Years ago in his fantastic Linux related essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond wrote “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
Today this applies way beyond software, and increasingly in the field of government and governance. We’ve talked several times about how citizen blogs, citizen journalism, and the massive networks, both formal and informal, of concerned global citizens are creating a new paradigm within which governments must operate.
So whether it’s the use of YouTube (while under house arrest) or the blogosphere to help bring light to the situation in Pakistan, or the use of mobiles and the Net to help local councils literally fix themselves up, the public is increasingly able to enact greater scrutiny on the activities of government.
A great example is the site ManyEyes. Sponsored by IBM, the site takes publicly available data and turns it into some pretty interesting visualizations. Be it related to environmental, social or political issues, the site allows users (i.e. you and me) to graph data and subsequently draw the appropriate links to whatever it is we’re trying to prove. For example, one might look at a comparison of U.S. state emission rates and draw the conclusion that cows, not cars, are the real evil behind global warming. Evidently, such visualizations need some dialogue to become truly useable but nonetheless they create a tremendous window for engagement in policy. And combined with a plethora of similar sites and mashups such as those created by Sunlight labs, each of us has the tools to become modern-day Bob Woodwards or Carl Bernsteins….
The assumption of course is that illuminating the bugs will actually lead to them being resolved. Unfortunately political “bugs” seem to take a long time to fix.
One step at a time Naumi, one step at a time. It took nearly 5 years for Nixon to fall after Watergate came to light.
[...] folks at the WIKINOMICS blog have a post titled “All bugs are shallow . . . ” They explain: Years ago in his fantastic Linux related essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric [...]
I should say that availability of a medium by which the public is “increasingly able to enact greater scrutiny on the activities of government” (Herman 2007) is an important consideration since access to a meaningful communication is essential before a something can be uploaded and consequently downloaded within a “political platform”. I would argue that technology has both a colonization and peripheralization imperative - it affects tremendously those who have advantage while excludes in the process the already voiceless majority. So who has the advantage to peek into that “window of engagement” (Herman 2007)? And who are the ones creating that new paradigm? ‘We’ and ‘us’ are dangerous pronouns, because while they are normally believed to be inclusive, they always refer to that group of people who gather together in the same hall.
Miko - definitely! One of the biggest thrusts of our Gov 2.0 research is on the question of who is being engaged/who is participating. Is it simply those who are already part of the process? Those who self-select in as participants? Or do these new mediums actually create an incentive, and means, of broader participation? And, ultimately, does it matter? How does it impact the democratic process? A very fascinating area of investigation.
We interviewed the UK CIO, John Suffolk, a few weeks backm and he noted that in order to make this a truly holistic medium you first had to address the digital divide, thus enabling the voiceless majority to join the discussion. Tall order.
These are very interesting questions Dan. I can now see how the Chamber’s school at IDS has greatly evolved with the advent of technology. Fullspeed! Will findings be made available at no cost? Well, that’s again another access question, and again from the perspective of the periphery. Conversely, how far can the findings go? Again, another access question; which gives me the idea that the “autocrat” is better positioned to install research findings into action, no matter how loud Manhattan Transfer would sing “Park Chung Hee was a wanted man…”
There are two groups; those that ‘get it’ and those that do not. Efficiency is the name of the game in business and those who cling to structure-the tangible- have ‘insecurity’ written all over their faces. I have begun to give the book “Wikinomics” to those who yearn to work smarter and quicker.
[...] of countries are now more open to the speculation of the world community. Earlier, Dan wrote a post on the role of citizen journalism in transforming government. In it, he [...]
[...] 06:54pm We’ve blogged before about visualization tools like ManyEyes and Swivel (here, here, and here), but I thought I’d reiterate the point of how powerful and readily available these [...]