and I've been all over the continent and your blanket generalization is completely unfair. Yes, people are poor...but in what 3rd world country is that not the case? And stuff sucks everywhere, but that's a pretty universal condition as well, especially in the 3rd world. But calling it a shithole is completely unfair.

You're right. Calling South America a shithole was out of line. I was wrong.

People are poor in the third world, and my question is, "Why?" The US was poor once. Japan was poor once. Europe has been poor many times over. Why is there a first world and a third world? What lifts countries out of poverty and provides for the common person? I argue that it's because of social democracy and the labor movement bringing people out of poverty.

These days I think libertarianism is like communism. It sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice -- it simply turns into fuedalism, which is more or less what you mostly have in South America -- corruption, cronyism, etc. I think that libertarians are misguided in thinking that free markets will provide for the people.

It's easy for an American to visit South America, live and travel amongst the upper 10%, and think that it's more or less like the US. But the thing is, what we consider middle-class in the US is wealthy. We have a hard time realizing how wealthy we really are. So for all those people who want less government in the US, and want to be more like South America, I hope they never experience that slide into poverty, because chances are, they'll end up in the poor 90%, not the rich 10%.

Re:That is soooooo... 2006

[curunir]

It's easy for an American to visit South America, live and travel amongst the upper 10%, and think that it's more or less like the US. But the thing is, what we consider middle-class in the US is wealthy.

For what it's worth, only part of my experience in South America would fall into that category. My first experience in South America was in high school as part of an amazing program called Amigos de las Americas. That was just 2 months, but I was living with a family in a rural part of Paraguay where the only people we (my partner and I...they always put people in groups of at least 2) saw were the two Mormon missionaries that were stationed there. The family we stayed with was very well off for the area, but our project involved venturing out into the countryside to give immunizations to children who's parents wouldn't normally bring them into the health center to be immunized, so I saw a lot of the poorer side of the country...to the point where we often ran into problems when we encountered families that only spoke Guaraní (the local indigenous language) and not Spanish.

My later experiences living in South America were in much more urban settings where I'll readily admit that I was not interacting with the poorest people on a day-to-day basis, but my first experience has stuck with me, so when I traveled around the continent, I was always looking for chances to venture off the beaten path and meet people who weren't accustomed to meeting Americans. It's always much more enjoyable to break down pre-conceived notions about Americans by showing people who only know the sterotype that there are some Americans that speak fluent Spanish, respect their culture and are genuinely interested in getting to know them. Some of the most amazing experiences of my life have come as a result of extended conversations on bus rides that end up with me being welcomed into peoples homes and being shown incredible hospitality and being pointed towards many of South America's hidden gems (the kind of stuff you don't often find in guidebooks.) So I feel confident in saying that I've seen a pretty good cross-section of South America, though I've spent very little time in Brazil, so there's a huge part that I'm still planning on exploring.

On the other matter of what led to the US moving from being poor to one of the wealthiest nations in the world, I'm not sure you can attribute it to any one thing. It's probably some measure of the founding principles on which it was based. It probably also has a lot to do with the pretty remarkable tradition we've had to peaceful transitions between governments, which cuts down on corruption since leaders know they can't simply ignore elections that their party loses. And I think some of it can be attributed to us being the escape valve for people who were looking for a better life than they could hope for in Europe. Then there's also slavery which was, while morally-reprehensible, an enabler of growing a very powerful agricultural economy. So I guess what I'm getting at is that I think there's a combination of quite a few fairly unique occurrences that led to the US becoming wealthier than almost all of the other American countries. And as far as Libertarianism goes, I do believe that an entirely-Libertarian government would probably be a total disaster, but trying to move our current system in a Libertarian direction would be very helpful, if only to reduce government spending and remove what I believe to be the single biggest problem in this country...the "War on Drugs." The resources that could be freed up by reducing the prison population, increasing the workforce and increasing revenues by legalizing and taxing the less harmful drugs is simply staggering.

Executive Privilege

[Renaissance 2K]

I didn't realize, until reading this article, that law is what forced the presidents to remain unwired. I just always assumed they were out of touch with the technological curve.

Still, that makes the president the only American citizen completely immune to spam, phishing, and those annoying e-mails laden with photos of dogs dressed up like superheroes.

That's some pretty hearty executive privilege.

Re:Executive Privilege

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm frankly surprised that that is the case and I wonder if it isn't the law per se as much as a somewhat hidebound cya interpretation of the law.

Obviously, we can't have the president using some goofy webmail account loaded with cross site vulnerabilities and hosted god-knows-where, nor can we have him using the RNC mailserver, beyond the reach of document retention laws*cough*. That said, though, email security and retention are not exactly rocket surgery. Strong crypto is a consumer level technology at this point, and virtually every corporation of any size already has experience with massive email retention. If anything, it is easier to build a retention system for electronic documents than it is to build one for paper documents in equivalent volume.

Re:Executive Privilege

[Rick Zeman]

I'm frankly surprised that that is the case and I wonder if it isn't the law per se as much as a somewhat hidebound cya interpretation of the law.

Obviously, we can't have the president using some goofy webmail account loaded with cross site vulnerabilities and hosted god-knows-where, nor can we have him using the RNC mailserver, beyond the reach of document retention laws*cough*. That said, though, email security and retention are not exactly rocket surgery. Strong crypto is a consumer level technology at this point, and virtually every corporation of any size already has experience with massive email retention. If anything, it is easier to build a retention system for electronic documents than it is to build one for paper documents in equivalent volume.

You're missing the point--it's not that they can'tbuild a retention system, it's that they don't want one. They don't want every word or thought (or lobbyist/Abramoff buying them off) captured for posterity.

Plus, the NSA would probably shit a brick if the Pres had a Blackberry since every BES packet flows through a foreign country.

Re:Executive Privilege

[porcupine8]

Yeah, I was pretty surprised at that. I understand that there may be security risks, but it seems like the pros would outweigh the cons. And while Obama may be able to do his job without a blackberry or any email at all, with only a slight loss in efficiency, what about presidents 20, 30 years from now? I imagine that at some point there will come a time when such restrictions actually get in the way of the president's job in a meaningful way.

Re:Executive Privilege

[witherstaff]

Bush hasn't followed the Presidential Records Act and "lost" more than 10 million emails. without getting into trouble. With this kind of precedent why should any future president give a damn?

Re:Executive Privilege

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point--it's not that they can't build a retention system, it's that they don't want one. They don't want every word or thought (or lobbyist/Abramoff buying them off) captured for posterity.

But wait! I thought that was only due to the EVIL George Bush/Haliburton/Cheney conspiracy! This is about CHANGE! Open government! Yes we can!

Sadly, this is not the coming of the Obamassiah. Obama is just another crappy politician, albeit more left-leaning than most.

Plus, the NSA would probably shit a brick if the Pres had a Blackberry since every BES packet flows through a foreign country.

Every ENCRYPTED BES packet flows through a foreign country. Fixed that for you.

Further, the blackberry platform has already been audited by the US government (and others, like NATO, UK, etc). The US government accepts blackberries for information that is "Sensitive But Unclassified". Some of the President's work falls into that category.

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp

I'm sure the NSA could modify blackberries to be more secure, especially if the President really, really wants one.

Re:Executive Privilege

[Rick Zeman]

Every ENCRYPTED BES packet flows through a foreign country. Fixed that for you.

No, you didn't. Encryption isn't an end unto itself. Every packet could have ROT13 encryption and your statement is still as valid.

Further, the blackberry platform has already been audited by the US government (and others, like NATO, UK, etc). The US government accepts blackberries for information that is "Sensitive But Unclassified". Some of the President's work falls into that category.

If you see what BushCo has done with security classifications during their past 7+ years, you'll see that "Sensitive but Unclassified" is a useless category--just about every communication as classified higher (so it doesn't have to be disclosed, not because it's intrinsically secret).

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp [blackberry.com]

Thanks. I've always been curious about that, but not quit curious enough to go digging.....

I'm sure the NSA could modify blackberries to be more secure, especially if the President really, really wants one.

The physical device is the safest piece of the chain, assuming that the admins have passwords/encryption set up.

Re:Executive Privilege

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

Plus, the NSA would probably shit a brick if the Pres had a Blackberry since every BES packet flows through a foreign country.

ahem, going through Canada would mean NSA would be allowed to intercept it. NSA isn't allowed to intercept domestic communications. They usually asks the Brits to spy on US soil http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3488548.stm This gives them a short cut. If 20% of americans know in their gut that Obama is Muslim, (and all muslims are fire breathing terrorist dragons) they need to keep an eye... err... ear on him.

Re:Executive Privilege

[rrking]

I agree that the Blackberry is scarry for this as it is routed thru a foreign country. But the NSA might like this as they will be able to spy on the Pres Communications as they are routed thru the foreign country. And they already allow the military to use blackberys as they used to be the only device that was approved. They now have windows mobile devices that can meet the standard.

Re:Executive Privilege

[ka9dgx]

If it's good enough for all of the Senators to have, why can't the Commander in Chief have one? The job sucks enough as it is, without having to be forced to use sub-standard communications infrastructure on a daily basis.

government open source efforts would be nice

[reusr1]

It would be nice if the government would start open sourcing all software projects developed within or for the government. It should be possible to cut development cost (states ultimately share the source code of some of their projects) and the projects payed by the people would be for the people.

Re:government open source efforts would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't they already public domain except where they're considered military secret?

Re:government open source efforts would be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I've always wanted to try the IRS software on my laptop.

Re:government open source efforts would be nice

[GodKingAmit]

Well work done by government employees does not have copyright. But for most government software they pay outside contractors to develop the software which is then licsenced to the government. This results in the contractor retaining copyright and preventing public distribution of the source code.

Re:government open source efforts would be nice

[reusr1]

funny - but yes, I would like all states to share their tax software instead of have one developed per state.

Re:government open source efforts would be nice

[reusr1]

where can I get the custom accounting application or budgeting application the state had written for them? Would be nice if somebody could provide a link or a how to do this.

Tools for gov.

[foniksonik]

Wikis for pending legislation.

