One of the things I've watched with a very weather eye since its inception a few years ago is "Gov 2.0" or "the open government movement" or "open source goes to Washington." That's because I see it merely as a Silicon Valley stalking horse of big IT and the ethics-free hackers trying to take power. Lobbying is a sacred tradition in our country. Lobbying is legal! Lobbying is good! Lobbying should be regulated, and registered. So it's not that they lobby that bothers me; it's that they say that what they do isn't lobbying.
What the Wired State hackers and big ITsters do who claim they oppose evil corrupt corporate lobbyists is pretend that they aren't lobbyists, they aren't evil paid agents, but are authentic, true, "direct democracy", the "netroots" if not actually the "grassroots". They pretend that because they have social networking technology, they are "of the people" and "for the people" even if not exactly "by the people" because no one has elected them. I really do hate the scam this entails. I hate the sheer hubris and phoniness of this pose. Of course they are lobbyists, and well-paid lobbyists, at that.
To describe Alexander Howard as a "journalist" is really stretching it. He doesn't report news; he shapes public opinion about technology. Different! Different!
Chief among the snakeoil salesmen of Silicon Valley is Ted O'Reilly. He has a huge publishing empire of course, is beloved by many a geek, and has a huge position from which to serve as one of the great Silicon Valley influencers. I have read him for years and watched his videos and speeches for years and I see him as basically peddling that "your information wants to be free, my information is available for a fee" kool-aid that I find the essential Big Lie of the Internet as we know it.
Alexander Howard is the Washington O'Reilly correspondent. At first a few years ago or whenever it was that he started out on Twitter, with the handle "digiphile," he seemed like this nice guy who was kinda curious and kinda enthusiastic about technology and basically an interesting geek, despite, of course, the sect that he came from (O'Reilly).
But I found that as time when on, he has become more and more outspoken and influential and less and less willing to debate anything.
When I saw him peddling the Participatory Budgeting stuff (which is a kind of political-sect-meets-software-sect operation), I really had to sigh. Why does someone like this do the agitprop work of Working Families? (These politicians who are "experimenting" with the Participatory Budget, the latest fad in "direct democracy" are from or related to Working Families and other leftist platforms).
Hence, this discussion, which I cut and paste here AFTER logging out of Google Plus, because on my dashboard, it shows "this post no longer exists" because I'm blocked from this thread, and Alex is shown as someone who "doesn't share with me" and Google suggests that I "add him to my circles" and maybe he'll share with me.
Sigh.
He's blocked me -- that's what that means. Google is really Orwellian. They should inform people when someone else has blocked them, or inform them when they are blocked from a thread or deleted. That's just normal, common courtesy. That they don't is function of a) geeky insecurity and thin-skinned demands for "privacy" which is a cover for lack of accountability b) discomfort about transparency about how much their "open" systems are actually filled with closed stuff like this.
Here's what Mr. Open Gov does to me, a critic of his peddling of a software cult. Howard couldn't be more wrong when he claims that "the means of production haven't been socialized." *Of course they have, Alexander* because a software program/website/opensource outlook has collectivized the action, and with only one certain "progressive" perspective, has invaded a public space under camouflage of "democratic participation".
Proof of what I'm saying is easy to establish: you don't see this method applied in or near a Republican office or even something to the center or right of these leftists. That's how you know. It's not a neutral tool.
Notice if you criticize anything on the left, and if you utter the word socialism, you are immediately branded as a nut, a Tea Partier, etc. etc.
Some other comments --
o note how Howard accepts only "constructive" criticism of Gov 2.0. Why does it have to be "constructive"? why are we genuflecting to this cult?
o Working Families is criticized even on the left. It is associated with the controversial ACORN. I'm for health care, better public schools and jobs, but I would try never to vote for any candidate that I see on that cult list unless there was absolutely no other choice. I really don't like the "fusion ticket" method for that reason. This party could never stand on its own, and it bleeds into Democratic Party politics and tickets and gains a foothold.
o Working Families has supported openly and recruited for OWS. That's definitely not a mainstream Democratic Party position.
