Yay for One Web Day! This is from 2007:

[Tags: owd one_web_day susan_crawford rocketboom ]

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I want to propose an hypothesis.

Suppose our new president gets serious about using the Internet as a tool of governance. So, he takes his email list and uses it to kickstart a new e-gov social network. In fact, his opponent provides his email list, too. So, let’s say we have 5M on this network. Let’s say it prominently features blogs and forums. Let’s say after two years there are 30M registered users, and some good percentage of those are at least occasionally active. Of course, I’m making all of this up.

Now, the problem the Internet has faced almost from the beginning is how to scale conversations. We’ve solved it time after time, whether it’s threading and forking Usenet discussions or Amazon’s reviews of reviews. So, let’s imagine that this new social network solves the problem through a combination of forking (or recursive conversations … see orgware [Disclosure: I’m an adviser]) and reputation, more or less along the DailyKos lines.

So, 30M people are engaged in vital conversations. Some people gain prominence in discussions on particular issues. The administration notices this. The relevant government policy makers want to engage in these conversations, because otherwise the 30M citizens feel like they’re being ignored. The emergent discussion leaders become the online points of contact between the administration and the conversations, because that’s how those conversations scale.

For example, PolarKing111 gains an enormous reputation because he writes about polar warming so knowledgeably and passionately, because he engages with all sides in the discussion with respect, and because he’s so good at representing all the various opinions. Administration officials engage with him on the site, often in a spirited back-and-forth. He ably represents the concerns emerging from the many discussions on the site. It’s a public dialogue with just enough structure, one unlike any our democracy has seen.

Inevitably, one day in early 2011, the media will discover that PolarKing111 is a 15 year old girl, but that’s not my point. My point is that the emergent online discussion leaders play a role unprecedented in our democracy. They are not elected yet they represent us. They are not members of the government yet they directly affect government. They have some power but the power comes from an emergent process. We don’t even have a word for this role.

Of course, I’m making all of this up. It’s just an hypothesis. Yet, it’s easy to imagine something like this happening, while it simultaneously being impossible to predict exactly what will happen. Nevertheless, there’s a strong possibility that some form of e-gov social network will emerge, either from the government or from the people. This social network could create new roles or processes of democracy that could well turn out to be quite important. But, just as Facebook can alter the nature of privacy by deciding whether or not to set a checkbox on or off by default, the roles and processes of this new layer of democracy will depend to a large degree on small decisions about how the software happens to work.

Democracy is susceptible to software.

Personally, I think that’s likely to be a good thing. But, who knows?

No one, that’s who.

[Tags: democracy e-democracy e-government e-gov ]

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I’m at the 20th anniversary celebation of the Information Resources Management College of the National Defense University in DC. David Wennergren (Deputy asst secty of defense for info mgt, and DoD deputy chief info officer) is leading a panel on Gov’t 2.0, with Anthony Williams (nGenera, and coauthor of Wikinomics), Bruce Klein (Cisco, US public sector) and Mike Bradshaw (Google, federal sector). [I’m live blogging, making mistakes, being incomplete, mishearing …]

The moderator and the panelists each take a turn at the podium.

David says that Web 2.0 (etc.) is a powerful opportunity “for us to change differently.” Agencies don’t have to be isolated. Mashups, mass collaboration, etc., enable rapid innovation. “We’ve grown up in a world of systems,” big systems. In the new world, we need to be able to “focus and converge.” [David is citing someone else, but I didn’t catch the name.] He refers to the book “Polarity Management.” We have to get both security and sharing right. E.g., focus on secure networks and you create a “self-inflicted denial of service attack” on yourself. [Nice] If you don’t get sharing right, we lose our edge as a nation of innovators.

Anthony Williams (Wikinomics) says he’s been working with governments on e-gov ideas. If we can do Wikipedia, Galaxyzoo, Curriki, there’s no telling what we can do as citizens. The five big ideas: 1. Rethink public service. We still treat citizens as passive recipients. 2. Make sure the information flows horizontally and through all the governmental layers. 3. Open up the boundaries of government, inviting input from citizens, non-profits, private e, etc. 4. New models of democracy, especially interactive models of political communication. 5. Rethink our core institutions, redraw the division of labor. Can we source government services globally?