Only members of congress ( or their staff ) can make changes, but anyone can add a comment to any change. Use a moderation system like on /. to hide frivolous comments and to ensure that insightful comments rise to the top.

Use an issue tracker for existing legislation. Have a problem with a law? File a bug. It may be marked as trivial or may get fast tracked as a patch. Either way you know it's status and can organize to get that status changed if enough people agree with you.

Use RSS feeds to distribute Congressional hearing notes, comittee transcripts, and legislative votes.

   

Re:Tools for gov.

[langelgjm]

Wikis for pending legislation. Only members of congress ( or their staff ) can make changes, but anyone can add a comment to any change. Use a moderation system like on /. to hide frivolous comments and to ensure that insightful comments rise to the top

I've thought of this before. Though, I wonder about the value of any of it.

/. has a pretty good moderation system, or at least it seems to me. But while it works a lot of the time, it also sucks a lot of the time. Comments that sound right, or that people want to be true, are modded up, regardless of whether they are actually true. Comments on legal matters are probably one of the best examples of this.

Of course, from time to time you'll have a trusted source say something (think NYCL), but there are many instances when I've seen factually incorrect information modded to +5 Informative and stay that way.*

Furthermore, I get the feeling we'll be more likely to see something like this: http://obamacto.org/ than a more complex moderation system. Note that at the time of posting, "repeal the DMCA" is the third ranked suggestion. Of course we all know the problems with the DMCA (anti-circumvention provisions come to mind first), but repealing it would also get rid of safe-harbor provisions. How many people who clicked "vote for" thought of that?

In any case, it's not as if legislators are just going to look at the top five things on the list and implement them. At least, one hopes not.

Where a moderation system would work well is in the thousands of public comments that are submitted to, say, the FCC when they ask for public comment. That way instead of a flood of inane commentary, then can see some highly ranked ideas first.

*If my own comment becomes an example of this, here is a disclaimer :-)

Re:Tools for gov.

[ColdWetDog]

Only members of congress ( or their staff ) can make changes, but anyone can add a comment to any change. Use a moderation system like on /. to hide frivolous comments and to ensure that insightful comments rise to the top.

Nice idea, but in practice - just think of it: the trolling, the 'off topic' rants. If Slashdot has issues with moderators having some sort of connection with the topic, and the topics here tend to be fairly limited in scope, can you imagine the 'comments' on bills that range from arcane farming subsidies to Barbie Dolls?

Besides, the Federal Register is available on line and has every bill (and then some). I believe (and am too lazy to look it up) that you can access bills in committee somewhere on line. At least you can for some states.

Re:Tools for gov.

[Tubal-Cain]

But that makes too much sense!

Re:Tools for gov.

[modmans2ndcoming]

Which is why Change.gov is not a live feed of Obama's daily life, it is video and audio and documents and messages meant to communicate policy and make a much more transparent government.

Re:Tools for gov.

[AnyoneEB]

The Metascore project (part of the Metagovernment project) is working on a moderation system that would work for a discussion of that scale, which may be interesting. I do not know if they will come up with a working solution, but it is worth looking at.

Re:Tools for gov.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The other issue is conflict of interest. With the exception of some stories being blog/adwords pimpage or slashvertisements, and the occasional similar scuffle in the comments, nobody on Slashdot has all that much to gain or lose from things going any particular way. The Management just wants things to flow smoothly and traffic to stay high, and everybody else is here for the entertainment. Under such circumstances, people are generally decent, and the few that aren't tend to be blatant and uncreative, and thus easy to shoot down. If, instead, Slashdot were populated by people with nontrivial stakes in moderation outcomes, the place would be a mess.

Re:Tools for gov.

[mellestad]

How do you protect this from gaming though? Imagine what Wikipedia, or Google Search even, would turn in to when billion dollar laws were at stake.

Re:Tools for gov.

[pacificleo]

" That way instead of a flood of inane commentary, then can see some highly ranked ideas first." Problem with suggested method is that it will eventually reduce to an exercise in sophistry [ never mind that even /. behave like that sometime] . IMHO most effective method of having a directly participative govt is to have a weighted voting system . where people get different number of votes on specific topic . an architect might get more votes on an issue related to urban planning than a n accountant . who might get a more votes on Finance matters . This enable a true meritocracy

Re:Tools for gov.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikis for pending legislation.

...because we never get disagreement about what new legislation should contain?

(what, irony? What's that then?)

Re:Tools for gov.

[complete loony]

Modernising law would require a strict compilable language and virtual machine to apply it. The interpretation of law is pretty strict already, just formalise it and build a model that can evaluate how it applies. You'd need a CM system of some kind, test cases to see clearly how the law would be applied. The court system can submit patches to clarify interpretation, establish which parts of law apply with which precedence where this hasn't been specified, and add exception handling. Congress can submit patches to change the functionality, mark sections as deprecated.

However it will probably never happen. The work involved is bigger than the effort being made to formalise and verify mathematical proofs, and it would be far more complicated.

Re:Tools for gov.

[Anonymous Coward]

Best. Idea. Ever.

Re:Tools for gov.

[MadMidnightBomber]

I refer you to my sig. Meant to be the response when someone was asked why his company didn't do sensible thing X: "It makes too much sense and doesn't cost enough."

Re:Tools for gov.

[foniksonik]

Regarding 'gaming' the comments, certainly there is room for this to happen but in all fairness this already happens - it's called Lobbying, except that it happens behind closed doors and out of the public eye. If people were to attempt this type of activity the Press would be all over it digging up the commenters background info and discovering who was trying to moderate up various views.

The idea was in fact exactly as you say regarding the FCC public comments... except that it would be centralized and available for all legislation.

What's great about a moderated comments system is that you get comments on the comments, and those are usually even more interesting than the original... so someone hits on a good topic, then others iterate on it.

Re:Tools for gov.

[Shotgun]

Great idea, except:

-an urban planning project would probably need more input from the accountant than the architect. Streets don't pave themselves, and all that.

-power would then settle onto the guy that gets to decide who gets who vote on what and in what proportion.

Settle that second one, and you've reached governmental nirvana. All forms of government eventually boil down to "who gets to decide."
 

Laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

With built in microphone and web-cam? That should keep foreign agencies and other bored kiddies busy for a bit.

It's pretty obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

Digg will replace Congress (ie people will Digg up the laws they like, bury the ones they don't)
Flickr will replace National Parks (who needs to go outdoors when you can see it... from your computer!)
Google will replace the CDC and provide health care (just Google your symptoms)
Twitter will replace the USPS (do you really need private letters?)

Laptop??

[E 99]

A self-respecting president would have something a bit more functional than a laptop on his desk. It should also get sucked up into the oval office ceiling at a touch of a button.

transparent?

[Anonymous Coward]

why do you want or expect any government to aim for transparency in the first place? Isn't that a typical conservative/free trade/etc. delusion?

Presidential Records Act???

[Anonymous Coward]

> Obama will have to give up some of his communications gadgets [CC] because of the Presidential Records Act.

As opposed to deliberately ignoring or subverting it like the present administration has?

A real how-to

[dino213b]

This is really simple: provide data feeds to the public -- from various government collection sources.

End of story. We don't need the government to spend months, or years even, building websites which dumb data down for us. Give us the raw data feeds and let us create mashups, interactive content and let people make their own judgment based on it. Sure, some sites might need heavy design (such as educational loan repayment sites, etc).

A prime example of this data feed is something like DC's http://data.octo.dc.gov/

And what can people do with that? Well, something like this:

Drunken sailor map

Re:A real how-to

[Silona]

exactly - I don't want the govt interpretation because I want to know the bias. There is no such thing as interpretation without bias I prefer to at least know what that bias is IE Cato vs ACLU Cheers! Silona

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

transparent online voting - 300 million double checkers.

the foundation of the us government is re-presentation.

a request

[omar.sahal]

The only problem I had with Obama was his vague speeches (hope, blah blah change etc) it seemed to say nice sounding things but not give any detail (lots of room for being weaselly letter on).
change.gov seemed 48 hours after Obama was elected to have (under the title agenda) a detailed policy list. This however disappeared quite quickly. Another site however seems to have all his policy details but is by a group called Obama for America, who are they, please post if you have any detail.

Re:a request

[Plug]

"Obama for America" is (was?) the legal name of his Presidential campaign.

Re:a request

[Bob The Cowboy]

change.gov seemed 48 hours after Obama was elected to have (under the title agenda) a detailed policy list. This however disappeared quite quickly

It wasn't removed, just re-arranged. In fact it's still under "Agenda", the fifth tab in from the right and under the "Change.gov" logo at the top. From there you can click on any particular policy you want to know about.

Or just go to: http://www.change.gov/agenda/

Another site however seems to have all his policy details but is by a group called Obama for America, who are they, please post if you have any detail.

This was his campaign website during the elections. Pretty sure a lot of the policy stuff is the same, here.

HTH,
Bill

Re:a request

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the official website of his campaign.

"Obama for America" is just their incorporated name.

Re:a request

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama for America was his campaign site, and it was available throughout his entire campaign, complete with policy plans. The plans were also edited down into at least one book which I have seen in several stores. He constantly encouraged people to visit his website to get more details on more general ideas presented in his speeches.

If only we had a functioning media they might have done the research on the detailed ideas from both campaigns. But all they want to talk about, Democrats or Republicans, is gaffes gaffes, and more gaffes.

Don't worry, he runs plan9

[Mathinker]

That's "Plan 9 from the NSA", of course...

Interesting...

[Mathinker]

And what does AC posting on Slashdot replace?

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous threat letters, duh.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

And what does AC posting on Slashdot replace?

Anonymous dissent?

Dissent without retribution?

Whistle blowing without the legal and financial hardship?

The ability to buck the crowd when it's unpopular?

I'm sire there's more, but I can't think of them. After all, I'm just a stupid AC.

How To Build a Web 2.0 Government?

[John Hasler]

You mean one that values appearance over substance, is full of malware and bugs, crashes a lot, and isn't even compatible with itself? That's the usual kind. We've already got one. Worldwide, we've got hundreds.

Re:How To Build a Web 2.0 Government?

