We have to make a choice: divert more & more energy to avoid & repair leak after leak or come to terms with an open world. # This is the big ethical and practical choice we need to confront. Every time we choose to keep even the smallest secrets we sow seeds that’ll grow into [...]
Tagged as:
cablegate,
epistemology,
foreign affairs,
government,
history,
internet,
julian assange,
knowledge,
love of learning,
news,
open government,
philosophy,
politics,
process,
secrecy,
transparency,
truth,
wikileaks
It took me most of my young life to figure this out. After growing up as a precocious political junkie I got jaded pretty early. I grew up in a rural conservative family but somehow, deep-down I’m an urban technophile who often hopes there’s no problem that walkable neighbourhoods and Twitter hashtags can’t solve. In [...]
Tagged as:
cities,
conservatism,
democracy,
design ego,
elections,
government,
ideology,
moral psychology,
motivation,
politics,
pragmatism,
progressivism,
purpose,
relevance,
values,
voting,
will to relevance
They’ve done a good job of making moderate people critical. I tend to give police the benefit of the doubt, and I was one of the people thinking, “well it’s not an easy task” last week, but the way complaints have been handled (i.e. not) since then is deplorable. Both the police and people in all [...]
Tagged as:
authority,
competence,
courage,
g20,
government,
law,
police,
power,
protests,
security,
toronto,
trust
Yesterday a new website launched, Action London 2010, providing Londoners what promises to be a textbook perfect case study on dos and don’ts of civic engagement in the digital age. They say (and have demonstrated they are) working to improve the site quickly, to their credit. I wasn’t going to post this but I eventually decided to lay [...]
Tagged as:
accountability,
cities,
civic engagement,
democracy,
digital democracy,
generativity,
government,
openness,
transparency
Other people will have a lot more insight into this than I do, but since everyone is talking about Google’s announcement [excerpted]… We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which [...]
Tagged as:
china,
diplomacy,
foreign policy,
google,
government,
open,
policy,
security,
strategy
I’ve learned not to care as much when other people are being stupid. It’s their problem. Last year I did more blogging in the spirit of “someone’s wrong on the internet,” but lately I’ve learned to lay off and let people screw up. (I’m so kind.) When I started writing about media it was because [...]
Tagged as:
collaboration,
complaints,
criticism,
government,
ideas,
open government,
opinions,
optimism,
pessimism,
politics,
pragmatism
I enthusiastically support Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue parliament… Here’s why. Proponents of more open, participatory, and directly accountable government have just been handed the best opportunity we could ask for. It’s a turning point in the narrative of centralized power that began with Jean Chrétien’s run in the 90s and has built up ever since. [...]
Tagged as:
activism,
canada,
citizen engagement,
facebook,
government,
open,
parliament,
politics,
prorogation,
public sphere,
slacktivism,
social media,
stephen harper
There’s no way to avoid the reality that strikes will make people upset, but maybe we can do more to avoid them altogether. That suggestion was made by Larry Cornies in great column in Saturday’s London Free Press, arguing we’re overdue to consider the damage caused by strikes and lockouts, time to think more imaginatively about [...]
Tagged as:
deception,
government,
labour,
london transit,
manipulation,
negotiation,
open government,
openness,
politics,
society change,
strikes,
transparency,
unions,
work
I wasn’t planning on writing much more about London for the time-being, but it just occurred to me that I should at least recognize the economic strategy recommendations made by the LEDC. I already bloviated on their recent summit — not once but twice – and I’ve written so much on the topic my silence would [...]
Tagged as:
government,
london
Who’s responsible for the “inspiration deficit” in Canadian politics? Why of course, blame the young: The young reject the political status quo, as they should, but they are too lazy to do anything about it. Most of the under-25s don’t even bother to vote. Instead of fighting for change, they wallow in their vanities and [...]
Tagged as:
blame,
change,
demographics,
elections,
generations,
generativity,
government,
leadership,
politics,
the young,
voting,
youth
by OpenConceptual on 07-12-2009
in mission
Just sort of a brainstorm here, following up on some of my relatively more youthful attempts to outline what this is all about: Draft Enterprise Model The Practice of Theory The other day I jotted down a few points — trying to distill the underlying mission of this amorphous enterprise. It has a few different [...]
Tagged as:
accountability,
articulation,
beta,
business,
change,
civics,
decision-making,
decisions,
design thinking,
digitization,
government,
information,
objectivity,
open,
open government,
open source,
openness,
org theory,
organizations,
participation,
politics,
pragmatism,
social web,
society,
transparency,
volunteering,
web
Directly following up on my last post about the problems of goals gone wild, here’s a look at China’s attempts to keep up their 8% rate of annual GDP growth. (Thanks to Francois in the previous post’s comments for bringing up the abuse of information during China’s Cultural Revolution.) Earlier today, FP Passport reported the World Bank’s quarterly [...]
Tagged as:
china,
economics,
goals,
government,
growth,
information,
policy