Some thoughts, current events
In almost every intangible system, it is careless and impractical to completely throw away things that aren’t working optimally. The sensible among us don’t end relationships simply because times are rough or throw away processes just because there is a flaw.
There’s been lots of argument about the validity of the claim that the OWS movement doesn’t have a message. I think it is also about the demands surfacing being entirely too radical. The reality is, given a global perspective that spans centuries, that we have a system that is perfectly workable in many ways and has, in good ways as well as the bad, brought global change. When folks talk about how people in the movement are young, I sense that this piece of information is given as relevant in describing the approach and messages that do exist. They are a bit naive, idealistic and impractical. Perhaps an exercise in direct democracy might serve to help us understand fully the cost of the alternatives, but otherwise regression isn’t called for. We have something to iterate on, to modernize. I think many would find the support and call for communism or other extreme forms of socialism laughable at best.
Earlier, watching a video on representative democracy, I was overcome with half-formed ideas about the role technology can play in shaping our future as a society. Mainstream news outlets have acknowledged the role of technology in recent demonstrations in a baffled and somewhat pitiable way. But I feel like perhaps they sense something, this possibility.
How activists are using the web now is akin to a brochure website. Its a presence on the internet, but its not actually using the medium for what its good at. We, as citizens and constituents, hardly have the chance to use technology to interact with our governing bodies and when we do, its typically not a pleasant experience.
We are a disenfranchised people. We seem to be out of touch with some of the realities of our situation at this point in time and of the realities of many other people, both within our country and outside. We find it difficult to discuss ideas, gather consensus and give feedback in a way that allows for all voices to be heard. Our education system does a horrible job of encouraging critical thought and you have to go digging for news or other information that doesn’t actively kill it.
I’m a nerd. It is inevitable that I was going to propose that we solve this problem with software. I have this vague sense of a marriage of policy and technology as a means to affect policy and communicate as a society on a more level plane and protest and support and perhaps most importantly be seen.
I wish that my life was such that I could find a few smart, like-minded people, do some brainstorming and throw up a Kickstarter campaign or something. I’m sure someone else out there is thinking this, too. I hope they make more progress than I’m likely to.
I had the immense pleasure of hearing Todd Park talk at Brooklyn Beta recently. As stated in his Twitter bio, he is the “Chief Technology Officer and entrepreneur-in-residence at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services”. He spoke of this little budding piece in this one branch of our huge government that seems to be interested in joining the modern world. He is on a campaign to tell people who build things with technology about all of the data that the agency is making available and is inviting us to revolutionize health care using this data.
I’ve done a bit of thinking about how “survival of the fittest” doesn’t quite work in our world anymore. Note: for the sake of simplicity and staying on the domestic topic, I’m going to say this from a first/western world perspective. Some have and some don’t, but things have become much more complex than the best hunter eating and feeding their offspring better than the others. I feel like its about survival of the flexible. We need to pick up the pace and start to be brave about trying solutions. I suspect that people move toward radical, drastic changes in social structure because there is no opening for them to affect the structures that are in place.
For all our sakes, and as a warning to those in government now - if we are to preserve what we have and prevent a further destructive atmosphere, stifling economic growth at the very least, we’d better open up some paths for change to be affected within, in a meaningful way, and quick.
I hope that the giant corporation has seen its day for the most part, along with rigid government on high. Not that large bodies can’t exist, but that they need to find ways to have more moving parts that live in harmony with the whole and still have a meaningful impact. The single hope for the US is to embrace rapid innovation. It is doubtless the only way to stay economically viable, it is the only way to stop wasting the abilities of talented individuals who don’t have a way to be productive, its potentially the way to quell an uprising and perhaps eventually being swallowed up by another dominant global player, if not in name then in our ability to survive or lack thereof.
