One of the big buzzwords around Washington and the rest of the country since November 4th, 2008 has been “transparency”. President Obama was widely prophesied as the harbinger of a political culture of openness and honesty. He has also been expected to be the first to leverage the Internet as a chief means of communication and collaboration with the American people.
So far the President and his administration have made promising steps on both fronts (see data.gov, for example). But what is important to remember about the web is that it’s designed to let the novice user contribute just as much as the elite power players.
WashingtonWatch.com, a website maintained in his spare time by Jim Harper of the Cato Institute, has started an initiative to let the average Joe and Jane identify pork spending buried within federal legislation. Wired.com’s Epicenter blog notes that the site, in partnership with the Sunlight Foundation, will be rewarding the top citizen watchdogs with Amazon Kindles, iPods, and other prizes.
This is a perfect example of what the New York Times recently referred to as “focused crowdsourcing.” If you want to put the mob to work, you need to do a few things. First, identify a market where there is a thirst for action. Then provide a specific and realistic objective, ideally one that is measurable and that can be registered in discrete steps (so as to lure both the curious and the committed). Offer users the tools and rules of the game, and provide worthy incentives. Next thing you know, you’re harnessing the wisdom and effort of the crowds to (hopefully) do some good in the world.
Harper has followed this model to perfection. The contest ends either when all earmarks have been entered, or when the fiscal year ends in October. Here’s hoping for robust participation from a digital citizenry hungry to see and make some change.
Hey folks. It’s been exactly three month since I last wrote a post for Tropophilia. Trust me, it hurts me as much as it hurts you. I’ve been busy with moving from Mountain View to San Francisco, as well as throwing a bachelor party and being the best man for our very own Mr. and Mrs. Ansley. (Congrats to the happy couple, currently on their honeymoon!)
The biggest trouble I’ve had is finding topics that I’m both passionate enough to write about, but also am “allowed” to address. Google has few rules about employee blogging (it’s actually a highly encouraged practice), but obviously there are limits to what I should and should not touch. Writing about competitors, or businesses that are suffering because of the rise of the web, or even about Google’s own moves, would probably not be in my or Google’s interest. Since this is pretty much everything I used to write about, you can understand I’m having a little blogger’s block recently.
The most frustrating part is not that I can’t chronicle the news items themselves, but that, as a result, I can’t vent my enthusiasm for the subject matter. One big reason I wanted to start Tropophilia was to release some intellectual energy about this new digital era. While my job gives me the daily opportunity to think about and work on these issues, there’s just something different about sitting down at the keyboard and crafting my own subjective analysis. I really miss that feeling.
All of this is to say that I’m going to resolve myself to finding those stories I can write about, and reengaging myself with this blog in short order. There will probably be more “pointing to / this is interesting” posts than “analysis” ones. I’m also hoping to start teasing out some of the legal questions surrounding new technologies and companies, in addition to talking about their cultural impact. I hope that you’ll continue to find it interesting, and even if you don’t, that you’ll at least be able to see the enthusiasm behind it.
Good talk, see you out there.
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