E-Solutions 4 E-verybody

Not Quite Live-Blogging:

Here are the random and unedited notes that I made during the Google/New America Foundations "Wiki Whitehouse e-Government" conference and seminar:

http://www.newamerica.net/events/2008/wiki_white_house

I busted out the tiny Asus Ee PC and semi-live blogged the event. In fact, since I hung out in the back of the room with the cool kids, I didn't have that good of a view. So I streamed the live feed to my computer (sound off) for a better POV. So now, without further preface, my random musings:

Thinking again about the nature of democracy - what is the nature of self-determination within collective action when technology allows for very fluid connections between individuals and groups.

Transparency vs. Communication

What will be the push back from corporate entities and entrenched political parties? Use of PR and adversing?

What is the difference between resident and citizen?

What can be "crowd-sourced"? What is the relationship between democracy and "the crowd"? What is the value of mass connectedness?

What are the nature of open-source and tech standards?
Craig is shopping for a Label. It makes him good at oxymorons. (note - we are not paradoxical, we are optimistic!) "My fellow nerds..."

Are we at the rise of "Geek Cultural Revolution". Free the nerds! A new kind of civic engagement: become 'smart' about one topic and get involved online.
Don't feed the trolls.-- building discussion boards for vote ups/downs -- will run back into the persistant problems of democracy. For example those people looking to either scam a system.

- Net Neutrality is close to agreement, but professional PR trolls get billable hours to slow down genuine discussions.
- Digital Divide is being diminished through cheap mobile phones, but the education and thought needed for participation needs to be expanded.

What will the opennes to comments on YouTube and WaPo articles do to discourse? Will we start running sources and using social netowrking -- will we demand the same of government info dumps (like budgets and spending bills) Is corporate and government deleting of comments a restriction of 1st amendment rights? Especially in a world where there is no shortage of space (unlike ink & paper)

Technocratic Meritocracy! Public Diplomacy.

What is the role of comment posts as the new 4th estate for the post-literate age? How literate will the post-literate information era be? (education for new masses?) Or bury dissent in a sea of unorganized information?

Is the next decade and a half the rough equivalent of the time period 1776 to 1789? (what is the new form or government that is going to evolve?) What is the relevance of the nation state - controlling resources? What new resources can challenge these old structure?

Look again at "Yes Prime Minister". What is "open government"? How do you know when you have it?

Innovation: a small video-mixer software where a operator can switch between wi-fi cameras in a room.

Are we at the height of a "Praxic Age"? What does it turn into? What are the social ideas which endure?
What do we need to do to change the culture? (Bitchun Society?) Education better than Attrition to change from a broadcast to a p2p mentality & culture.

----
and somewhere I still have my notes from the House of Sweden event I went to over Spring Break. But that's another posting...