Government 2.0

How do you think government (either in the United States or elsewhere) can best utilize technology to engage the public and make government more transparent and accessible?

Former Senator and President Elect Barack Obama will record his weekly presidential campaign address and post in on his presidential transition site change.gov. His youth and experience with technology beg the question. Should Government should utilize the technology that’s in front of them, to connect with the average citizen? This is the way of the future in which the government can keep in touch with the growing population that is getting the majority of news and information online.

So far, Barack Obama is the symbol for change and hope and if this is one of the changes that would help get the people to keep a check on government, and hold them accountable for any wrongdoing, then I am all for it. The advent of the internet and various political blogs and message boards that have sprouted up, more so during the eight years of the Bush Administration have helped the people, more specifically young people engage in the political process again. Out of this, will come the new generation of political activists who are not afraid to speak out against government when it does something wrong. By the way, it is the patriotic thing to do!

The internet has helped propel the Barack Obama campaign by raising millions of dollars from small donors, helping to bring him to the national spotlight as a serious Presidential contender with a strong backing.

The idea of posting a YouTube video of Barack Obama’s weekly presidential address, is a wonderful idea. It will allow You Tube posters to post comments regarding certain policies that Obama will propose. Maybe it will have an impact on the way that new legislation is passed, because if the Obama Administration proposes something that is unpopular, then his approval ratings will go down and if he proposes something that the majority of Americans agree with, then his ratings will improve. So our comments may be able to sway his position on certain policies.

Overall, I think this could be beneficial to the American people. It will help keep those technologically savvy informed and that will result in keeping a close eye on our government when they screw things up. I look forward to this new Administration to see what’s in store.

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/16/1526229

The Issue of Net Neutrality

There is a lot of debate with the big internet and telephone corporations over the issue of network neutrality. The big companies want to be able to regulate the internet through fees. Also to determine what internet content you want to see gets to you fastest than others.

The principle of net neutrality is that all information on the internet is treated equally. AT & T , Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon all argue that they should be able to charge internet sites a premium for delivering faster content on better known sites like Google or Youtube than on lesser known sites. Does an internet company have the right to limit the content that you wish to view?

Many of the internet companies feel that the due to the increasing use of games playing and video content being used, that it is taking up much of the bandwidth. As a result of this they propose a plan to charge heavy internet users fees to used websites with data rich, heavy content within them.

The argument against this is that this is practice threatens internet freedoms that we have always enjoyed. Opponents also fear of internet discrimination. The internet is the extension of free speech written in the first amendment of the Constitution. Also the fact that the lack of so called regulation of the internet has led to the technological revolution. MySpace, Facebook and Youtube exist with net neutrality and without it, online entrepreneurs are at risk of being at the mercy of the internet providers to be able to share their content.

Another issue to deal with is the issue of government being involved in such regulation. Should government be involved with such regulation or should the free market work itself out? Usually when government tries to regulate business, they do so with good intentions. But those good intentions often lead to unintended consequences. New regulations could help to stifle new competition from entering the arena. They would have to go to the government to seek approval wasting time in the process.

I support net neutrality because I want all of the content online to be equally distributed to everyone and not have certain sites available for users for a fee. As a supporter of the first amendment, I feel that the internet especially during this decade, has been a bastion of freedom of information and innovation, the likes of which no one has seen. In this case I don’t support government legislation for net neutrality and as a result , the market just needs to work itself out.

New York Politics

The blog I found was The Daily Politics blog. This blog is in conjunction with the New York Daily News. The link is http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/ . It is written by Elizabeth Benjamin. That is her real name and she uses no pseudonyms. She is news writer for the New York Daily News and political journalist out of Albany. She joined the Times Union in June 1997. While at the paper, she has covered suburban, city and state government. Benjamin is the paper's lead political reporter and blogger She is in her fifth year working out of the state Capitol. I was unable to find the very first post of the blog because it is updated on a weekly basis.

The tone on this blog is straightforward. She writes on the issues going on in New York City politics, with a little dash of national Presidential politics in between. She shows no bias when writing the blog. It makes it a much more comfortable read, in that you can come up with your own opinions on certain topics without the writer persuading you to think one way.

