Bill's Notebook

Today, I received Daniel Lathrop and Laurel Ruma’s Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice.  I just read the first chapter, “A Peace Corps for Programmers,” and I already know this will be a great book!  What a refreshing and blunt assessment of what is wrong with the current way the federal government procures software.

1)  WhiteHouse.gov goes Open Source (Drupal) – actually reported on10/25/2009 but the original story has been updated to include the contractors: Acquia and Phase2.  The contractors also had folks at the OpenGov workshop I attended.

2) U.S. Department of Defense to allow Social Networking on unclassified computers – Check out their Social Hub.

3) Pew Research Study shows we get our news through social networks – “The latest study from Pew Internet analyzes the news Americans are consuming and various different ways they find news. Based on a sample of 2,259 adults, the study reveals that three fourths of the people (75%) who find news online get it either forwarded through e-mail or posts on social networking sites, and half of them (52%) forward the news through those means.”

4) UK Newspaper, The Guardian, opens new API on political information – You don’t even have to register to access APIs that will feed election and political information into apps that you create.

So, governments are going open source and embracing social networking at the same time people’s news consumption shifts to online social networking applications.  Almost a perfect storm of open government.

But building trust online is a different process than building trust in the face-to-face world.  Mashable has a great interview with Dr. Judy Olson on creating trust through social networking tools.  As government moves toward openness and collaboration, these can be the basis for an effective trust strategy.

The results are surprising.

An interesting perspective on how power is shifting from government to the people.

Four months ago, I wrote about Walter Anderson’s Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be and how it perfectly described the rise of social networking even though it was published in 1992.  Essentially, Anderson argues that technology has advanced to the point that people can construct their own reality of like-minded individuals.

Rachel Winchester updates this argument with her concept of the Metanet.  She defines it as:

“The population of the internet has hit the point where we can no longer lump everything and everyone together as ‘the Internet.’ There’s the internet of things, as more and more devices come online of their own accord, and more and more sensors are added. There’s the cloud, where data is stored and processed, there’s the commerce internet, there are the walled gardens of intranets and private instances, and there’s social media, now the main way people interact with the internet. I’m starting to call these the metanet, the macronet, the micronet, and the me net.”

On a related note, I think my last paragraph of my original posting was a bit pessimistic as I asserted that social networking will lead to more groupthink and exclusionary communities.  I still think there is a danger of groupthink but the same technologies can also make it easier for people to break from groups they no longer find useful or welcome to form their own.  A key to this is how social networking technologies make it easier to raise criticisms and objections that could prevent the formation of groupthink.  Must keep an open mind on this.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson’s observation about beer.  I read an interesting post about the seeming elitism of the TED Conferences and I somewhat agree with the author’s assertion:

“This is classic TED. Take an idea that has gained currency. Self-appoint some (non-genuine) champion of that idea. Change the idea subtly to align with the political preferences of the ‘elite’ audience. Then market the new version of the idea (and its new champions) as the original idea that has been and is widely accepted.”

It’s not just TED.  You see this all over the web.  A few consultants, speakers, writers, whatever get together and self-proclaim each other the elite of their field (an especially audacious example – The Digerati).  They build a website, hold online conferences, and video their talks so that the “masses” can bask in the assembled geniuses.

Sometimes, the stuff is good.  I especially enjoy the TED talks and some of the Digerati have interesting insights.  Other times, it is pure pretentious crap.  And woe be to any outsider who dares question the wisdom of this assembly of genius.

But, so what?  Before the Internet and Web 2.0, these mutual admiration societies could run a magazine or discussion salon that few others had the money or expertise to run.  Now, anyone with an online connection can become their own elite group.  Don’t like TED?  Then, build your own group of gurus.  Start a Facebook group, create a group blog, film some videos.  Gather around your friends, give each other titles, and publish your great works on Scribd.

Soon, you will be one of the elite and will have lots of fans.  And other people who can’t stand you and create their own group in response to your elitism.  Democratizing elitism through social networking.

Watching the video tutorial about Google Buzz and its features I think that Google has quietly conceded that Google Wave wasn’t as revolutionary as they had hoped.  Notice how Google Buzz is essentially Google Wave with GMail as the platform.

UPDATE – O’Reilly Radar has also noticed the similarity between Google Wave and Google Buzz.

Charles Leadbeater (titles himself a leading innovation and creativity thinker) writes a provocative essay on five potential problems with the move toward cloud computing:

1)  Homogeneity stemming from established companies like Google and Apple.

2)  Corporate Control.

3)  Prevention of cloud formation by strict copyright controls.

4)  Government control of the cloud.

5)  The Digital Divide.

These are potentially serious issues that do warrant further exploration.  The Internet is famous for routing around controls but can it survive in a cloud environment?

Amazing video!  Now, speaking as a public administration and public policy scholar, I am fascinated to see how this will change government in the next decade.