People have something to say

I'm back after a short break. I've been more and more intrigued with the idea of consumer technology as popular expression. I've had the opportunity now to write several articles for State News, a monthly magazine from the Council of State Governments, on technology issues. I continually return to the idea that people have something to say. State government in general is not listening very well.

I'm thinking:

• The Web is clearly a media platform inifinitely customizable and answerable to the user.
• We are using this plaftorm to share our stories. Web logs have meaning because even though we may be flawed, our stories are not.
• If power is derived from the consent of the governed, more information is a net plus for government because it leads to a clearer expression of the will of the governed. And minority opinion can be clearly understood and accommodated. There is a growing awareness among policy makers about the availability of information, but a disinclination -- so far -- to think seriously about the implications.
• State government doesn't have the internal tools to deal with this development. Bureaucratic structures, calcified with unecessary regulation and rulemaking cannot cope, by themselves, with this reality. I've seen too many good people trapped in Alice-in-Wonderland cultures. Public administration suffers greatly.
• Facts by themselves are approaching a commodity status. New value is created by putting facts together to describe a different reality. Leaving aside strictly personal information, government-as-insitutution likes to think it has special knowledge about what's good for us.
  
• The same phenomena that has struck other media outlets -- a volunteer class of fact checkers -- has yet to fully hit state government.
  
• There is a messiness in legislatures that is unavoidable. As one result of an amplified public voice, we may discover again that legislatures are valuable for bounding the passions of society.