The big story on the The Daily Politics blog is the news that Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York seeks to run a third term as mayor. The City Council voted 29-22 in favor of extending terms limits for Mayor, so Bloomberg could seek re-election next year. The vote came not without some controversy. One blog entry entitled “Bloomberg’s ’09 opponents respond” , Bloomberg’s opponents ferociously went after the Mayor and City Council. Comptroller Bill Thompson said "I am saddened that our Mayor and majority of City Council members have put individuals before principles. Today our government chose to empower itself rather than the people it serves." Representative Anthony Weiner had this to say “Today is a sad day for New York's democracy and I am disappointed. Everyone can see that this is a backroom, insider deal that takes away New Yorkers' right to vote. I don't believe it will soon be forgotten." This is obviously a big story that will continue to go on as the 2009 mayoral election approaches.

Reader reaction of this particular story is that of utter disappointment. The majority of reader comments 9:1 were opposed to extending term limits for the mayor and most felt that two terms was enough. They feel betrayed by their city council members that voted for something that the public was vehemently against. Some reactions from readers were that they would get rid of any “dead wood” in November.

Ever since the advent of blogs, they have shaped the way politics has been viewed by the public. “Blogs might affect the presidential campaign in another way: by encouraging their readers to participate in politics…blogs may prod their readers to engage in other kinds of political activity, such as giving more to candidates or registering and mobilizing new voters” ( LA Times: Who listens to blogging heads?). One statistic that is sure to raise eyebrows is that“46% of Americans have used the internet to get political news and share their thoughts about the campaign” (Pew Internet, 2008). This shows that the American people are paying attention to politics now more than ever and they are watching politicians every move. It is a good thing, that way we can keep the politicians in check .

Pew Internet. 2008. The Internet and the 2008 election. www.pewinternet.org

Sides, John. 2008. Who listens to blogging heads? Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-sides13-2008jul13,0,3601017.story

Web Application

One site that I frequent that provides me with all the mixtapes I need, for free, is www.datpiff.com. They are a website community that provides free mixtapes to anyone that like to download them . The music comes from people who, apparently, have a lot of spare time on their hands to upload music onto the site. The site is not an illegal file sharing site so it is perfectly acceptable to download any song from this site and risk penalties. All of the mixtapes are for promotional use only.

The site uses a lot of flash and shockwave and it has a hip hop feel to it. There a a few advertisements on the site but nothing that is too distracting, in my opinion. On the main page of the site it provides you with the newest mixtapes from various artists. There a lots of underground artists who have mixtapes out, and there are also mainstream artists who provide there mixtape on the site as well. Overall, I would say that the site is generally easy to use. All you need to do is to type in any artist you want and once you do that, all of the mixtapes that the artist has created will be downloaded onto the screen for your liking.

The site is great because it allows to download free music and be able to put in onto your IPod. There is also a small but active community on the site which allows you to comment on any song or mixtape album that you listened to. It also provides you with blogs and hip hop gossip columns as well for you entertainment. It is beneficial because, it helps you keep up to date with what artist is coming out with a new mixtape and whether or not you should download it. The best part about it is that it is all free. So enjoy!

Datpiff . www.datpiff.com

Online Communities

“Community is an important aspect of life for most people. Cooley (1983) says that all normal humans have a natural affinity for community. He suggests that the primary factor inhibiting the formation of communities, no matter what their scale, is that they are difficult to organize” (Fernback & Thompson, 1995). On the internet , there are many web groups, message board groups and even social networking groups that each of us are a part of. One group that I have been a part of since the 2005 is Democraticunderground.com. Democratic Underground is a message board geared towards liberal and Democratic voters in the United States and across the globe. It is aimed at users who are disgruntled at the Bush Administration’s policy during this decade.

I joined in 2005, because I was angry at the way things were handled during the Hurricane Katrina fiasco. I needed to join a community where people had the same frustrations about the government’s handling of Katrina and what I can do to help with the situation. I searched all over the internet for a site that fit my world view of things. I didn’t know what a liberal or conservative was at the time and I didn’t really know who all the politicians were and who the Governor of Louisiana was but I needed to join something where I can relate with other people.

I have been a member of the site for more than three years, and now it is the 2008 elections. Tensions are high and the presidential race is down to its final stretch, and a lot of posters are disrespectful to each more than ever because of the intensity of the elections. However, the board is still a good place to catch up on news and information from a liberal point of view.

The differences that I find with the online community as opposed to the offline community is that there is obviously no face to face interaction. When you are debating with someone about politics and policy and the other person happens to disagree, you want to see their initial reaction. You don’t want to wait 5-10 minutes for a response. So response times are much slower in message board communities than in real life. If the other person wants to react in displeasure, they would usually post an emoticon to show their reaction to a topic. Also the feeling of anonymity is one that feels good, in a way because nobody knows who you are, unless you post a picture, and your much freer to discuss an unpopular viewpoint than if you were in a face to face conversation, that would make you think about the words you say before you say them . Those are the differences between the online and offline communities.