o Imagine, if you criticize socialist parties and people with questionable organizing tactics and extremist beliefs, you are suddenly "unable to give up your guns" (!) or are for "expensive housing" and "inaccessible health care". What a loon! I don't have health insurance, you dumbass. My kids go to public schools. Do yours???
o Howard says he has no religion of software. But the entire open-source open gov movement does tend to be religious and magical in its thinking about how it will "empower people" or bring about "progressive" goals.
o I've bothered with Alexander Howard over the years precisely because I thought he might be intelligent enough to reason with. But proximity to power may have dimmed that intelligence. If he can't take somebody "messing up" his lovely propaganda piece about a software sect helping a political sect, what can you do? Do what you have to do in any closed society -- route around. Log out of G+ and not bother with him or them at all -- or log out and search for his public comments and continue commenting on them anyway, as relevant.
o Dominic Amann -- if he doesn't want to hear it from me, he can hear it from the devs at Disqus and Drupal who believe they have indeed baked their beliefs into the software. As for Working Families, it has 35,000 registered members. This is a city of some 8 million people. The Democratic Party usually wins. Ok, then.
o the most creepy part of this exchange is this:
When one looks at the aggregate of the comments you've made on my updates here and elsewhere on the Web, however, along with the public attacks you've levied in person, there's a pattern which many parts of the community has both recognized and called out repeatedly.
This is awfully, awfully creepy. It makes it seem that there is something called "the community" (there isn't). It makes it seem that he, Alexander Howard, is in charge of, or in some sort of leadership position in this putative "community" and can decide to pronounce on someone's behaviour or not (he can't). It makes it sound like there are "many" people who are somehow unhappy or disturbed or righteously indignant about my vigorous attacks on the closed society of "open source" (there aren't, although he may imagine it).
So there you have it. Another closed, tiny mind of the "open source" movement. Proving my point, yet again. Afraid of debate. Afraid of labels, especially the label "socialism". Afraid of controversy or strife.
Below, the post G+ the social net-nanny tells me now "no longer exists" -- *chuckles* -- but which Google the search engine can still find:
Tiago Peixoto originally shared this post:
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socialism "is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy."
participatory budgeting is a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making, and a type of participatory democracy, in which ordinary people decide how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget.
Citizens participating in the budgetary process is not "socialism," by that standards or any other. The means of production have not been "socialized" in this paradigm of budgeting. Regardless, it's up to cities and their citizens to decide whether to adopt these methods for allocation, not to "YOU SOCIALIST" -- whoever they are.
Since I believe that you're a resident of NYC, perhaps you might raise your concerns to the proponents of Participatory Budgeting in New York City and see if they hold water.
http://pbnyc.org/
I mean if ordinary people without tons of money were able to sway politicians, we might get, you know, some Wall St crooks thrown in jail, or get billionaires to pay as high a percentage of taxes as I do. Perhaps while checking on the definition of socialism, you should check on the definition of democracy, conspiracy and cult while you are at it. You will find (if your brain is actually functional, and not completely overridden by tea party dogma) that there is in fact a conspiracy, and you will find it BY FOLLOWING THE MONEY. Not by focussing on a few poor people trying to get government to do what they were voted to do (instead of what big business is paying them to do).
The four people running this have a decided political agenda and viewpoint in NYC. If this was the open empowering pluralistic "people's" thing you claim, we'd see a wide variety of perspectives -- Republicans, Democrats, Independents -- all making use of it. Instead, we see Working Families cultists. If a district in Queen is now all Republican, why would Democrats in the minority or the Working Families cult get to decide how the discretionary money should be doled out in that district, just because they show up with smart phones?! They don't. This is decidedly UNDEMOCRATIC and empowering only those with a certain agenda and perspective. Which is why I call it out.
Yes, I'd prefer deliberations behind closed doors with ELECTED officials than having sectarians show up and grab things by their lights, yeah, I sure would! But I don't have to wait for smoke signals from behind closed doors. I call up my elected officials or email them. Do you? I see them walking around my neighbourhood, in fact, and I talk to them about housing, heat, recycling, health, etc. issues in the area. Do you? As a single working mother I don't have lots of time to go sit in meetings and fight sectarians from Working Families, but I do shout out when I see that they might encroach on the more liberal DEMOCRATIC leaders I've elected, NOT THEM.