[techno-vampire]

Getting elected is all about putting appearance before substance, and we've all seen how much BO knows about getting elected. What we don't know, yet, is what, if anything, he knows about doing the job. If he follows true to recent Democrat form (Clinton and Carter) it will be something between 12 and 18 months after he's sworn in before we see him acting like a President instead of like a candidate. During that time Web 2.0 would fit his style to a T.

RE: How To Build a Web 2.0 Government?

[nEoN nOoDlE]

With AJAX, obviously.

comm theory

[globaljustin]

to add a little comm theory to your point...

technology doesn't fundamentally change communication (whether it be words, pictures, video, or audio). It may change the style and method of delivery (the 'channel' and 'code') but the content of what is being communicated does not change.

'web 2.0' is a nothing term. some try to pin it down with a technical definition that is usually along the lines of 'web pages that automatically refresh' or somesuch, but the fact is, its usage is so broad that any effort to make it a useful, defined term is pointless. once marketing people and Time magazine got ahold of it, it was finished...

Obama's administration is going to re-open the channels of communication between the exec. branch and the populace. They will do so using all technology CURRENTLY AVAILABLE including YouTube and Facebook. FDR did the same thing with his fireside chats.

Obama isn't doing anything particularly novel...but having an executive who actually communicates effectively with his constituents IS going to be very different from what we've had!

Re:comm theory

[omeomi]

unless your theory happens to be that of Marshall McLuhan, in which case the technology (medium) defines (is) the communication (the message)

Re:comm theory

[worthawholebean]

The original definition of Web 2.0 in my view was just asynchronous data transfer - so you don't need to reload the whole page to get more information.

Re:comm theory

[Anonymous Coward]

I strongly disagree with your statement. I think its obvious that technology certainly can change communication. Take television and radio for instance - for a long time the only way to effectively communicate with a large mass of people. With the rise of the internet the communication can go both directions. I do see this as a 'fundamental difference' (sorry for the flashbacks to the debates) that technology makes with respect to communication.

Re:comm theory

[daigu]

I'm sorry, but the medium fundamentally changes the message. One example among legions: a hand written thank you note on a good card that you took the time to mail after a job interview sends a completely different message than an email - even if the words used in both are identical.

Spend some time thinking about the last time complex emotions were conveyed using television. Try listening to this interview with Neil Gaiman that has a brief discussion about A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where something works over radio that doesn't work over television or in a movie.

Style and method of delivery are part of the content.

Re:comm theory

[LingNoi]

I just call it more then one site I need to allow on noscipt.

Web 2.0, where websites insist on you loading over 10 websites worth of javascript crap.

Re:comm theory

[ScentCone]

Obama's administration is going to re-open the channels of communication between the exec. branch and the populace.

You're confusing "communication between" with "communication at."

Do you really want a chief executive who has to wade through millions of messages sent to him? Or want, as a taxpayer, to pay for a staff of thousands who will sit there all day and distill down what they think are messages he should see or surf to? Come now. Saying that he'll use different mechanisms to broadcast his thoughts is a lot different than saying that he'll somehow be more communicated to than his predecessors. He's hired to be an executive, not an open-door representative. Executives who misunderstand that tend to be terrible leaders.

Communication channels are not closed now, and won't be more open next year. The current president has weekly communications going out, and has a press team that meets with the press to field questions every day. The next president is going to do the same thing. You can already go online to listen digest every weekly presidential communication that you want to digest. I think that you're just talking about having a president that has things to say that you prefer to hear. I'm worried enough about Obama's ability to learn everything he needs to know about having his first ever actual executive job while also being POTUS in very challenging times. I don't know why he should take even more time out of every week to make sure that every weekly address is seamlessly presentable for video. Ask any president if he thinks prepping for 52 more on-television presentations every year is particularly helpful for his schedule. I'm betting that Obama is only now getting his head around how much less time he'll have for anything, compared to being a non-voting, perpetual candidate senator. His Web 2.0 goof-off time is going to evaporate on him right before his sleep-deprived eyes.

Re:comm theory

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be assured that the press will help him blame everything on the current administration. Every time he makes a decision we don't like (sorry folks, no nationalized health care; and by the way, I may have to raise taxes on the middle class; etc.) it will be followed by "because of the failures of the previous administration." And people will buy it because the Democratic party has very successfully positioned themselves over the last few years, and very successfully demon-ized Republicans.
Over half of the population - based on the last election - is primed to believe the worst about the Bush administration. They are reassured that any problems in their lives are because of GWB and Dick Cheney. A policy of personal responsibility does not garner votes.

Re:comm theory

[hedwards]

Do you really want a chief executive who has to wade through millions of messages sent to him? Or want, as a taxpayer, to pay for a staff of thousands who will sit there all day and distill down what they think are messages he should see or surf to? Come now. Saying that he'll use different mechanisms to broadcast his thoughts is a lot different than saying that he'll somehow be more communicated to than his predecessors. He's hired to be an executive, not an open-door representative. Executives who misunderstand that tend to be terrible leaders.

You do realize that we would have had a much more effective government for the last 2 terms, right? It's inherently problematic when the legislature willfully works against the wishes and desires of the majority because they don't believe in doing so. In cases like that the people would probably be better off having the congress in gridlock. Same goes for the Presidency, the federal government is supposed to at least attempt to act in the people's interest.

Re:comm theory

[hedwards]

Oh, really? So, it's acceptable to run up a multi-trillion dollar debt, fight an undeclared war, ignore the constitution when it's convenient and deliberately sabotage attempts of the majority to have their say in our governance?

Because I must have missed the part of your post where you prove that those things were really just a set up. That the President isn't actually running an undeclared war and that the extra ~6 trillion dollars in debt is actually still in the checking account.

Re:comm theory

[Jason Levine]

I've got to agree. To give an example, a member on a web forum I run has advanced cancer. Things don't look good and he's likely to pass away in a few weeks. If we needed to rely on TV/radio, I'd never have heard of him. His passing in Georgia wouldn't have merited even a quick mention on the TV/radio stations in NY (not to mention Israel, Australia, the UK, and other countries that our members are from). With the Internet, however, common interests (in this case computers) has enabled strangers from across the globe to become friends in a way that no other form of mass media would have allowed.

Re:comm theory

[mysticgoat]

technology doesn't fundamentally change communication (whether it be words, pictures, video, or audio). It may change the style and method of delivery (the 'channel' and 'code') but the content of what is being communicated does not change.

Yeah, right.

Just like the development of aluminum technology wasn't a fundamental change in transportation, since the purpose of a Boeing 747 and an iron horse steam locomotive are basically the same. It all comes down to just moving people and things over long distances, eh?

Wake up! Communications has changed in a fundamental way. The Internet has now grown into actually being a World Wide Web, and that is very different from just being a supersized telephone exchange. It now has these very real characteristics:

1. The concept of "channels" is no longer applicable. This is a web with innumerable ways for information to propagate in every direction.
2. There are no natural choke points: it is now much more difficult and expensive to control information.
3. It is populated by both an incredible number of individuals, and by innumerable self-organizing groups with fuzzy memberships and fuzzy, but sometimes very powerful, influence.
4. I could go on, but why bother? Anyone with a mind open to rational thought about this can add a dozen more points easily enough. Those whose minds are still closed won't be persuaded by an exhaustive listing of points.

Re:comm theory

[v(*_*)vvvv]

I agree and disagree.

I disagree with technology not having any influence on communication. There are things we will write in an email that we wouldn't write in a letter. There are things we might text that otherwise would not be communicated. There are huge speed and convenience benefits of having mobile communication devices that have immense impact on real world actions resulting from faster and smoother information propagation. More things can get done in one day. More opportunities can be seized. More dangers can be avoided.

With that said, I totally agree that Web 2.0 as a particular technological category will have close to no impact on communication. What 2.0 can do 1.0 has done already, and 2.0 is more about web interfaces more than anything, and although that might feel like a big part of a web site (since it is the experience after all), it is still a minor influence when it comes to actual communication frequency, speed, or accuracy.

Those of us who use SMS and email and the web are on faster clocks than those of us who do not. We communicate faster. We find answers faster. We can utilize more resources more accurately and efficiently. For a president or any executive of any company to not be on "internet time" and "paperless" is a huge detriment to everybody working under that person and to the organization as a whole.

The box has already shifted.

Re:comm theory

[xaothewretched]

communicating he will. but the question is, will he listen, or is he blowing smoke?

Re:comm theory

[Zerth]

There is one huge choke point: attention span.

If you don't Streisand it, most things will drown under the sea of noise. I'm sure there are dozens, if not thousands of actions being taken by our governments that would shock and piss us off, but will never reach the mainstream attention even with the requirements for media avalanches being lowered to some guy with a webcam & youtube.

There are just too many banal activities clogging the public awareness to grasp all the *worse* things.

Re:comm theory

[ScentCone]

run up a multi-trillion dollar debt, fight an undeclared war

Check with Congress. The president can't spend a dime that the congress doesn't collect as taxes and authorize as a budget item. And, presuming you're talking about Iraq (or were you talking about Bill Clinton's use of the military in, say, Kosovo - no war declared there, either), the president didn't use force there, either, until congress specifically authorized it.

deliberately sabotage attempts of the majority

Which majority are you referring to, exactly? If you mean that the party with more seats in congress doesn't always get its way when it can't muster a super majority of votes in the senate, but seem to think that this has only been true while the current administration has been in the executive branch, then you are really being myopic about it. Were you not around while Dems were filbustering the Republican majority in the legislature? Or when the party in the majority had its agenda "sabotaged" by Bill Clinton? What makes your particular, contemporary dislike for the centuries-old system of checks and balances worth a second glance? It's not new, not even close.

And lest you think that a particular idealogy is somehow moving into a sweet spot of sweeping unamimous authority and some large mandate come January, remember that Obama only won by 6% of the people that voted, and that as usual, close to half of the people who could have voted did not bother to do so. And of the seats gained by the democrats in congress and the senate, many of those newly won seats are now occupied by very conservative dems who are not at all of the Pelosi/Reid stripe. But even if they were, would you really expect their political opponents to cease to vote on behalf of those who re-elected them? Should the democrats, when they were most recently in the minority, have given up their own principles and not voted according to their own values? Why? Do you really think that whoever owns the most legislative seats should expect to be able to steamroll the wishes of the other half of the country?

