I randomly came across this lecture by Beth Noveck for the Stamford University Human Computer Interaction Seminar entitled “Technologies for collaborative democracy”.
Once she’d got over the introductory bits of her presentation of various e-democracy projects from around the world (which covered the usual Downing Street e-Petition stuff), she went on to make some really interesting points.
Here’s a random selection of some of the things I learnt from Beth Noveck’s video (N.B. I only last til 40 mins, when I got hungry!):
- Her main interest is in how to break out of the current nature of ad-hoc democratic processes – e.g. one off consultation events of things like Flash mobs – and create ongoing collaborative governance.
- Vermont is trying to become the “digital Delaware”, setting up a legal framework for creating “virtual companies” i.e. legalising online collaborative partnerships
- Libya’s Policywiki – bizarrely, Libya has embraced e-democracy, and has set up a Policywiki, enabling citizens to take part in collaborative policy making. The projects been funded by the Qadhafi foundation.
- I liked her description of the Peer-to-patent’s project as creating a “Human database”. It was also interesting to hear how the peer-to-patent project uses highly structured participative process, aimed at experts.
- I LOVED her anecdote about Thomas Jefferson being the founder of participative governance.
- Her point about collaborative governance being about effectiveness not equality was something that I’ve been thinking about for a while.
- Visual deliberation – I thought this was her most interesting point. She described a research project’s findings that found that when we see ourselves in the screen we change our behaviour. And gave the example of how if you morph your face into the face of a President you’re more likely to vote for them. Further she made that described how President Bush colourised his face darked in ads targeted at black and hispanic neighbourhoods.
- Group brain – this is the point that if you explicitly identify a group as a group, then they’re more likely to act as a group, and be more effective at solving a problem collaboratively.
- Social Translucence – following on from the Group Brain point, is the question of what happens when you see yourself as a group in a screen? And also, how do you design interfaces that create this? She firmly believes that this idea would bring about change.
She then got on to a point about “Green Chicago”, at which point my hunger took over and I had to go!
