Continuations

Fred posted over the weekend about deficit reduction. What we really need though is not cutting within the existing system, but rather restructuring government for the age of the Internet. We currently seem to be in the habit of piling patches upon poorly working systems. It is as if we were trying to cope with decades of technical debt with a couple of maintenance releases as opposed to a fundamental refactoring. Where we should look instead is at what is possible in the private sector. If V...

Yesterday, Fred wrote a post titled “Stuck In The Middle With You” about his continued support for President Obama. I feel the same way. I was excited early on about Obama’s campaign, felt that he made smart choices then, and was thrilled to see him elected. Obama took office under some of the most adverse circumstances of any president, with two wars in progress and an economy headed into free fall. Now we find ourselves not even a year later and the beginning of a withdrawal from Iraq has n...

Whenever my kids tell me how their teachers don’t want them to use Wikipedia as a source I redouble my effort to show them why Wikipedia is important and how it works. In particular, I make sure they understand how to look at the history of a page and to check out the discussion or “talk” page that sits behind the content page. Two principles of those pages are critically important. First, they are inclusive by allowing anyone to contribute to the process at least initially (on some controver...

I wrote a bit of a rant recently about the structural changes in our economy and society that need to be addressed. What we are getting instead – not surprisingly – is a lame last minute compromise on the debt ceiling that includes absolutely no additional revenues for the government (“it’s all cuts!”). This essentially means that the Democrats and the President caved completely on their original positions (that’s simply an assessment of the outcome, whether or not you happened to agree with ...

I have argued in the past that we need an Internet Bill of Rights. If anyone doubted that, then they should look at what has been happening at and around the eG8 summit. There have been many great tweets from people there and around the world. The two that summarize the situation best for me are first Jeff Jarvis tweeting thatAt # eG8, government acts as if it should protect us from the internet. Instead, the internet needs protection from government.And then this wonderful response by Scott ...

There is a lot in the FY 2010 US budget and it will take some time to digest. But one thing that is clear right away is that there is a big tax hike coming for folks at higher income levels. I for one have never been upset about paying taxes. That’s probably in part because growing up in Germany my Dad, who was a teacher and – like all teachers in Germany at the time – a government employee, instilled a sense that paying taxes was a civic duty right up there with voting. I still believe that ...

About a year ago, I wrote a post with the same title, except that it ended in a question mark. Since then I have become convinced that solving the problem of our ever growing data trails will require a reshaping of what we mean by and expect from the idea of privacy. Two things happened this week that brought this issue back to mind:On Monday in our partners meeting we got to talking about EZ Pass and how it creates a trail of a car’s movement (and by implication people movement). We talked b...