If one party as a very good case for something, they should have no trouble getting a majority of the votes to back them. It happens when it needs to. And it doesn't happen when the sponsor of the legislation is weak on the issue - and that's exactly how it should be.

ignore the constitution when it's convenient

Specifically?

That the President isn't actually running an undeclared war

Against who? The Taliban wasn't a nation-state. It was a brutal movement of armed thugs from other countries that was occupying Afghanistan's meager civic roles and marketplaces and harboring another group that had been carrying out terrorist attacks around the world for years. The constitution's language surrounding war declaration doesn't even fit that situation. Would you have just sat on your hands, then? And what of Saddam Hussein? The hostilities he started when he invaded Kuwait never ended. The UN's sanctions against his regime were never relieved because he never complied with the terms of his withdrawl from that nation, and never stopped shooting at coalition aircraft. For years. So, should a declaration of war have been used to aid Kuwait? How about Somalia? How about in Kosovo? Should one be issued before we could aid peacekeepers in Darfur? Why?

Re:comm theory

[TrekkieGod]

a hand written thank you note on a good card that you took the time to mail after a job interview sends a completely different message than an email

Yeah, it sends the message that you don't know how to use e-mail :)

Re:comm theory

[ronocdh]

technology doesn't fundamentally change communication (whether it be words, pictures, video, or audio). It may change the style and method of delivery (the 'channel' and 'code') but the content of what is being communicated does not change.

Yeah, you're right. I remember how much I loved to post my mother photographs of cats with goofy captions on them. I used to make the captions from letters I cut out of magazines.

Re:comm theory

[theaveng]

Please don't take this the wrong way.

It's just something to think about. 2000 years from now, do you think anyone will remember your friend? (Or us?)

Re:comm theory

[DragonWriter]

technology doesn't fundamentally change communication (whether it be words, pictures, video, or audio).

This is pretty transparently false. How many people can be reached by a single communication, how much latency there is on the channel, how many people can transmit on the channel, the reliability of the channel, the accountability of the channel, and how high the bandwidth is on the channel all make pretty fundamental differences in communication.

It may change the style and method of delivery (the 'channel' and 'code') but the content of what is being communicated does not change.

This, again, is untrue. The content of what is transmitted over (even a scripted) TV channel is different in kind than that transmitted via print -- and that's just for one-sender-many-receiver communications channels without immediacy. Live TV is even more different, and any kind of conferencing technology where the number of potential senders is equal to the number of potential receivers and there is little latency is even more fundamentally different in the content that is distributed and received via the channel.

Re:comm theory

[Shotgun]

He'll listen...to his pollsters.

Realistically, there are to many people with to many opinions for him to be able to give a damn what Shotgun posted on /.

There is a reason that our founding fathers created a government with a House of Representatives, a Senate, a President and a Supreme Court. Each one is best suited for a particular task. Representatives are the avenue of the common man to Washington. Senators were originally the avenue of state governments to Washington (though, that has been bastardized into a Representative ver2.0 now). The President should be receiving marching orders from the Congress, and using advisors to carry out those orders as efficiently as possible. The Supreme Court isn't even supposed to listen to the common man. That's why they're appointed for life.

"Increasing communications" will just be a way of maintaining a cult of personality that put a neophyte in the office of the President. It CAN'T be used for anything else. If you want to have your individual say-so in Washington, contact your congress-person.

Re:comm theory

[Jason Levine]

Just because time erases many people from memory doesn't mean that technology hasn't changed communication. The point is that technology has enabled my friend to make an impact on myself and dozens of other people who wouldn't have even known he existed before.

To give an example with more lasting repercussions: I met my wife online 9 years ago (Yahoo chat rooms). We lived hundreds of miles apart at the time and so, without technology's contribution to communication, we would never have met, fallen in love, and gotten married. In addition, our two sons would never have been born. Any children they have in the future (as well as those childrens' children, etc) owe their very existence to the way the Internet changed communications. I know for a fact that my story isn't unique and the numbers of stories like it will only multiply. Pretty soon, virtually all segments of humanity will be able to trace their ancestry to a moment where the Internet contributed an influence. In 2000 years, I doubt that anyone would be alive who would be able to say that the Internet (or whatever eventually supplants it) didn't contribute to their ancestry in any way.

Re:comm theory

[globaljustin]

I'm a grad student in communications (information and communication technology, MS...;) and I've never, ever heard a proper development of that all too often quoted phrase "the medium is the message"

ex: if I use a telephone to call my friend to tell her I'm coming over...in the context of that quote, is "telephone" the message? no!

the quotation is useless as far as understanding communications...but thanks for perpetuating it, it gives me an opportunity to talk about comm theory

Re:comm theory

[omeomi]

I'm a grad student in communications (information and communication technology, MS...;) and I've never, ever heard a proper development of that all too often quoted phrase "the medium is the message"

Seriously? You know he wrote several books on the topic, right? Understanding Media for one, and for the lighter-hearted reader, The Medium is the Massage

ex: if I use a telephone to call my friend to tell her I'm coming over...in the context of that quote, is "telephone" the message? no!

No, but that call that you made to your friend would never have occurred had the telephone not been invented, and so the existence of the telephone is fundamentally more important than the banal conversation that you might have with it...which is, in a nutshell, the point.

Regardless, my point wasn't that there's this Marshall McLuhan quote that people like to use, it was that the GP's overstatement that "comm theory" would proclaim that "technology doesn't fundamentally change communication" is entirely dependent on the communications theorist with which you are talking.

Re:comm theory

[globaljustin]

Look, I knew about his books, etc. but I just never thought much about them. By the time I started studying comm theory there were many other more well developed takes on types of channels and technology. I do credit McLuhan with being one of the first to emphasize how different types of channels and developments in technology affect the message.

That's right, I said the type of channel effects the message. If you think that contradicts GP's (me) post then you are mistaken. I said the channel doesn't *fundamentally* change. Of course the channel by which we communicate alters things...but not at a fundamental level of meaning.

Also, this is a stupid argument, started by a stupid quotation that survives b/c it's so eminently quotable.

Of course the message matters...and of course the channel matters...THE BOTH MATTER! ex: the message "i'll be over at 8" matters to the receiver...but the channel...whether it be txt msg, email, or phone is immaterial to the needs of the receiver of the message...as long as she gets the message

to a communication theorist studying land-line phone usage vs. cell phone usage, the content doesn't matter...but that's not the context the quotation is used in most frequently.

again...they both matter, and the medium (channel) is NOT the message...the message is the fucking message...

Re:comm theory

[omeomi]

Sigh...somebody said "all fruits are apples", and I said "look, I have an orange". I was just pointing out a fallacy in an argumant by showing the existance of a differing, and rather well known viewpoint. Whether you or I agree with it is immaterial.

Re:comm theory

[globaljustin]

well, I still enjoy talking about it...

i'm going to be having alot of conversations like this in grad school (i just started) so at least for my part your comment was beneficial

Government 2.0?!

[wmbetts]

Hopefully Government 2.0 will be designed better than Twitter, but still have all the nice rounded edges and glass buttons!

rm -rf

[srussia]

done.

Re:rm -rf

[grcumb]

done.

Done like dinner, you mean.

I don't know that I've ever seen a more (inadvertantly) astute summary of the 'small government' argument. Using rm as a tool to remove the operating system that makes its own existence and purpose possible is directly analogous to the argument that we should use government to shrink itself.

Logically, it can only end in disaster. The moment government cedes its ability to operate in a particular area (and in this example, it's /bin), it ceases to be effective.

We all know that the libertarian approach wants simply to reduce waste and reduce the government 'footprint'. BUT... that's not practicable. As we've seen from all of the small-government proponents who took office, the effect is the inverse to what voters intended - deregulation becomes license for special interests (most often corporate leaders) to run rampant in pursuit of short-term interests. And that is precisely what regulation was supposed to avoid.

And still, government grows.

It grows because those very same interests who laud deregulation in some areas actually want and require regulation in others - again, to protect their own short-term interests.

The issue of what role government should play and the question of what constitutes (heh) an appropriate size are critically important to a healthy democracy, and in that sense, libertarianism provides a healthy, skeptical check on the desire of some to govern everything, all the time. But the discussion has to begin with the premise that some regulation and legislation must exist in order to protect the long-term health of the government and the people.

Re:rm -rf

[Anonymous Coward]

But the discussion has to begin with the premise that some regulation and legislation must exist in order to protect the long-term health of the government and the people.

All activities are reviewable by the courts and subject to scrutiny under statue, common law, regulations, et cetera. To say there must be some "regulation and legislation" is pointless. Unless your point is, the discussion begins once you agree with me.

US law would be placed under version control.

[X-rated Ouroboros]

Open Government is collecting a suggestions for a government legislative Wiki and RSS feed specification.

No. Not 2.0. Not here. Not for this. please

[unity100]

as if there has ever been a '2.0' on the internet except the hype, please, dont bring it unto politics.

what obama is going to do will be to post a video on a video streaming website. thats the gist of it. dont hype the shit out of it.

More,better net access in the US

[vesuvana]

If he really wants Americans to participate in the Web 2.0 community, Obama's first acts should include improving high speed access for the masses. How embarrassing to lag even behind Estonia (no offense to Estonia). We need more people hooked up to high speed net access and high speed needs to be just that, instead of sometimes so-so speed.

Great think for PGP perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are worried about people intercepting his e-mail, or posing as him through an e-mail, he could start using PGP to encrypt/sign his messages. His e-mail is then as safe as that personal passcode he keeps for himself, and changing it every 90 days or so would do a world of good too.

what will be the Downtime ?

[pacificleo]

if gov wants to go Web 2.0 ( whatever that means) can they assure 99.999% uptime ?

Direct Democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Two policies that would fix our Democracy.

