Tag Archives: programming

Rebooting Democracy thoughts on Activists versus Pundits and Law

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The difference between an actual organizer/activist working in a movement and someone of the punditry; there are *concrete* artifacts pursued by an organizer/activist and the primary artifact of a pundit is their cult of personality.

If there aren’t proposals behind the bluster of someone considered a leader, maybe what you have isn’t a leader, but a pundit in pursuit of nothing more than fame and power.

There is a Rebooting Democracy movement brewing among many in technology spheres. Lawrence Lessig is one of the activists (not pundits) behind this and a perfect example of this is a movement he and many others are pursuing to pass the Fair Elections Now act. Check it out.

Activists tend to be far more boring than pundits in my experience (no offense you activists out there). When you start to coalesce energy into real action (which in turn means facing the gears of bureaucracy and process), it can be frustrating, slow and yes, boring. But it’s the body of democracy. And we are part of it.

YouTube: “Schoolhouse Rock- How a Bill Becomes a Law”:

There is a challenge here for the Rebooting Democracy movement. Where is the list of laws or bills on the books that lets me find those I might be interested in supporting or fighting to have dismantled? The tools that are out there require a lot of work and are not where they need to be. Until I can locate laws and bills, Local, State, and Federal that would call me to action (even ‘like’-ing them on Facebook) and such activity can be aggregated some how for our representatives to act on, we remain in a position where those who speak the loudest, or have the greatest cash pile, have the ear of our law-makers.

We say we want an informed citizenry and participatory democracy. To me, this is an achievable small measure along that path.

So if you are a software engineer out there who would like to build the infrastructure for this, or are part of this, let me know, because I want to be involved where I can. There is code to write. System’s to build. So that all of us can better connect, be informed, and participate.

Related:

Thomas.gov

O’Reilly Radar: Mark Drapeau: “What does Government 2.0 look like?”

Rebooting Democracy

Code for America

Sunlight Foundation

Getting to know who you are can help

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Oscar Wilde may have said, “only the shallow know themselves”, but a little introspection can go a long way.

Kimberly Blessing recommends a book and online assessment called “StrengthsFinder” to put to language what your natural strengths and inclinations are so that you can better put them to use.

She mentions the Keirsey temperament sorter in relation to Strengths Finder and it’s an assessment I’ve taken a few times over the past ten or so years. I always end up in the Idealist camp, sometimes among the Champions, sometimes among the Teachers. Re-reading the description of the Idealist I’m actually taken aback at how close it maps to me, including what my values are and what stresses me out.

I’m looking forward to finishing reading StrengthsFinder (quarter of the way through) and taking the assessment, it will be fun and helpful.

: StrenghtsFinder indicated my top 5 strengths are: Connectedness, Input, Individualization, Activator, and Strategic. These make a lot of send an emphasize elements of the Keirsey identified Idealist in me. These strengths compliment each other nicely.

Being an Activator, being driven to make things happen, works well to balance out the Strategic strength, which is to anticipate and project ahead. You can actually see how these two strenghts can be in conflict with one another too.

Individualization, looking for the unique qualities in each person and finding a way to help people work together, assists with Connectedness, which is all about bridge building and seeing the larger picture, the meaning of things.

As for Input, well Richelle calls me Number 5 (from Short Circuit) 🙂

I’d bet that Adaptibility, Context and Learner were among my top 10, if there was access, I’d bet they were there.

I highly recommend taking StrenghtsFinder. Even if you don’t believe in this kinda thing, and think that who we are as people is far more fluid than these kinda things would suggest, I do believe a little introspection can go a long way.

Interested in data and visualizations?

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Check out the Guardian’s Datablog, and while you are at it, read/watch the Guardian’s Simon Rogers interview with Jonathan Stray of Nieman Journalism Labs on the rise of data journalism and the tools they use.

Want to know what people want?

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Well this doesn’t get you exactly there, but László Kozma has a Perl script and some analysis that points you to the top sentences on the Web that start with “How can I” using Google. Fascinating stuff.

Tutoring

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Lately I’ve been part of a project helping tutor an individual in assisted living, who is disabled, in learning how to navigate the Web and email, with the eventual goal of uploading his music to YouTube. I can’t wait to introduce you to him – he’s fantastic and his songwriting is interesting.

It has been a terrific experience, an eye opener, and a reminder of things I I might have forgotten from when I used to develop applications for folks I worked with at Sears, who were not familiar with using a mouse, let alone an application of some sort.

Two things that come to mind that I will probably talk more about in later posts are that metaphors and analogies are terrific communication tools and that we as programmers and web service producers still make things too damn hard – there is still tremendous opportunity for innovation.

Example idea:

Markup that web browsers recognize for Login and Logout links/activities/forms so that the web browser itself can present a common interface for this kind of common action. Everyone has these interactions in different locations, with different looks and feels, but for those people who are disadvantaged in some way, this could provide a common interface. This way, web designers can keep the flexibility in their UI designs they seek *and* an additional utility would be available in the browser itself, to assist those who need it.

Just an idea to throw out there.

I’m thankful to be in a position to do this, and I hope to share more as this project progresses.

Access Matters

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Programmers have a saying, “Linus’ Law”: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”.

This makes it all the more concerning that during the oil leak disaster in the Gulf, access has been restricted for reporters and scientists.

Lets hope the news that the leak is almost over is true. The cleanup will take years.

Related:

ProPublica.org: Stephen Engelberg: “When the Police Control the Press”

Yesterday was a big one for newspaper companies

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The Journal Register Company, which is running a forward thinking project focusing on newspaper production, reached an important landmark yesterday, and published their newspapers using open source tools.

Read about it from Jeff Jarvis and on the Journal Register’s blog about the project they have appropriately titled, “The Ben Franklin Project”. The work that The Journal Register Company is putting into this will provide a template for others to build upon.

More from Steve Earley and John Paton.