I have a lot more faith in lawyers or business people from my neighbourhood I've seen all my life with political and management experiment parsing out money that my FREE MEDIA tells me is being done so I do have some check and balance on it, than I do have for secretive political cults like Working Families doing this with their various pretend-democrat cadres showing up for meetings and taking over. "The tyranny of who shows up*. It's not about Wall Street. It's about My Street, big guy.
Um, I don't subscribe to Tea Party dogma. Indeed, when I read their materials -- I read materials from all viewpoints -- I see it is dogmatic, supersticious and unfinformed. You know, like the Marxists in Working Families? Like Internet People like yourselves and like Jeff Brown, who is a total obsessive loon? You know, like that.
I follow the money in my neighbourhood with the people I elected. I don't need the smart-phone set to take my tax dollars away from me.
If you happen to be right about Working Families (and I don't really know much about them other than I happen to agree with a few things I have heard), your style actually harms your cause - because you come across as a libertarian nut job instead of a democrat. As is more likely the case, (and what you appear to be), you are a shill for the tea party, pretending to be a democrat and bashing the tools some democrats are using to counterbalance republican ownership of fox news, the tea party and powerful corporate interests. I see an increasing number of "letters to the editor" and blog posts that are from "I normally vote liberal" or "I consider myself unbiased" followed with "but on this issue I am changing my vote..." which, after the first dozen or so, start to smack of some kind of low level orchestrated campaign to sway the opinions of the drones who feel that voting is an exercise to pick the winner.
Much the same thing happens in tech columns, where MS has paid shills who opine and advocate on MS behalf in any debate they can find. Apple has a similar thing going, but they don't have to pay their shills ;).
Perhaps you need to actually explain to those of us who are uninformed exactly what makes Working Families dangerous / marxist / socialist - otherwise I am afraid that all you are doing is name calling, and that carries absolutely no weight with me whatsoever.
Or are you saying that these policies are a smokescreen for some nefarious communist plot to take over the country and force you to give up your guns? If so, then I am very curious as to your evidence.
You find criticism of your software religion every time to be somehow crazy, nutty, biased, guilty of Latin Boys School "crimes" like "ad hominem attacks' blah blah.
But do YOU EVER think critically of the software and the cults associated with it that you hawk so regularly and often, Mr. Digiphile? It's ok if you don't, but don't then try to tar others who do as nutty name-callers.
Participatory Budgeting is yet another attempt at people with very, very definite and sectarian leftist political views to make themselves appear as if they are broadly democratic and "fixing" what they say is a corrupt, unrepresentative capitalist-ridden system. That's their right to do. But the rest of us who aren't in that less than 1 percent occupying Wall Street don't see it as they do. We're happy to go on voting in the Democratic Party. We're happy to go on discussing budgets with elected politicians with other social media like Twitter and Facebook and email without the "help" of software cultism engineered by four politicians from a very definite tendency to look like something its not.
"Participatory Budget" has red flags all over it, and reasonable, liberal, intelligent people should be calling these out all over the place. Instead, they are gullible, they mindlessly pass it along and retweet it and copy it and give it legitimacy.
I'm happy to stand by my own record of critical thinking, none of which includes the conflation of religion or cults with software, which is the signature thrust of your own oeuvre.
When one looks at the aggregate of the comments you've made on my updates here and elsewhere on the Web, however, along with the public attacks you've levied in person, there's a pattern which many parts of the community has both recognized and called out repeatedly.
It's abundantly clear that your behavior over the years speaks for itself.
Names used by yourself without explanation or relevance: socialist, marxist, cultist, agenda, digiphile (excuse me - don't you actually run a blog yourself, and espouse the use of twitter and facebook - and aren't you right now using a bleeding edge techological media?)
You have yet to state ONE THING that WF support or espouse that is undemocratic, or even that you personally disagree with. The entire "substance" of your statements is name calling. If this is the extent of your critical thinking, you merely wind up sounding like Sarah Palin.
And what the heck is "biased software"? Have we not only invented artificial intelligence, but gone on to endow it with unmerited opinions already? I must have missed the memo or the nobel prize.
12:21 PM
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