It's now just over a week since Gov 2.0 wrapped. This piece has been delayed, first by travel, then by some nasty illness and the work load that awaited me upon my return. My apologies for the gap, dear readers. Here are my final reflections and thoughts.
Photo by Alex Dunne
"How can we be a nation of laws if the law is behind a cash register?"
On Thursday morning I rose out of my seat, applauding loudly, shortly after those words were spoken. Then I stand, along with the entire Gov 2.0 crowd. There are shouts and cheers. One of them, at least, was mine.
Open government pioneer Carl Malamud had just sounded a clarion call, which is a term I don't use lightly. In a surprisingly low-key tone, he had delivered a short speech that drew on the history of America's democracy (the better parts, at least) channeled to a concrete goal: tearing down the wall that limits full access to the law to the legal profession and universities.
Here was what I had hoped to see from the conference: grand ideals translated into practical action in an area that often gets ignored. An area where the use of modern technology could prove a great boon.
That our elected leaders —good, bad or ugly— come extensively from the legal class is an oft-overlooked fact that affects our current perspective on government in many ways. Oddly for this era, many legal cases and opinions are still behind a wall, confined to expensive services. Breaking this information out would be huge.
As Malamud wrapped up, I could see the good that could be done with millions of minds picking over the sudden flood of revealed laws: exposing loopholes, making them easily searchable and looking for ways to topple outdated precedents. The exclusive legal priesthood would quiver with rage, but fuck 'em.
The law is for all? Maybe not quite yet, but it would be a good start.
Malamud's talk was one of the high points of the conference. The Gov 2.0 summit was exhilarating: there were good ideas and plenty, usually delivered rapid-fire by very bright people doing their damndest to bring a shining future into being. I can be cynical. I can cut. I do both because I believe that experience must direct the fire of ideas for them to have any meaning. But there was something in the air.
There was also enough naivete and hubris to fill an oil tanker. There's much that can be done here; and many, many obstacles in the way.
Why is all this happening now? That is a question that had been on my mind throughout the summit. The need for a government better adapted to meet the future is not a new issue. One answer of course, is that technology and politics have happily converged. The government is more open to this type of change, and evolving technology now makes it far easier to do.
Romi Mahajan, a longtime veteran of these types of summits, revealed to me an additional possibility. Mahajan now works for Ascentium after a long stint at Microsoft, and has written extensively on topics of politics and sociology as well as tech.
"Private sector money is drying up, so they're going to government," Mahajan said, pointing out the heavy-hitter corporate sponsorships for breakfast, lunch and after-conference booze.
Of course, it wouldn't be the first time in history that base motives and altruism managed to walk hand-in-glove to accomplish some good, but it does put things in a different light than the commonly presented . Mahajan sees potential here, but also the dire need for more perspectives outside of the relatively well-heeled technologist set.
"It would have been great to have an organizer up [on stage], someone who's only making $15,000 a year out in the trenches," he elaborated, and I couldn't agree more. Gov 2.0 would be greatly improved by those points of view, in fact I'll venture far enough to say that it will rot on the vine if it doesn't find them.
The ideas, especially the better ones, need that reality, need translators who can take them from the rarefied air and down into the scarcity and relative powerlessness that currently defines most people's relations with government.
The digital divide must also be addressed. I give Tim O'Reilly credit for bringing this up at several points, such as the final chat with the White House's Andrew McLaughlin, when O'Reilly asked: "if you can't afford books, can you afford a net connection?"
The answer is no. There was some speculation at the conference that eventually such tech will get so cheap that everyone will be connected. Consider me a skeptic. If you're working 16 hours a day at minimum wage to feed your kids, you're not getting shit. You will not be connected; you will remain invisible to the bright, shining world that's being built with all this wonderful gadgetry. There was a tendency at Gov 2.0 to mistake the assembled minds as somehow representative of a larger whole, of "we the people."
No. It was, by and large, a very, very small segment of the people, and a particularly affluent and well-connected one at that, but far removed from the vast majority of this country or any other. That's a huge problem: what you don't see will come back to haunt you.