Bruce (Cisco) talks about how Cisco is using tech to transfer its business. Web 2.0 is about collaboration. Collaboration accelerates productivity, mission success (or growth), and innovation. But it’s more about the culture and the processes than the technology. He shows a crowded slide of how Cisco is using Web 2.0. Their Directory 3.0 includes profiles and areas of expertise. Ciscopedia is an internal wiki. And they have a portal for employees that includes info and apps. Wiki use went up 5x over a year, blogs up 3x, and video up 12x. Cisco is changing from command and control to collaboration and teamwork.

Mike (Google) begins with a title slide that has Google in one corner but that shares the space equally with Skype, Wikipedia, the iPhone, Facebook, AOL, YouTube, the iPod, Second Life, and Bebo. 98% of Google’s revenues come from its free products. Only 2% comes from Mike’s federal group. The cost of switching is zero, he says, so companies have to constantly work on providing good features that are usable without training. “We take that philosophy now to the workplace.” 89% people say they use at least one “unsanctioned” technology at work (Yankee Group). 49% say the tech they have at home is more advanced than what they have at work. He gives some examples of government embracing Web 2.0 tech. E.g., Homeland Security in Alabama used Google Earth as a platform for satellite imagery. Then firefighters started populating it with info about buildings and equipment. Then students started adding info. Etc. He ends by talking about the importance of cloud computing. He compares it to the early corporate resistance to PCs because they were insecure, etc. In addition to providing applications and infrastructure, cloud computing can be a platform (as with Google aps and Salesforce.com). In its own data centers, Google assumes things will fail. They buy commodity hardware and hold the drives in with velcro. Every minute, 13 hrs of video are uploaded to YouTube. The search engine gets a billion queries a day. Google has had to build a huge infrastructure, which they now make available to the public for free.

Q: How do we reconcile the rapidity of innovation and the slowness of the gov’t acquisition process?
A: (david) It’s changing. We’re becoming beter about using what’s on the Web. And we’re learning to move incrementally rather than building the big honking system.

Q: What kind of test did Cisco do to weed about the execs who are not ready to move from the command and control structure?
A: At Cisco, we measure everything. John Chambers put together boards and councils to run the company. The councils are cross-functional. You quickly see who collaborates and who doesn’t. Cisco changed the compensation so that for some, 70% of their compensation comes from how the company overall does.

Q: The DoD blocks many social networking sites. The younger employees want to collaborate all the time. How do we bring them in, let them live in their culture, and modify the environment to meet their needs?
A: (david) Blocking access is a non-sustainable policy. These government institutions do change when leaders stand up.
A: (anthony) We interviewed 10,000 youths globally. The public sector is the least desirable place to work in the US, UK and Canada. I agree with Dave on the blocking of sites. Canada banned Facebook for gov’t empoloyees, so everyone moved to MySpace. Canada is now looking at rolling out a Facebook-like product for the entire government.
A: (mike) Google has “20% time”: Spend 20% of your week doing something of great interest to you. That’s how Gmail was created. It includes community service, solar energy, etc. That helps retention. The federal gov’t attracts very smart people, but they get frustrated when tools they’re using — Facebook, for example — gets shut down. The first thing that has to be addressed are the security issues. We open our data centers to let federal folks see how secure we are. The old certification process takes too long.

Q: In the new model of gov’t how do you make sure the voice of all the people, even those without cmputers, is heard?
A: Yes, we don’t want simply to amplify the traditional values. But we hope some of the gaps will close. This needs political attention.

Q: The Toffflers [who are in the audience] point to the variance of rates of change. What’s Google doing to help accelerate change in education and law, to keep it up with the speed at which business changes?
A: (mike) We do try to influence policy. And we try to get info out to the gov’t. My 20% time is spent in bringing tech to charitable orgs.
A: (bruce) Cisco thinks there has to be a major transformation in education: Change in curriculum, in how teachers teach, how students can use tech to learn. We have bunches of pilots in place.

Q: We don’t have standards. Should there be government regulation of the Net to produce standards? And how would this work internationally?
A: (anthony) Regulating the Internet is not so good. But having the government using open standards is important.
A: (bruce) You stifle innovation if you over regulate.
A: (mike) Disruptive tech disrupts cost structures as well. We like open source and open standards because if you use our stuff, you’ll also be using other stuff as well.