1. One person, 1 vote. Direct democracy. No representatives needed. This removes the influence of lobbyists and money.
2. Legislation can be suggested by anyone, but can't be considered for a vote (by the people) unless 10% of the public approves. This turns the default of new laws to OFF. Right now the default is ON. It would be hard to get 10% of the people interested in anything, so apathy starts to make the people freer every day, as opposed to right now, where apathy let's CONgress enslave us.

Re:Direct democracy

[IamTheRealMike]

Why aim so low? We have the technology (almost) to let anybody vote on any bill put before the Government. Of course most people wouldn't vote on most issues, as they are often quite inane - at least judging by the UK Parliament. To stop minority interests taking over then, you allow (indeed, enforce) that everybody votes on every issue - but to stop it becoming overwhelming, allow people to delegate their vote to arbitrary other people.

By default then everybodies vote would be delegated to their elected representative, unless they chose to vote themselves. But I could easily set up a more complex scheme, in which my accountant votes for me on matters of tax, I handle technology related votes myself and my representative takes all the rest.

This is actual direct democracy, with the only remaining problem being inability to directly submit legislation from any citizen. There are truly some scalability and social/educational issues with that, but it's what we should aim for.

Re:Direct democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

You already have control over a a small percentage of your (U.S.) tax money! It's the box on your 1040 that asks whether you want $3 to go into the Presidential Campaign Fund. It's not much, but it's a start!

Re:Direct democracy

[jcnnghm]

Go here and read the comments. This is why it would be unwise to allow everyone to vote on the issues.

Re:Direct democracy

[John Hasler]

Joseph Stalin: "He who votes decides nothing; he who counts the votes decides everything."

And you want to try use the Internet for "direct democracy". Sure.

Re:Direct democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why aim so low?

Tyranny of the majority.

Re:Direct democracy

[ekso]

There are lots of nice papers on the subject here: http://edc.unige.ch/

Re:Direct democracy

[IamTheRealMike]

Thanks, that's interesting. I live in Zurich, didn't realise there was research being done right up the road. I'll check it out.

Everybody cheer for

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple product placement!

I say "web government" is long overdue

[Hojima]

There shouldn't be a government of a few people telling the rest what to do and subjecting people to bad legislation from corruption and incompetence. Think of what could get accomplished if there were none of the three branches, simply a majority vote for what the people want the government to do in each region. Then there could be many advisory parties that are well educated in their field in order to suggest the best way to accomplish those desires. If a state government is implemented well enough, there would be much better prospects on freedom, as you could just move to avoid any laws that you happen to be the minority voter on.

Re:I say "web government" is long overdue

[Darundal]

If the majority vote was the sole decider on every issue, with "advisers" giving people suggestions as to how they should vote, you will end up with heavily bribed advisers (moreso than congresscritters and other government drones), a constant barrage of campaigns with similar content to John McCains "Obama wants to give kindergartners comprehensive sex education" ad or the funny face net neutrality ad, and people voting for issues because they don't like to leave blanks on ballots. Or, in short, the current system, only slower, more corrupt, and less competent.

Re:I say "web government" is long overdue

[Hojima]

For one, there would be too many advisers to bribe considering that it would be many organizations for each discipline, and then there would be many parties for the debates that each discipline has, and then there would be the plethora of people who would be certified advisers, as it could be a simple thing to obtain (simply getting a degree and then license for the discipline should be good enough). Then each party of each discipline can choose someone who is prominent in the field to be a representative to present the plan that the massive amount of advisers from each party agree on. Second, the system would be fast as hell in comparison to the slow process we have now of the so called checks and balances. Third, the market would be regulated better if it was the majority of the people voting on issues to regulate the market, so that it will be impossible to have some lobbyist whore allow any monopoly to run rampant and further corrupt the government.

Re:I say "web government" is long overdue

[cayenne8]

"If a state government is implemented well enough, there would be much better prospects on freedom, as you could just move to avoid any laws that you happen to be the minority voter on."

Well, the US was originally set up to have most of the power in the states...with a WEAK federal govt. Unfortunately, the fed govt. has overstepped its authority time and time again. Will be hard to shrink it back down again. But, yes....the states are more able to act towards the needs of their citizens.

Remember, you are a citizen of your state first....and citizen of the United States second.

Re:I say "web government" is long overdue

[ITEric]

What you are suggesting is the total abandonment of the U.S. Constitution. If you wanted to buy an island somewhere and set up your own government, I believe your idea might be worth a try. Here in the U.S. though, the Constitution has been subverted quite enough already. If anything, we need a Congressional review of the existing legislation to look at constitutionality of the laws and repeal any as necessary. (Yeah, I know, that's supposed to be the job of the Supreme Court, but they've done a poor job of it.)

What we really need is a way to implement changes (within the context of the Constitution) that take advantage of some of the conveniences of modern technology. Take my idea for limiting bad legislation: Let's have the sponsors of bills post them to a website where they can be reviewed by the public-at-large. Then every lawmaker who wants to amend the bill would post the amendment as a comment so that the public can see who is loading the bills down with what pork. I doubt it would take very long for the public to see exactly which politicians are screwing us and how. - That's transparency!

Re:I say "web government" is long overdue

[sharperguy]

Two problems I can see.

1, The quality of youtube comments

2, /b/

Re:I say "web government" is long overdue

[Alpha830RulZ]

Well, the basic reason for having a representative government is that you hope that the representatives will find out more about the issues than the man on the street will know, and thus be empowered to make better decisions.

For the simplest case, how do you think the vote on "lets eliminate taxes" would go? After that, how about a vote on "Let's give everyone a million dollars"? Finally, what do you think the results of those two votes would be? For a hint, google "hyperinflation" or "pre WWII germany economy".

Re:I say "web government" is long overdue

[theaveng]

I repeat:

All you're advocating is a system that would trample the minority views under foot. No longer would we have freedom of worship, or freedom to post radical blogs, or freedom to be homosexual because the Demos would rule, not the Law. I would not want to be an African or Asian American living under such a system where the Majority may imprison me whenever they feel like it (by simple 50%+1 vote).

A Republic of Laws that protects the individual rights is superior. Ask Socrates. He was killed by his Democracy (his neighbors hated him so they simply voted to have him killed).

Re:I say "web government" is long overdue

[theaveng]

+1.

I like that idea. However I fear most citizens have never even visited house.gov or senate.gov where such Bills and amendments are posted, so nothing's really going to change.

Re:I say "web government" is long overdue

[theaveng]

>>>how do you think the vote on "lets eliminate taxes" would go?

Massachusetts just held a vote to eliminate income taxes. Surprisingly, only ~30% of Massachusetts' citizens voted yes.

Maybe a laptop isn't such a great idea ...

[guanxi]

The President's data -- the most confidential and valuable in the world -- stored on a nice compact, portable 6 pound device, which was designed for someone to walk away with. It's probably safe in the Oval Office, but what happens when he takes it someplace else? Is the wifi radio on? In ad hoc or infrastructure mode?

And if he's not taking it with him, why does he need a laptop (has he filled out the form providing a business-case justification for this purchase?). It doesn't seem like such a great idea to me. I'm sure we can find another way to provide him with the resources he needs, independent of his location, with a little better physical security.

Re:Maybe a laptop isn't such a great idea ...

[Anonymous Coward]

He ought to have a new position within the secret service; a techie that can ensure he is always practicing safe computing procedures ought to be with him at all times.

Re:Maybe a laptop isn't such a great idea ...

[RobertLTux]

You do know that "The Football" is basically a very specialized laptop so all he would need to do is just have the person carrying the football carry the laptop also.

Re:Maybe a laptop isn't such a great idea ...

[techno-vampire]

And if he's not taking it with him, why does he need a laptop

In this case, the laptop would be used to make it look like he's using a computer to get more work done. Of course, when the cameras aren't rolling he can put it away and get on with doing things on paper if that's what he wants. If he were really interested in computerizing his work he'd get a desktop. He'd have a faster computer with more RAM and a bigger, better monitor that would actually make his work easier. Using a laptop in this context is just more proof that BO favors form over function.

Re:Maybe a laptop isn't such a great idea ...

[guanxi]

Maybe he can carry a suitcase too if he has a free hand.

Bush quote of the day...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace.

"The only course of action..." very Bush.

"Cyberspace" -- really?!

And PGP did exist in 2000, didn't it?

Re:Bush quote of the day...

[Dr_Barnowl]

Heh, you think a politician is going to use a technology that can prove that he sent a given communique?

(yes, I know you don't have to sign your documents)

Re:Bush quote of the day...

[maxume]

The software can't prove that his keys were not compromised (thus all it can prove is that someone with access to the private key sent the document).

Re:Bush quote of the day...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Since you know that, why would you even comment?

But to answer that question: There are at least a few obvious cases where it would be very nice to prove that this is an actual executive order which actually came from the President.

In other situations, yes, it might be very nice to prove what you (or some other politician) said on a given date at a given time -- even if it's only useful against a politician, that's still a kind of MAD that, ultimately, would tend to keep them more honest.

But I'm thinking situations like "I said on September 10th, 2001, that we were likely to be attacked in the near future. But did anyone listen to me?"

A bit contrived, but not that uncommon -- and not all of it is already in the public record.

Re:Bush quote of the day...

[John Hasler]

How does PGP prevent the recipients of supposedly confidential messages from releasing them (or choice out-of-context bits thereof), intentionally or otherwise? And there is the Presidential Records Act to deal with.

Address the basic issue

[GaryOlson]

Don't just implement technology for the sake of using "Web 2.0" technology. Change the operations of the Federal Government so that these technologies are the most effective method to execute the business of the government.
1) Stop sending Representatives to Washington. Each and every US Representative will work from an office at the geometric center of his district located inside his district. [If the district map does not allow this, the districts can be redrawn].
2) Other executive offices will be equally de-centralized. The Dept of Agriculture will be located in the agricultural states for example.
Any implementation of "Web 2.0" which does not diminish the power of the "Beltway Bandits" through decentralization will only increase their influence.

Re:Address the basic issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dept of Agriculture will be located in the agricultural states for example.

Please show an example of a single US state that does not have agriculture.

Oh, right, thanks for playing.