Democratic Underground

Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure? (May, 1995) Jan Fernback & Brad Thompson

Identity

According to Wikipedia, online identity is an online social identity that internet users establish on websites and online communities such as the use of avatars and pseudonyms (Wikipedia: Online Identity). Twelve years ago, I first started using the internet . It wasn’t available in my elementary school at the time, but it was available in my local library. So I, along with every other school aged kid used to sign up and wait upwards to an hour just to use 15 minutes of the Internet. It was amazing being able to amass so much information about anything and everything. But what I didn’t realize was the amount of people using the internet at the same time. What seemed to be an exciting new development turned out to be a world-wide phenomenon.

My parents finally bought their first home computer in 2001. Completely packaged with Microsoft Windows 98, and the America Online internet package, this was the first time I had the internet in my own home. AOL, was famous for its numerous chat rooms. You could chat about anything from Finance to Real Estate or even chat with people that live in the same city as you. Keep in mind that I had no parental supervision at all as my parents had trusted me to become a responsible internet user. and that, I was pretty much free to do whatever I wanted on the internet, as long as I didn’t purchase any items online.

My most memorable and first screen name that I used was “FKingOfTheWorld 237”. I had gained the reputation as a disruptive, rambunctious, trash talking troll that people would hate to chat with. I used to chat mostly in the New York chat room and what started off with as casual conversation turned out to be trash talking, slugfest. What started off as a one on one chat turned out to be fight which ultimately disrupted the board and caused its members to leave . Typical immaturity by a 13 year old, doing nothing but disrupting chat rooms.

The whole ruse continued until someone who chatted online in the same chat room threatened to stalk me and threatened my life. I tried to fight him back, verbally, but he was too strong and his words were scary enough to help me log off online as fast as possible. I was foolish enough to think that this man would actually come to my place and hurt me. He even threatened to hack into my account, that way I wouldn’t be able to log on to AOL anymore.

Several online stores have beefed up security to ensure protection for their online customers. Programs such as anti-phishing software and Passcode help give the illusion of protection, but some criminals have found ways around the new security measures by these online retailers. A lot of customer information is public and it easy to go online and steal the identity of the person you want to use as a target. So there are ways to get around these security blankets.

Gift Economy

Before today, I did not even know what a gift economy was, or if I even participated in it. Now, I know that I do and mostly every single web user has used and contributed to the web economy one way or another. Gifford Pinchot points to a book called The Gift: The Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde. He says that in a gift economy, status is accorded to those who give the most to others. He provides us with an example of people who give the most to the gift economy. Scientists of high stature, he says, are not the ones who are most knowledgeable, but are ones who have contributed most. He adds, “A scientist of great knowledge, but only minor contributions is almost pitied - his or her career is seen as a waste of talent” (Pinchot: The Gift Economy).

According to Wikipedia, a gift economy is defined as a social theory which goods and services are given without the direct, immediate return (Wikipedia, 2008). It says that it differs from planned, barter and market economies in that return is expected from exchange. Pollack continues, “Why would anyone give away such valuable advice? What can explain the amount of cooperation that does occur in online communities?”.

He talks about the internet gift economy when people pass on free advice or offer useful information, the recipient is often unknown to them and the giver may never encounter the recipient again. The end result being, the usual obligation of a loose reciprocity between two specific individuals is difficult or impossible (The Economies of Online Cooperation).

One example provided by Pollack is from face-to-face interaction,” if I help a stranded motorist in my community, I do not expect that motorist to return the favor, but I may hope and expect someone else in the community to offer me aid should I be in a similar situation” (The Economies of Online Cooperation).

A message board that I often frequent that offers Real Estate Investment advice is an example of a gift economy. There are a lot of people like myself, that browse around for information that you are looking for, whether it be in residential, commercial real estate or financing. If you are looking for answers on a particular topic, there are experts who are currently in the industry that are willing to help you. They provide valuable advice to people who ask questions and people who are starting out and people who just need guidance.

Another example of a gift economy is social networking sites like Facebook. It is a place where you share and receive information from people in your networks. You can connect with people in college, old High School buddies and distant family members. The more you contribute to the site, the more you can maximize your experience and the less you contribute the less you get in return.

Gift Economy. (n.d) Wikipedia. Retrieved September 19 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy#cite_note-0

Kollack, Peter. “The Economies of Online Cooperation: Gifts and Public Goods in Cyberspace”. 1999

Pinchot, Gifford. “The Gift Economy”. 1995 <>