Last thoughts? What do you see coming down the road?
A: (mike) Watch for Android. Open source.
A: (bruce) Work on culture to take advantage of what’s out there.
A: (anthony) How does the gov’t source expertise? How does it tap into the collaborative intelligence?
A: (david) We have to work on trust. It’s the single biggest inhibitor to making this shift. [Tags: irmc government federal web_2.0 ]

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The National Maritime Museum has posted photos at Flickr. Some beauties there.

[Tags: national_maritime_museum flickr everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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This site will add more cowbell to any mp3 you upload to it.

[Tags: cowbell ]

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Last night, I went to the JFK Library to see a panel on the Internet and the campaign, with Matt Bai of The New York Times, Garrett Graff of Washingtonian Magazine (and Howard Dean’s first political webmaster), and Joe Trippi, who ran Dean’s campaign.

It was an interesting session not just because of the caliber of the people, but because the sight it gave of what’s been settled and what we’re still arguing about. These three astute observers — two of them straight-ahead Obama supporters, and one maintaining professional neutrality, but, c’mon, you think Bai’s going to vote for McCain?? — agree that the Internet is transformative of politics and ultimately of democracy. It’s worth pausing to remember that four years ago, we were still arguing about that. They also agree that this is overall for the good, albeit with various important doubts and reservations.

They also agree that the Internet is loosening party affiliation to the extent that in the next four or eight years we’re likely to see a viable independent presidential candidate.

But the three did not agree with one another and sometimes with themselves about whether the Net is making us more partisan (“echo chambers”) or better informed. Is it manipulated by pols throwing out chum that predictably attracts the mindless sharks or, as Trippi replied, is that more characteristic of cable news than the Net? The fact that we are so uncertain about this might indicate that it’s just too soon to tell, but I suspect it indicates that there’s something malformed in the question.

For example, last night one of the audience members expressed concern that the Net is naught but a series of echo chambers. Bai earlier had maintained that he worries that the Net is not about persuasion but about confirmation: you only read that which confirms your views. Ellen Hume of MIT’s civic media project worried from the floor that we’ve lost a unified, authoritative press, feared enough by politicians that when they’re caught in a lie (“I said thanks but no thanks”) they’ll actually stop repeating it.

These are all good points. And yet the question of whether the Net is making us better voters or not remains unsettled, including, I suspect, in the minds of each of those speaking last night. Ultimately, I think it’s unsettled not simply because we lack evidence or because the Internet revolution isn’t over yet. There are more difficult reasons this issue remains an Internet cultural Rohrschach test

1. We don’t yet know how to make intuitive sense of the open connective nature of the Net. We don’t fault our real-world discussions with friends because they’re not arguments that are based on persuasion that work themselves down to first principles. We’ve chosen our rw friends in part because of the sympathy of our views and the sympathy of our discussion styles, yet we don’t count those friendshipsas echo chambers. Online, we can engage with people before we’ve become friends with them. We thus sometimes bond based on agreement (“echo chambers”) or on disagreement strong enough us to get us to respond (“flame fests”).

2. We don’t know how to handle the new publicness of the Net. We can hear — and blog about — every nasty conversation held. Imagine you could listen in on every barroom quarrel and every fratboy gabfest. Well, now you can. We now know just how awful we are.

2a. To put the previous point differently: We make the mistake of treating the Net as if it were a medium. But it’s more like a world than a medium. Everything humans can do and say is done and said there. Want to find hate-based OCD? Got it! Want to emphasize the way in which bloggers bring skeptical intelligence to stories promulgated by the worst of the MSM? Can do! Because the Net is an open world, no examples are typical .

3. We therefore don’t really have anything to compare the Web to. Before the Web and off the Web, how much of our time was spent in persuasive rather than confirming discussions? How diverse was the nightly news compared to the “average” encounters with news on the Net? How much disagreement was allowed in watercooler discussions before people just crumpled their cups and walked away, and what is the online equivalent of watercoolers anyway?

Perhaps the persistence of the question is due to our shock at being shown who we really are. When all you can see of yourself is what the sanitized mass media show you and what you can see around you in your physical environs, the differences the Net makes visible unsettle us profoundly.

The Financial Times has a good article on the Internet’s effect on the US campaign.