How do communications tools even work at that leve

[Paul Carver]

In a world where it's barely possible to filter all the spam, how can someone in such a high visibility position even use email, IM, or phone?

If I knew Obama's phone number, what's to stop me and a million other people from calling him in the middle of his inaguration speech?

How can his Blackberry possibly cope if millions of Americans knew his email address?

I wouldn't have even imagined that someone in his position would have "standard" communications tools. I would have assumed that any communications tools he has are dedicated links to his personal staff and not the standard phone numbers and email addresses that "mere mortals" use.

Re:Don't use 19th century ideas

[monoqlith]

Despite what you may have read in a chain email, there's no call for mandatory public service.

Obama has called for voluntary public service. Voluntary. If you choose to perform public service, the government helps you out attending a public university. I think that's a good idea, for one.

Re:Don't use 19th century ideas

[xorm]

Where I am [somewhere within the Bay Area, California], high-school students have to finish 40 hours of community service in order to graduate. I'm sure many other school districts have similar policies. I guess that makes us communists, huh?

One Man/Woman, One Vote...

[gbutler69]

ONE TIME!

Re:One Man/Woman, One Vote...

[theaveng]

>>>Think of what could get accomplished if there were none of the three branches, simply a majority vote for what the people want the government to do in each region.
>>>

Yeah just think if we had used that type of government in 1942. Instead of a reasonable response to the World War crisis (monitor Japanese citizens for possible spy activity), the ruling 80% Majority of white-americans could vote to have them killed in a giant genocidal holocaust. Brilliant. You've just advocated Tyranny of the Majority to squash the minority underfoot.

This is why we have a *Republic* of Laws, not a demos of vigilante justice. Our Constitutional Laws protect the minority (or the one) from the stifling tyranny of the majority.

We can do better - visualization

[xant]

How about we include people under the CTO office that are specialized in data visualization. Very dry, tedious data can be made both more accessible and more interesting if we had a few people in the government who knew how to make useful graphics. For example, a graphic illustrating the size of "earmarks" in government vs. the size of the 850 billion dollar bailout we just passed, the Iraq war, or just about any other pick-your-favorite-wasteful-spending demon, would have very quickly ended discussion about the earmarks and focused it on the various more gruesome ways we have our budgetary thumbs up our asses.

Similarly, I think visualizations of the length of some bills being passed would draw attention very quickly to which ones were being buried under a pile of dangerous and unrelated riders, and which ones were too complex to be useful.

And I'm not particularly creative - someone with access to the raw data feed and experience in this field could make visualizations that actually informed the public about what's going on.

Re:We can do better - visualization

[xant]

Actually, I just thought of another one: how about a visualization of the ways Congress and the President are spending their time. Group the time spent in various ways ("Bookkeeping", "military issues", "energy policy", "inappropriately texting interns"...) and allow us input on how the group as a whole spends its time. They work for us, goddammit, and we should get a say in what they focus on. I'm a boss at work, and when I think one of my engineers is spending too much time on a particular trivial task, I'll let them know what I think they should work on instead.

Re:We can do better - visualization

[roguetrick]

Graphics are actually one very heavily used thing in congress. Nearly every senator puts one up when they're talking about something and the reps like to put one up and hoot in front of it while throwing shit at each other. One of these days I hope a representative decides to put up a picture of Goatse.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent. Point is, folks use graphs to prove their point all the time in government. Doesn't change the fact that nobody cares.

Re:We can do better - visualization

[Zerth]

They should get Hans Rosling, he's got some neat visualizations of data, especially about halfway in.

Re:We can do better - visualization

[xant]

Hans Rosling was exactly the person I was thinking about, actually.

Re:We can do better - visualization

[Anonymous Coward]

one this I keep asking for is to give us the data so we can create interesting visualizations.

Visualization always have bias - and you can tell the bias by which org does them. let's just be transparent about our biases...

Re:We can do better - visualization

[Silona]

oops didn't realize I wasn't logged in...

More technology for the goverment to use on us?

[flajann]

I'm more concerned about how Government will use "Web 2.0" to exact even more control over us than they do now. Government is not really interested in being "open", though it will throw us a few bones here and there just to keep us from rioting in the street.

Throughout recent history we have all witnessed countless ways Government has used technology against us all. Sometimes we can hold a few things back, like the Real ID Act; other times it slips us by, like the sneaky roving wiretap law the FBI managed to slip in.

What we need is less government, and that government must be truly accountable for its actions. The things the Bush Administration has done should land several indictments and at the very least an impeachment; but Bush & Co. will get away scott free with atrocities far, far, far worse than Clinton lying about his salacious personal affairs.

Until we have believable accountability, we will never have a government we can truly trust. Obama now represents the "Great Black Hope" for the country. Let's see what really happens.

Re:Don't use 19th century ideas

[Creepy Crawler]

No, mandatory community service does not make them communists..

It makes them slavers. Either you do it out of your own volition, or you are coerced/forced to. That's either indentured servitude or plain ol slavery.

A jury got OJ Simpson on kidnapping charges cause he told them to "stay still". Time is immaterial. You force us to do something, it's slavery.

technologically self-sufficient government

[a thing(amagigger)]

The government should not be tied to companies (such as Google for YouTube). All technological government facilities should be owned by the government.

Re:technologically self-sufficient government

[geekmux]

The government should not be tied to companies (such as Google for YouTube). All technological government facilities should be owned by the government.

Exactly. In this economy, what would happen if we found that US Gov bailed out YouTube, Twitter, Skype, or even Google and was now overseeing these companies? Just imagine the manipulative control over the masses...

(OK, OK, so no one would really care of Twitter went that direction, I get it...)

In many situations, the words Government and Commercial mix together about as well as Church and State.

Oh, and Obama, knock it off with the "I'm hip and cool" marketing campaign. You won. Don't think you really need the YouTube hookup at this point.

How about the ability to fork your own version?

[petes_PoV]

Don't like the way the current govt. is going? Fine, take a copy of the constitution and start writing your own amendments. Or even add patches to the original - after removing it's read-only status, of course.

I'm not too clear what license you'd be able to release it under - suggestions?

The death of the sound bite

[symbolset]

For too long the public policy of the US has been weighed and measured in three second clips cherry picked by the media to push their own agenda. Presidents have given addresses, but unless you block out the time to listen to the whole message at the time it was given then the republication and further dissemination were prohibited by copyright. What was left were tiny snippets chosen, perhaps to educate and inform but more often chosen to catch attention and spark a fire for pundits to fan into a heated argument between commercials. This doesn't serve the intent of the policy makers at all, and does nothing to improve public policy.

There is an opportunity here for the President Elect to circumvent the established media and get his message out in a way that preserves the whole message and conveys more substance than can be carried by a sound bite. This is a risk - policies as a whole can be unloved - but at least people will discuss them as whole policies and not be as swayed by a single implementation detail.

Getting more public information into the hands of the people is also a good thing. The government of the US collects, stores and transmits huge volumes of information. They pay for research, they study trends, they map and photograph, illustrate and write code and generate a lot of other content. Putting more of this online in open formats is a great way to allow the people to share in the progress and become more informed if they choose. It's also an opportunity for the people to take advantage of the information to cross-correlate, rethink and discover what gems might be in the tailings of this information mine, since publications of the US government generally aren't covered by copyright. This could promote a great deal of progress.

Government agencies at all levels are more and more making their services - information, permitting, licensing, and so on - accessible over the Internet. This makes interacting with government much easier and less prone to error. It makes government more accessible to the handicapped and the poor. The Internet doesn't "close", so people can interact with the government at times of day that are available to them. Accelerating this trend would be a good thing, but we need to be aware of a potential issue: if the Internet is a face of government, then access to that interaction must be preserved and protected. If the Internet becomes the road to City Hall then local broadband monopolies cannot continue to be the gatekeepers, choosing which region is deserving of bandwidth and which is not.

Re:The death of the sound bite

[Anonymous Coward]

residents have given addresses, but unless you block out the time to listen to the whole message at the time it was given then the republication and further dissemination were prohibited by copyright.

Jesus fucking christ, you're an idiot. Did you know that the entirety of the President's speeches & news conferences are available on whitehouse.gov and have been for a very long time?

Further, the works of the US government (like the President's speeches) are not subject to copyright.

And even if they were, maybe you've heard of this intarweb thingy where people put video & text that is protected by copyright (and they just don't care about copyright)?

There is an opportunity here for the President Elect to circumvent the established media and get his message out

Riiight, because clearly the media were blocking Obama's message. Even the Manchester Guardian, a very left-wing (and pro-Obama) paper in the UK, had a long article detailing the extent of the love affair between US media and Obama.

Re:The death of the sound bite

[symbolset]

Did you know that the entirety of the President's speeches & news conferences are available on whitehouse.gov and have been for a very long time?

Yes, I did know that. I also knew that there have been accusations of revisionism, some warranted and some not. Let's get past that.

Riiight, because clearly the media were blocking Obama's message.

The election is over. Coverage will drop. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as immersion in divisive issues has ramped the rhetoric to unpleasant levels. The work of the republic goes on even if, and probably especially when, nobody is watching.

Re:The death of the sound bite

[a.ameri]

Very insightful argument. What is more and more pronounced everyday is the opportunity that Obama has to follow on FDR's footpath. FDR did exactly what you describe, getting around the reporting of his policies by newspapers, by his weekly radio broadcasts. Obama is reading a lot about former presidential transitions, he said on 60 minutes that he's reading a book on FDR's first 100 days in office, and I'm sure this wouldn't escape him.

A New Yorker reporter described the challenge of converting his huge online following during the campaign to be part of his government, to converting a population that had been mobilized for warfare to going back to civil industrial activity. It's not gonna be easy, and I think many people especially the youth who were part of the campaign and were energized and motivated by his campaign will switch off from politics again, simply because governing is more tedious and boring that campaigning.

But we don't know that yet, and this remains one of Obama's biggest challenges, how to keep people, and especially youngsters, engaged with him. That will be the major challenge of kicking the government, any government, into the 21st century, making it more open and transparent and eventually, more 'democratic'.

Re:Don't use 19th century ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

That is very funny. The Government forced me to go to school... I was a slave! They forced me to go on field trips, visit companies and write reports, and now they're forcing kids to gain community service experience.

