Monday, September 10, 2012

Articles / Books I'm Reading Today


Citizen as Designer in SSIR

Here are some excerpts from Brodie Bolands fantastic article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review:

“Reducing deficits, addressing climate change, and preventing major security threats—these challenges require creativity and innovation more than debate.

“This 
deciding paradigm* diverts institutional resources away from innovation and toward conflict, and fails to tap into the knowledge and ingenuity that we all possess. Our primary role as citizens is checking a box beside our preferred option on the ballot. That the poverty of this notion of what we can contribute does not seem absurd to us only speaks to how entrenched we are in our ideas of what democracy is. In a world where we use mass collaboration to design products, generate knowledge, and create markets, why do we accept such a constrained role in the political realm? This should seem as anachronistic to us as the typewriter or the telegraph—quaint, useful for its time, but ultimately too limited.


“Currently, our political system answers the question 
how do we decide between alternatives? Instead, it should ask how could we design better alternatives?”

“Current structures are strained and new ones are needed. We have an exciting design challenge ahead.

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David Eaves (who blogs at eaves.ca) shares an important message in an article on Slate.com about the politicization of data and the importance of us not treating successes on open data as our end-game.

Read it here: Lies, Damned Lies, and Open Data

Several lines that resonated:
"
We are going to have to find ways to ensure not just the openness of data, but also its credibility and reliability."

"Open data does not represent an endgame, but another step in what will likely be a never-ending struggle for rational debate and evidence based public policy."
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The Challenge of Direct Democracy - the 1992 Canadian Referendum.
Check it out here.

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