War was a topic of some import on the final day of Gov 2.0, though in a mostly scrubbed, cleaned-up version. Michael Coppola, a high-school-age cyber warrior who'd managed, impressively, to bust the government's Cyber Challenge wide open. Introducing him, it was revealed that the United States has about 1,000 world-class cyberwarriors, while many other nations have ten times that number (John Robb, as usual, is essential reading here).
Yet no one conjured up collapsed economies, power outages and stolen information; the visceral consequences of cyberwarfare. It was impossible not to shiver at the casual reference to "people as weapons." The obvious questions: weapons for what? Wielded by whom?
Over chicken skewers and whiskey at the previous day's reception, the senatorial-looking Linton Wells II, a professor at the National Defense University and former Chief Information Officer for the Department of Defense, noted that hackers at the annual DefCon convention were "salivating" over the possibilities offered by social media.
He raised the point again in his onstage conversation with two of the Army's top tech officers—Maj. Gen. Nickolas Justice and Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorensen— who said that the military, of all things, is trying to shift from a "need to know" culture to "need to share." They evoked images of soldiers being able to use their cellphones to coordinate actions on the battlefield.
Security is a concern, and from more than one direction. It's easy to see widely used social media at a government level making a lot of vital data vulnerable. It would also be entirely too plausible to see that data being vulnerable to government as well. The dark reverse of a connected society— with a more transparent government quickly responding to basic needs— is a nightmarish security state quickly stomping out threats through the use of the very same mapping and connective tools.
Which one will we get? Like the old Cherokee story, the wolf we feed will win.
They're both there. After the generals, a panel of defense and intelligence experts took the stage for possibly the most jargon-filled part of the entire summit. There were some useful points even there too, but lost in the discussion is that the participants were essentially talking about spying, hacking and bloodshed.
Now, government has to do all those things, to one degree or another. But lost in the discussion entirely seemed to be any appreciation of the consequences of those actions. There were exceptions. Dave Warner's excellent presentation on the first day focused on using tech as a tool to relate to the Afghans, soldiers and contractors alike involved in the reconstruction efforts and elections. It was refreshingly ground-level, as was the U.S. Gov's Michele Quaid's sudden barb that "in business time is money, in intelligence time is lives."
But overall, the emphasis seemed to be on vague "bad guys" and using new tech to better do things governments have already decided to do.
I couldn't help but remember my fears about Gov 2.0 turning into the latest incarnation of the Best and the Brightest. Few people remember Robert McNamara's successes curing river blindness or reviving the economy using then-cutting edge science. Why? Because they remember kill counts and carpet bombing in Vietnam instead; tactics which originated from that very same mentality.
There was a temptation at Gov 2.0 for the technologists to see themselves as white knights. One well-dressed businessman turned to me on the last day and gushed "this is great stuff, if only the government will do it, if only they'll do it." Despite O'Reilly repeatedly praising the efforts and potential contributions of the government side, the palpably feeling from the technologists seemed to read clearly: we are smart and we are here to save you. McNamara's ilk had the same mind-set. It did not turn out well.
That's going to be a problem as soon as the quest for Gov 2.0 gets into the trenches, let alone starts touching the corners and conflicts of a massive, dynamic society.
Despite my concerns, I believe we can do better this time. I see the FCC chair say that broadband is now as essential as roads. I see the maps for Gaza, I see interaction with Islamic culture on Second Life, I see rumors being debunked before they feed bloody riots, I see Patients Like Me compiling medical data and support at amazing speeds. I think that maybe, just maybe, there are some seeds of a finer world here.
But the question must always be not just "can we do this?" but "should we?" The best war strategy is to fight as few of them as possible. That same lesson has to be applied to all of Gov 2.0. Tech can enable, it can assist, it can open up possibilities. By itself, it cannot solve. It cannot replace common sense, good decision-making or the need for basic justice. It does not make us immune to the lessons of history or the lust for power.
Tackle those questions head-on, open the table up to people from all walks of life, and we might get somewhere.
It's a start.
Fantastic write-up, thanks.
Posted by: Mark Drapeau | September 19, 2009 at 01:06 PM
A *lot of people need to read this analysis.
great modeling shot btw :]
Posted by: paul canning | September 19, 2009 at 04:42 PM