Public Servant Ratings

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how good this idea is, but what if there was a website that people could visit to rate/provide feedback about public servants? If you have a complaint (or less frequently, a compliment) about a public employee, ask for their employee number, visit the website, and post a comment. Given adequate safeguards (which I don't pretend to know) to ensure only real comments are posted, the feedback could be used in the employees evaluations.

I think this would quickly pinpoint the truly obnoxious would be 'public masters' and provide a means to weed them out of the government.

Ever had a horrible experience with somebody at the DMV, what about airport security? It sure would be nice to have something to push back against that sort of behavior.

peer-to-peer

[drDugan]

We're also hosting this on LegalTorrents here
http://beta.legaltorrents.com/torrents/255-weekly-address-nov-15-2008

Technology and the Economy

[ThinkComp]

It seems as though technology can be used to kill two birds with one stone... I wrote an op-ed about this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/new-deal-20_b_142518.html

Direct democracy

[rwa2]

Right now we don't have a "real" democracy in the same way the ancient Greeks practiced it... the U.S. has a representative democracy where we elect a few people to make all of our decisions for us. I don't think this is a bad idea considering the scalability issues. However, the Web 2.0 age could allow people to have more direct input and metrics in the decisions they really care about, and not just give up their choice to whatever their elected representative feels on that one particular issue.

The easiest way to give the control back to the people would be to give them some control over how their taxes are allocated. Right now, we pay a certain percentage of our income in taxes, and the government decides how much to budget for each department. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually "earmark" your tax dollars? Don't want to support the war in Iraq? Want a certain percentage of your taxes to go support the Dept. of Education or NASA space exploration instead? This would be a great way of directly measuring people's priorities, and give people the sense that the work they do to make money does not go towards what they consider "waste".

Right now, we sort of have an indirect way of controlling where our tax money goes... you can make tax-deductible contributions to certain charities, or at best you can feed up to $2500 or so to a Political Action Committee to lobby your elected representatives for you. Both of those methods strike me as rather inefficient.

The government can start small... giving people control over a small percentage of their taxes and gradually increase it as the new balance of power is worked out. Also, maybe they could limit it to a fixed amount per capita, so the people who pay lots of tax don't get a disproportionate amount of control.

Anyway, I'd like to have more control over where my tax dollars go, and increase competitiveness within the government organizations to show that they put the money to good use.

One word...

[skelly33]

referendum.

Though it'll never happen in this hard-headed and self-serving world.

Re:One word...

[John Hasler]

Referenda over the Net? And you thought touch-screen voting machines were bad!

Re:One word...

[skelly33]

Agreed. That's because trust is an issue. I thought while we're fantasizing about an egalitarian wonderland, why not go for the gold? ;-)

Re:Don't use 19th century ideas

[cdrguru]

The "mandatory" part disappeared in less than 96 hours after the election. Someone woke up. However, if you go back before the election you can see the word "mandatory" was there.

Now, it was pitched as partly in exchange for a $4000 grant for higher education but that didn't make it any less mandatory.

Hogwash

[coryking]

End of story. We don't need the government to spend months, or years even, building websites which dumb data down for us

Yeah. Whatever. If the government cannot explain to us what the hell is causing this economic crisis in terms we understand, what makes you think they understand it either? If they cannot explain it to us, who will? The media?

The government should be *forced* to making things easy for us to understand. For if it is *not* easy to understand, it makes corruption easy.

"Dumbing data down for us" is the exact reason we live in a republic, not a straight democracy. We elect our representatives hoping they can distill complex issues down to forms we can manage. Each of us lack the time to fully understand every single issue facing our country.

The blackberry issue

[Anonymous Coward]

it's called Blackberry enterprise server, that way, he can still use a blackberry and use it for government emails (non-sensitive govt emails)

In fact that would probably be incredibly handy as president. having access to your emails in your pocket.

Sounds nice in theory

[coryking]

But in practice it would turn out just like the BBB or those "consumerratings.com" sites. A bunch of people with axes to grind who probably are equally responsible for their fuckups as the business they are complaining about.

Plus how do you scale such a beast to the US government. You'd get people all across the globe posting on the thing!

Re:Don't use 19th century ideas

[Creepy Crawler]

Go read up about the Athenian idea of education.

Those forced to "study" are not free by any means. And considering the "success" of American education, we're doing something wrong.

Simple...

[nick_davison]

Refuse to hire anyone who still says "two point oh." They're cretins who jump on a buzzword theme rather than understanding issues.

Unaware: An interwuh?

Moronic: It's a series of tubes.

Cretin: 2.0 is where it's at.

Ideal: Let's look at net neutrality, airforce cyber-command, the events in any former Soviet state that pisses off Russia, the DMCA, etc., address the issues of today and also look at what the potential upcoming issues of tomorrow are so we're a little more prepared before they hit us. Let's bring a pannel of advisors together from both the corporate, academic and non-profit worlds, ensuring no single voice is too strong but all have the ability to inform a single decision maker who isn't allowed to entertain lobbyists. We'll never please everyone all of the time but we'll fail America less than every other method tried (except Al Gore's as he built this thing).

School Database Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Coward here,

As a developer formerly working with a couple different schools databases I for one believe that the federal government should force public schools to using a database scheme standard.

Without a standard it becomes a herculean task to aggregate statistical data regarding the quality of our schools against any measure.

If every school were on the same standard it could become possible to generate very accurate reports without the need to, by hand, reorganize data every time.

Step 1 - Get the MORONS out of government....

[KozmoKramer]

Step 1 -> Get the MORONS out of government (This election accomplished that )

I am not sure about what comes next. I am just very happy that step one was accomplished! :)

Re:Step 1 - Get the MORONS out of government....

[John Hasler]

You are in for a crushing disappointment (unless you are a True Believer). While Obama does not appear to be a moron himself there will be plenty in his administration.

Re:Step 1 - Get the MORONS out of government....

[KozmoKramer]

BUSH IS/WAS a crushing disappointment. He is proof that Republicans, who are "True Believers", will look the other way no matter what their elected party member does. He can screw up as much as he likes as long as he is a Republican. As a registered Independent I am sick of both parties. As an American, I am sick of incompetent fools being elected based upon their connections. Palin appears to be the next Fool that the Republicans are willing to get behind. If the Republicans wanted McCain to win so much, why did they treat him so poorly in the 2000 election? Why did they choose the Shrub instead in 2000, Hmmm?

Lobby groups

[Alomex]

Currently special interest groups have an inordinate amount of power. A couple dozen well organized and active city residents can stop a development that is supported by the majority of the population that yet can be bothered to do anything (NIMBY is an example of this). This is before we even speak of a well funded lobby proposing a similar change.

Using Web 2.0 we can give Joe 888 (aka Joe sixpack) the power to lobby on this issue by allowing them to contribute, say $1 cents in the name of their pet project. Around here a hotel chain was denied permission to build anywhere within the city thanks to a small but organized "environmental" effort.

The average person on the street favored the development but this didn't matter. The way things are currently, those eldermen would lose the election next time around when running against opponents funded by the "environmental" lobby group. The $1 contribution would negate the effects of those lobby groups.

The end result is that the hotel got built a few miles out of town and now tourists drive into the city. Talk about a win for the environment (not!).

Very Difficult To Do - And too easy to undo

[ChronoFish]

I was the lead developer at the Rhode Island Secretary of state for several years. The administration I came in under was very pro-technology and allowed the IT department to explore Open Source, web services, REST APIs, RSS Feeds, etc. The later administration was very technology leary, felt that the IT department had too much power, and refused to provide real leadership. All the hard work that made the department a leader in technology and openness evaporated in period of months.

The Open Source technologies were done away with, the developers and system guys all left, and the IT department collapsed.

It is now all outsourced with no plans to expand their offerings, and have had to scale back on existing services.

I loved it till I hated it.

-CF

Re:Anti-White Racism in the Afro Community

[Anonymous Coward]

Oreos are 2/3 black. Other than that I kind of agree with you.

WTF? No feed?

[Gible]

WTF? Change.gov doesn't have an rss/atom feed? ..or am I blind?

Re:WTF? No feed?

[Rob T Firefly]

The "blog" and "press room" each have an RSS feed. The little wavy icons can be seen on this page, though they are grey rather than the customary orange.

Re:Tools for gov. = e-parliament

[kubitus]

Let our elected representatives stay in their election district!

Give them fast Internet and connect them to Senate or Congress. There they are represented with a monitor and loudspeaker instead of of a seat.

This way a lot of money is saved for travelling, residence in Washington, etc...

Also our poor representatives are better shielded against them nasty lobbyists. And they do not loose contact with their voters - they get immediate feedback when they are out for dinner in a local restaurant.

Let our representatives also participate in the benefits of electronic technology, not only voters through e-votes!

for an e-parliament!

let me have your opinion on this!

Obama's Laptop - New Age of Slacking Off At Work

[robi2106]

Mr Obama will also be the first President to have a "SWF" button on his desktop so when he is killing time on games like Paper Physics or Line rider, he can immediately switch over to some spreadsheet looking thing when the Chief of Staff comes in to make sure he is still working.

Ahhh slacking off with style.

Web 2.0?

[folstaff]

Here is the most common use of Web 2.0: Talk about the "idea" of a better UI and add embedded video. Lower the content and add tracking cookies to tailor the content for a later date. Sounds like government already.

government can't be transparent becuz

[heroine]

Humans don't naturally question leadership. They accept leadership decisions as absolute. Increasing the reach of leadership through GooTube broadcasts, radio broadcasts, & loudspeakers driving around the streets merely reinforces leadership decisions.

Securing email

[blitzkrieg3]

From TFA:

Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.

"They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked," said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. "The nature of the president's job is that others can use e-mail for him."

What's wrong with PGP? Surely they could bring a consultant in from the NSA or something to advise in this. I have a hard time believing that I can send secure emails and yet they aren't able to do so presidential level.

Re:Securing email

[John Hasler]

How do you guarantee that the recipients of your secure emails keep them secure?

Web 2.0, Schweb 2.0...

