Slashdot Mirror
America's Technical Debt
Funksaw writes: An article by Brian Boyko in Equal Citizens, Lawrence Lessig's blog dealing with issues of institutional corruption in democratic politics, explains why, specifically, this reform movement needs (more) people with technical minds and technical skills.
Quoting: "What we need are more people willing to look at the laws of this country based on their function. And when I use the word 'function,' I mean very specifically the same sense that a computer programmer means it. (Because lord knows, government isn't functioning by any other definition.) ... It's not just that big money politics is being injected [like a code injection] into the function of democracy. It's also that the function of democracy can be warped by an injection. Stopping the injection of money into our democratic function still leaves the function vulnerable to the same — or similar — injection attack.... We need people who can solve the problems of politics like a programmer solves problems in computer code, because a democratic system with vulnerabilities is a democratic system that can fail or be made to fail."
The author is the technical adviser to the New Hampshire Rebellion and Mayday.US, two of Lessig's major reform projects.
Quoting: "What we need are more people willing to look at the laws of this country based on their function. And when I use the word 'function,' I mean very specifically the same sense that a computer programmer means it. (Because lord knows, government isn't functioning by any other definition.) ... It's not just that big money politics is being injected [like a code injection] into the function of democracy. It's also that the function of democracy can be warped by an injection. Stopping the injection of money into our democratic function still leaves the function vulnerable to the same — or similar — injection attack.... We need people who can solve the problems of politics like a programmer solves problems in computer code, because a democratic system with vulnerabilities is a democratic system that can fail or be made to fail."
The author is the technical adviser to the New Hampshire Rebellion and Mayday.US, two of Lessig's major reform projects.
Or every so often a Senator Obama comes along, wins, and then we end up with President Obama, a far cry from what we were sold,
I think he's been mostly what he said he would be. He got a healthcare bill, he ended the war in Iraq as quickly as reasonable, he tried to shut down Guantanamo, he tried to get gun control laws passed, he has been a staunch defender of the government's right to spy (he voted for that before he got into office).
About the only thing he didn't do that I expected him to do was the "transparency in government" promise. I didn't expect him to renege on that promise.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."