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O'Reilly Giving Away Open Government As Aaron Swartz Tribute
jones_supa writes "The classic hacker book publisher O'Reilly is releasing their book Open Government for free as a tribute for Aaron Swartz. The book asks the question, in a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness? Through a collection of essays and case studies, leading visionaries and practitioners both inside and outside of government share their ideas on how to achieve and direct this emerging world of online collaboration, transparency, and participation. The files are posted on the O'Reilly Media GitHub account as PDF, Mobi, and EPUB files."
The classic hacker book publisher O'Reilly
I wonder how O'Reilly feels about being labeled this way?
The US, at least, is ran by a partisan duopoly. This could change if we moved to a pluralistic voting system! Anything else is just a secondary issue.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Why would they want to. all government's are a racket run for the benefit of those inside police politician's etc.
(roman_mir, banned again)
...is that no government really wants "openness." Governments are generally a macro-version of the MAFIAA, or software publishers, where we get to see what's on the surface and intended for our consumption. Who would want exposed all the lobbying efforts and back-scratching that goes into most fatally flawed pieces of legilsation?
Whatever might have been not to like about Aaron Swartz as a person, fact is that he's a victim of excessive persecution. A persecution resulting from a jurisdiction that is slave to the economy, an economy this time impersonated by the content industry. Nice and noble gesture of O'Reilly.
I’ve read many eloquent eulogies from people who knew Aaron Swartz better than I did, but he was also a Foo and contributor to Open Government.
Have a missed something, here?
Is this going to be more muddling of a complex issue where people contend that swartz was "stealing what the taxpayers had already paid for" because some percentage of the research of JSTOR was funded with grants? are we really going to let people in this thread make that extreme oversimplification of the issue yet again here?
I can't wait for our government to reverse itself once Obama replaces Bush. We'll stop having FOIA requests denied, we'll close Gitmo, we'll stop sending troops overseas, and the abomination of "extrajudicial killings" of US citizens will finally end.
how do u kno he was a heavy coke user? not that i doubt it and i think he was a spoiled entitled faggot but i would love to find out more...
Am I the only one who thought this was something to do with Bill O'Reilly of Fox News?
Main Entry: 2leverage
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): leveraged; leveraging
Date: 1957
1 : to provide (as a corporation) or supplement (as money) with leverage; also : to enhance as if by supplying with financial leverage
2 : to use for gain : exploit
From here
FAIL.
When I first read it, I though it was Bill O'Reilly. Somehow that didn't seem right.
“But we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what's in it....” - Nancy Pelosi
That's totally untrue. He was a light pepsi user.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
If O'Reilly really wanted to honor Swartz' memory, shouldn't they release all of their books for free? Isn't that closer to what he was after?
Releasing just one book, in his name, while still planning to charge everybody for everything else in their catalog, sounds more like a publicity stunt.
This is the Information Age. More Information means More Power. Openness equates to giving the public more power. Governments will be as secretive and/or obfuscatory as possible. Just look at the legal system. You shouldn't have to study all laws and every legal finding (case law) just to effectively represent yourself in court. By making the information system overly complex, even to a point where each court has different procedures for evidence submittal, more power is removed from the common person -- One must trust someone else's knowledge to even stand a chance of defending themselves from their government (that should scare the crap out of everyone).
"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein
Yet, we go the other route when it comes to the laws that rule us? That's Insanity! (Hint: look up what Einstein says about Insanity)
I'm sorry. This "Open Government" has so very little chance of success. It would give citizens more information, thus more power and control over their governments. It is so rare for a government to give back a power once they've taken it for themselves that historically the only way for citizens to get the powers back is via revolt. Consider the PATRIOT Act. These powers were said to only be needed temporarily, the PATRIOT act was supposed to have expired by now. We were panicking and seemed to be under immediate threat, so the government used our fear to take powers, and they have not given them back, nor will such infrormation control ever be relinquished by them. FTWA
On May 26, 2011, President Barack Obama used an Autopen to sign a four-year extension of three key provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act while he was in France: roving wiretaps, searches of business records (the "library records provision"), and conducting surveillance of "lone wolves" — individuals suspected of terrorist-related activities not linked to terrorist groups. Republican leaders questioned if the use of the Autopen met the constitutional requirements for signing a bill into law.
And yet, the citizens have no similar investigative process for government officials. There is a huge disparity of information / power here...
These are just a few examples of how our own government shies away from public knowledge and tends toward secrecy and obfuscation, there are many others at nearly every turn of any nation's pages of history. The more secrecy and bureaucratic obfuscation, the less transparency, the less accountability, the less control the people have over their government, and the more power the government has over the public. In the Information Age, such control of information wields even greater power.
I know that a nation's fate doesn't have to be the same as all other nations who have embraced secrecy and avoided accountability, but I don't see any modern nation veering from the course to avoid assured destruction; Instead they accelerate. Note, however, that although "Open Government" has hardly any chance to succeed at all, it does have the best chance of success now than it ever has before.
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
- Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights" (from Sid Meir's Alpha Centauri)
Jesus Tap Dancing Christ, just build a pyramid to the idiot already.
You know editors, you could try to tell us technical shit like this. It's kinda important.
Oh I forgot, so such thing as editors here...
You really missed the boat. Whenever an artle headline asks a question, the answer can be given in a single word.
The book asks the question, in a world where web services can make real-time data accessible to anyone, how can the government leverage this openness to improve its operations and increase citizen participation and awareness?
No.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
With the state of the US today, increased paricipation and awareness will be used to increase the amount of goodies grifted from Uncle Sugar. The individual should be founded in solid principles before being invited to mess in the affairs of others.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I have 2 words to say about all this, that all have been ignoring:
1. PACER (well, actually CM/ECF, unless they've renamed it finally)
2. SPARQL
Everything else is just about useless without access to legal data. As Aaron Swartz can't tell you.
And as for you, Aaron, may you rest in Peace. You hacked the system, and the world will never be the same. God bless you.
I have great respect for Aaron's accomplishments and the depth of thought he brought to most problems, but his contribution to Open Government isn't his best work. In particular, its nearly-complete dismissal of transparency as a meaningful intervention suffers from a failure to consider likely counterfactuals. Transparency's impact is probably greatest through deterrence. It shifts equilibria. Aaron's view of it -- at least the one expressed in this chapter -- was ploddingly instrumentalist. Virtually any policy is going to be unsatisfying when viewed through that kind of lens.
I'll admit that my opinion on this is shaped by both personal and professional considerations, but I really do think that Aaron got this one wrong. More here, if anyone's interested: http://www.manifestdensity.net/2013/01/18/how-transparency-works/