[Katatsumuri]

Wake me up when Obama starts posting +5 Insightful comments on Slashdot.

This needs to be tagged...

[everynerd]

This article needs to be tagged with 'unnecessarybuzzwordpolitica'

You get rid of the president

[Anonymous Coward]

Web 2.0 is about collaboration, not leadership. Have a look at the Metaovernment project for real Web 2.0 Government.

Or look at this list of Government 2.0 projects.

Do the simple things first

[scamper_22]

I'm sure we can all think up grand ideas, but I'd be surprised if we even get the basic things done. Here's my basic list.

1. Open data formats and default to information accss. A simple example is transit. All transit services should be REQUIRED to support google's open route/scheduling format. Similarly, instead of having to request that information, it should be provided by default (published at some accessible location). The same should be done for statistics, census data... Now it might be wise to use institutions like the IEEE to decide on an open standard of mulitple ones exist or something along those lines.

2. Make it easy for people to donate for specific causes. THis could be a preapproved list of charities or causes that would be accessible for donation from a government maintained website.

3. Enforce security practices. This might include trampling a bit on the private sector. However, we have safety regulations for other products. Why not information security regulation. Things like mandating chip cards or pin numbers on cards... Perhaps some data center regulations...

The question everyone wants to know...

[Cyko_01]

...but does he run linux?

Re:The question everyone wants to know...

[ChameleonDave]

No, not Linux, but his laptop is a Mac, so he is running a form of Unix, at least.

I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned so far!

e-parliament

[kubitus]

Let our elected representatives stay in their election district!

Give them fast Internet and connect them to Senate or Congress. There they are represented with a monitor and loudspeaker instead of of a seat.

This way a lot of money is saved for travelling, residence in Washington, etc...

Also our poor representatives are better shielded against them nasty lobbyists. And they do not loose contact with their voters - they get immediate feedback when they are out for dinner in a local restaurant.

Let our representatives also participate in the benefits of electronic technology, not only voters through e-votes!

for an e-parliament!

let me have your opinion on this!

Re:e-parliament

[dfetter]

Human communication evolved over a very, very long stretch of time to be an in-person interaction. It's hubris to imagine that we've characterized it well enough to simulate what's needed electronically, so no, this is just ludicrous.

Re:e-parliament

[shlashdot]

Unfortunately face to face communication with government assures only those with nothing better to do and happening to live in a capital city actually communicate with government. The op's idea is valid and essential. It's not hubris to think that logical communication does not need to be face to face. In fact, just the opposite is true. It is hubris to think that good-looking socialites should rule us. Fuck you.

Log activity automatically?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we could build a system to automatically record all sorts of events in the bureaucracy. If everything went through computers, this would be easy, as well as much more efficient. Then build an online interface to access these events, maybe a query mechanism.

Then, someone could set up a sort of social system around these events, by allowing users to vote for events that they see as important. Then they could harness the masses to find interesting or controversial government activity.

The only creepy thing is if we become to dependent on this system. What if it goes down? Or is purposefully crashed?

Social networking website to develop communities

[Anonymous Coward]

Not long ago I thought about transposing Canonical's Launchpad software development framework (the only one I know to be that complete) to develop communities like cities, regions or even countries.

Imagine posting a bug such as "there is too much dog shit in Paris", or "unemployed people should be obliged to do civic work 20 hours a week"...and people thinking like you would send the same bug...

You could also submit a specification for a new law, etc... people could join and support you on an individual basis...

Something like a "Civic Facebook" with Launchpad dev features for building and maintaining communities...

This would enable true participatory democracy...

The YouTube video

[juggledean]

is fairly conservative, as youtube videos go. Most of the message could have been delivered as audio. There were some video details, there were three books on stage right which seemed to have John F Kennedy written on the spines. On the left there was a book I couldn't read and some writing on the flower pot, To Bara... There is more I couldn't make out.
It's a start.

http://smart-city.re-configure.org

[jznomad]

In reply, I would point to http://smart-city.re-configure.org/ a chapter in the book Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace. People will become more interested in participating when it becomes more exciting to be part of the process and can see the results of their participation.

Finally, The FBI Will Be Put To Good Use

[Anonymous Coward]

"he apparently hopes to be the first US president to have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office."

Plus, Obama has the authority to direct the FBI and the CIA to go after the v14Gara and C14L15 spammers, render them to an Egyptian prison, and have their balls cut off. Feel the hope! Yes we can!

Re:Don't use 19th century ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read up about the Athenian idea of education.

Back then if your daddy couldn't afford to educate you, you could still earn a respectable living and still be a respected member of society through the sweat of your brow.

Think about that next time you're asked "would you like fries with that?"

Change?

[Brandybuck]

Obama releases his speech on a proprietary format. If this really were the era of Change and Hope, we wouldn't have to still be sneaking around behind YouToob's Flash (and it's Adobe Minders) to snarf down the actual video content.

How do I think the gment can best utilize tech?

[ifixpcs]

Good question. Distributing weekly addresses or other programming installments on the Internet isn't ground breaking or revolutionary, though. Sorry. People have been doing that for years; they're called podcasts. If that's Obama's first great cutting edge technology innovation, count me disappointed. That doesn't count as change in my book. Please tell me we'll get more from this President's technology expertise than repurposed videos on YouTube.

Omnipresence?

[DeadboltX]

How long until these weekly addresses are broadcast on every tv station, radio station, and cooperation controlled streaming website? Vote for change, vote for 1984.

I didn't know!

[The Master Control P]

Honestly, I just wanted to know where babby comes from!

I was not at first impressed with the man

[symbolset]

This is a place where I'm torn. I'm pretty cynical about the ability of anybody who's capable of being elected president to enact real change. I'm not a fan of the economic vision of the Left, though I'm fond of their social vision. I've considered myself a Republican since Carter - I joined the army to survive the effects of his economic policies. I've never been a fan of the Right's desire to intrude on the individual's domain though. Although I generally prefer a divided and ineffective government, in times of crisis a unity of purpose can be helpful.

I see some good signs in Obama. Maybe I'm starting to open up to the idea that he might have some good stuff. I certainly don't envy him the job he's got before him. We shall see whether he requites himself well in the issue in TFA as well as others. I do think that if he will do well, he will not seek to follow in the footsteps of anybody else. The environment today is different that it was in FDR's day, and while some of FDR's policies helped us through a difficult time Obama hasn't got that much time. FDR was elected to four terms in office and Obama won't be.

Whether he's good or bad, we've got some hard times before us.

Why Not Custom Devices?

[maz2331]

I find it unbelievable that the NSA hasn't developed a custom government-only Blackberry type of device for senior officials to use. All the functionality can be built into a custom firmware/hardware solution that is ultra-encrypted and archives everything to a secure server.

If they haven't, they should build something like this.

Open ? YouTube ?

[MagicFab]

Sure, You Tube may be popular.

But using it in the same sentence as "openness" just hurts.

Start uploading videos to The Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org) and then we can download and share those videos legally (unlike YouTube, as per their terms of use) - even using a free format (Ogg Theora)! What a concept.

Participatory democracy

[Ginsu2000]

How about allowing people to qualify for internet based referendums, and then government decisions to be based on the results of those referendums. We have polls on slashdot everyday... this is taking the same technology and applying it to the political system. Politicians must remain accountable to their constituents, and their constituents need to be informed so as to be able to make intelligent decisions. I liked what I heard the other day about re-empowering the intellectuals, as opposed to ignoring them, so that we can work through these problems together. After all, we all share the same planet and the issues we face today are often issues which affect the future of our entire species. A baseline education in such matters is essential (refer http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2007_orig-articles/2007-10-15-reducingrisk.html ). Once people have read and understood the fundamental concepts from such an article, perhaps they could participate in an internet poll to further space policy...

Pull Their Plug

[Anonymous Coward]

Mixing government and internet has always been a large mistake from personal freedom,security and tax dollar standpoints.
          One of the jobs allowed the government is a postal system,let them utilize it.There is no justification in making the government more able,more rapid and convenienced in the harassment and mis-governing of "We the People". Severe limitations in fact for the government are warranted if they are to continue the job in a productive manner like:
1. Pay cuts for all Federal office holders.
2. Reduction of all non-constitutionally mandated programs.
3. Dissolution of all non constitutionally mandated offices.
4. No internet and thus no tax payed hours spent perusing pr0n on the taxpayers treat.

 

Executive Order to Stucture Information

[adjustable_pliers]

The "Structured Information for Federal Offices Executive Order" would require government agencies to structure as much of their data as possible (using techniques such as XML or Semantic Web) and put it online. That's it. Then developers of the Web 2.0 realm could use this information in new applications and mash-ups. It wouldn't require an act of Congress. No debates or lobbyists. But it would lay the foundation for the revolution in government transparency.

The medium does matter

[Nerdposeur]

Technology doesn't fundamentally change communication (whether it be words, pictures, video, or audio). It may change the style and method of delivery (the 'channel' and 'code') but the content of what is being communicated does not change.

I disagree. These two things provide radically different kinds of feedback from citizens:

1. Individual citizens write letters, on paper, to their government. They can't attach their words to a bill under consideration, they can't see what others are writing, and the sheer volume of their mail makes it a full-time job to determine what "the people" think.
2. Bills under consideration are listed online. Citizens attach their comments to them, respond to each other's comments, and vote up or down the comments of their peers. Officials can look at a bill and see the most popular sentiments of their constituents listed at the top of the comments.

I think "Web 2.0," by which I mean "online, peer-moderated group communication" could be a huge asset to more open governance. It can help citizens amplify their collective voice in a way that only full-time lobbyists have been able to do before.

Re:Don't use 19th century ideas

[monoqlith]

Link please?

I've been following this campaign since January. Not once did I hear about 'mandatory' public service. It was always voluntary, in exchange for the $4,000 grant. If it was mandatory, you wouldn't need to incentivize it with a grant.

Government 2.0

[kylenstone]

There is a lot of potential on the following websites: http://www.govexec.com/ http://www.govcentral.com/ http://www.personaldemocracy.com/

laptop on his desk ?

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That would be laptop One then ?