Stuck in the my in-laws basement, I came across Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) testifying in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on December 11, 2007 being replayed on C-Span.
Mr. Wales posed the analogy of a steak restaurant to a website. In the steak restaurant, the patrons will need knives. Since people have knives, they could stab each other. Therefore the patrons should sit in cages so they do not stab each other. Mr. Wales finds many websites that treat their patrons in the same way.
I found it interesting to hear the federal government struggling with Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 issues. There was a lot of discussion balancing transparency and privacy.
Senator Akaka (D-Hawaii) found it funny to hear his colleague Senator Lieberman using the Hawaiian word wiki.
There is more detail in these posts:
The Technology Liberation Front: Liveblogging (to tape) today’s e-gov hearing
Swordplay.tv: Senate Hearing Discusses Web 2.0 to Improve our Democracy
You can also see the webcast.
Thanks for the ping. It was defintely nice to hear some senators that are in touch with technology.
ReplyDeleteI just hope we can start to build some trust among fellow citizens now.