It quotes me (and — what are the odds? — it begins by quoting an Obama supporter named Stacey Weinberger, who is no relation), but I want to rise on a point of personal privilege, i.e., egocentric nitpicking. The article introduces me as “Mr Dean’s internet adviser.” Later in the article, it more accurately refers to me as “a Dean adviser,” which is much closer to the truth. Jeez. I hate being perceived as a taking credit I don’t deserve, and I definitely was not the campaign’s internet adviser, as if I were the one who figured out how to do all that Internet stuff. Ha! I twice told the interviewer that Trippi and Zephyr Teachout et al. had come up with their groundbreaking Internet strategy before I ever got there, and that the title Trippi kindly gave me (“Senior Internet Adviser”) was far more grandiose than my actual role. If there’s one thing that bothers me more than getting undeserved credit, it’s being perceived as taking undeserved credit.

[Tags: politics internet joe_trippi matt_bai garrett_graff howard_dean ]

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I’m downloading the new Brad Sucks collection…

[Tags: music brad_sucks bradsucks copyright riaa riaa_sucks ]

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Waveplace is bringing the One Laptop Per Child laptops (AKA “The $100 Laptop”) to poor parts of the world. Here’s a terrific post about teaching kids how to use the EToys program that’s included. For context, there’s this. And you want photos? Yes, you do. Here are some fantastic pictures. (And here’s one of my favorite photos of all time. BTW, the little girl is a double amputee.)

[Tags: olpc xo nicaragua waveplace ]

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Ronaldo Lemos says that Sony offers 13 new CDs a year to all of Brazil. But there is tremendous activity online. But sites like TramaVirtual only works for people with computers. His group researched Nigeria, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina. E.g., in the Brazilian province of Parà “tehcnobrega” (cheesy techno) is popular. There every year they produce 400 cds and 100 dvds. They’re not available in store. The producers have a deal with the people who sell pirated cds on the street. The cds are sold at the “raves.” The economic system is entirely different from the traditional music industry’s. The artists also sell higher-end versions at their concerts. This is a multi-million dollar market. The number 1 well-known artist in the country, Calypso, is completely outside the media-record industry complex. Baile funk is another example.

Brazil produces 51 films a year. Us: 611. India: 934. Nigeria: 1200. In Nigeria, they skip the usual distribution channels. They sell them directly on the street. Movies provide the #2 source of employment in Nigeria, for a million people.

Henri Langlois in 1969 said that cinema will only reach its destiny until people have appropriated the means of production, Ronaldo says.

He says people say that this music and these movies are in bad taste. But, he says, the samba in the 1930s was also perceived as in bad taste.

This is a global phenomenon: Grind, dubstep, hip hop, kuduro, champeta, etc.

[Now there is a general discussion with the panel I’m on. Too hard to live blog…] [Tags: music copyright ronaldo_lemos ae08 ars_electronica ]

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Jonah Brucker-Cohen (link link) says open systems encourage audiences to become active co-ccreators, reconfigure rule sets and create opportunities for now types of engagement. He lists some open tools, both hardware (Aduino, Freeduino, OpenPCD, Sun Small Programmable Object Technology) software, and art (Open Museum of Open Source Art). He shows a video of a literal breadboard by Teppien [sp?]. [NOTE: Live blogging. Error-full. Posted without proofreading.]

What are the benefits of subverting network context? Altering rule-sets shifts the engagement structure of a system. Forcing openness creates opportunities for risk or plahy. Hacking into systems challenges their general use.

Public wireless space allows community groups to serve local citizens, creative projects engaging with users. In privatized wireless spaces (e.g., in airports), they’re claimed by individuals. This raises the question: How do we allocate public wireless resources. Two of his projects challenge these relationships: Wifi-Hog challenged Starbuck’s (et al.) assumption that its pay wifi should be allowed to drive out free public wifi. Wifi-Hog blocks everyone else’s use of wifi. Jonah was asking about the acceptable use policy of public wifi nodes and about the promise of the “public sphere as a social leveler” (Habermas).

Wifi-Liberator toolkit (hw and sw) allows you to get around security in locked hotspots. But it only gives you access if you share.

Q: (James) Jamming wifi is to openness as screaming so loud that no one else can hear is to free speech. How does this move us toward openness?
A: It points out the points of control. That’s a requirement for change.

Q: (yochai) How about creating a trivially implementable meshing algorithm for residential wifi.
A: Fon is doing this.
Q: Fon is still commercial and wants to be compatible with the business model of the carriers. [Tags: ae08_ars_electronica dyi wifi jonah_brucker_cohen ]

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