Hi Ed:
Good points but --- the whole idea of this information age and governance is
not necesarily to compete with the experts but for the interested and -
hopefully intelligent poster to give input and broaden the debate by sharing
their opinions and viewpoints. I think the idea of the bazaar - and I am
still trying to assimilate whether this is the correct label - is perhaps
more like the Acropolis of ancient Greece - I hope my memory is right in
these names or I will quite justly get flamed. A common area or arena where
debate can take place in which those who have interests, ie the experts and
policy wonks and lobbyists have to justify their choices by critique by the
citizen. At the end of the day, they are the ones who will make the policy
- no argument there - but now those decisions are made in the backroom and
not even the stakeholders who will be affected by the decisions have input
other than to present proposals which disappear into a black hole - hardly
acknowledged - never debated.
Your example of aboriginal issues is the result of your experience. What is
being proposed is the creation of different experiences. This may be messy.
It may step on toes that don't want to be stepped on - it may not even work,
but for the first time since the invention of representative democracy, a
technological methodology makes possible the idea of a blending of direct
democracy with representional democracy. This is an experiment worth
engaging in. And looking forward into the future and trying to envision how
decisions in 2030 or 2100 might look, we have to admit that their will be
changes and we - living now at the start of the Internet Age will be the
pioneers who experiment. And that, to me is the key word - experimentation
and when you experiment in the scientific sense, failure is an appropriate
response which will eventually lead to success or other directions.
Respectfully
Thomas Lunde
----------
>From: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "futurework" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: From a "A Cathedral" of Public Policy to a Public Policy "Bazaar"
>Date: Fri, May 28, 1999, 2:49 PM
>
> Mike,
>
> What your paper does not seem to recognize is that government does not
> usually respond to the public as a whole, but to particular groups and
> interests within the public. This is not inappropriate if one views
> democracy as being founded on two often contradictory principles:
> recognizing the public interest as a whole; and protecting the rights and
> interests of individuals and groups. Bringing the public as a whole into
> policy formulation via a medium such as the internet might, if the
> initiative were genuine and sincere, satisfy one of these principles but
> could violate the other.
>
> Much of my experience in government and outside of it as a consultant has
> been with aboriginal issues. The content of these issues is complex. One
> has to become very deeply immersed in them before one really gets to
> understand them to the extent of being able to make an effective
> contribution to policy. I would question the willingness of most of the
> public to put enough time into developing an appropriate level of
> understanding. Moreover, aboriginal people have a longstanding proprietory
> interest in aboriginal policy making. They would strenuously resist an
> encroachment on this interest by the public as a whole. I would refer to
> the recent angry babble out of British Columbia on the Nisga settlement to
> illustrate what I'm saying.
>
> Other fields of policymaking would encounter similar problems. Could a
> life-long Toronto urbanite really understand the problems of marginalized
> prairie grain grower or the social devastation currently being faced by
> communities based on mining? Perhaps the role of the internet here is to
> educate -- to put the farmer or miner into direct contact with the urbanite
> so that he can then go after his MP. But to expect the urbanite to be
> sympathetic or even objective without such education is expecting too much.
>
> The role of government as cathedral is to try to balance a great variety of
> often mutually exclusive and mutually incomprehensible interests. I've
> worked in the cathedral and like the idea of the bazaar, but I quite
> honestly can't see how it would work. I read parts of the paper on the
> development of the Linux system. I came away with the impression that
> widespread input to the development and debugging of that system worked
> because everyone who contributed had a pretty good idea of what it was about
> and how it worked. I honestly cannot feel the same way about the
> development of Indian policy or many other issues government must try to
> resolve.
>
> Ed Weick
>
>
>>
>>(This is a draft of a paper that I'm developing that might be of interest
>>in this context. Contents, criticisms, "hacking" is welcomed.
>>Distribution (with attribution) is encouraged.)
>>Etc.
>
>
