techPresident - PoliticsWeb20 - Comments

Also some fuel for ideas

Sito Wa — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:17:18 -0400

Yeah, also I was fueled with ideas from the following site www.omfica.org
Lot of interesting things for political scientists majoring in IT :)))))

Definitely yes to on-line Democracy

Sito Wa — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:12:31 -0400

I think that Internet will give an opportunity to build at least a virtual democratic society, since interactive nature of new media provides the audience an opportunity to participate in the communication flow, to select, frame, disseminate information and instantaneously react to it, serving, in some cases, as gate-keepers for traditional media outlets. As more blogs are gradually penetrating into and blurring with the mainstream media, the agenda-setting power of traditional media becomes questionable. Who, after all, sets the agenda in this new, two-sided model of mass communication?
I have a lot of works and ideas on that. Also alternative search engines do really matter

Politics 2.0 is about communication, not information

scribe — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:38:00 -0400

FWIW, I think there's a big clash here between "letting citizens do things" and "citizens wanting to do things" - and the resources that each party thinks citizens need to achieve these. Central-driven initiatives often seem to focus on getting the information out to people - the key word is "transparency". This stems fundamentally, I think, from a representative democratic perspective, but it jars with the latter notion - a more involved, more participatory democracy. Citizens that want to do things themselves (rather than *know* things that other people are up to) don't want information, they want communication. The difference is between what people say, and how they say it.

UK politics is almost in the same situation that the "traditional" record companies are in. Listeners don't want to just buy music, they want to recommend it, move it from place to place, chop it up and remix it. In the same way, citizens don't just want to know what the government is up to - they want to take the information, personalise it, swap it with each other, use it for their own goals, etc.

If the government doesn't get this, then it *will* become redundant. Communications will route around it. New forms of local number-crunching and info-sharing will make centralised data "supplemental" at best, and "irrelevant" at worst - information depends entirely on what people need it for, and getting stuff done with fuzzy data is far better than being paralysed by too much data.

spot on

paulcanning — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:48:19 -0400

Fascinating to hear your take. This was the point I laughed out loud:

"DirectGov and BusinessLink ... Both have low brand recognition and problems competing with other sources."

she's 100% right about young people and I almost said hallelujah! praise her! out loud at the rest.

you don't know the half of it being inside the monster, Micah ...

www.paulcanning.me.uk
web stuff and other ramblings
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