Believe it or not, we are pert near (that's Texas slang for "just about") ten years into this brand new century. Time really flies, and it is amazing how fast technology, too, has changed in those few short years. What I want to know, however (aside from the reason why not a single politician nor environmentalist has proposed synchronized traffic lights to cut greenhouse gases, reduce dependency on foreign oil, reduce the need for add'l road construction, etc) is why it is, in this brand spankin' new century of rapidly advancing technology, that we can't figure out a way to harness that technology to communicate better with our politicians. Bear with me here as a simple farmer lays a communication brainstorm into "the cloud."
What if there was a website....you know....like usa.gov or something... where any regular Joe from anywhere, USA could post a suggestion for viewing by the entire world. Then....any John Doe and any of his friends could view said suggestion and give it a thumbs up, or thumbs down (or rate it according to some other system.) Suggestions with the highest ratings would be automatically sorted into a summary page with the most highly favored suggestions for the country. Politicians could make their own assessments of the suggestions and go from there. What have we got to lose? How insignificant would the costs of such a program be? How great are the potential benefits? Let's harness the power of the masses in such a way as was never imagined by the founders of this great country - let's take advantage of Al Gore's invention here!
Heck, my cousin Bill could prolly have the code for a basic version of this website written and published to the "ennernet" (as the locals call it) within an hour or two. All he lacks is the official URL and Obama's blessing in a national speech.
Here are my basic plans for the site:
- There would really need to be some sort of login system - something as simple as Ebay's or Craigslist's would be fine I think...but if you really wanted to go nuts, it could incorporate some sort of requirement for a social security number matching the name you submit or something
- There could be different categorizations for each suggestion (like environmental reform suggestions, health care reform suggestions, legal reform suggestions, etc) On top of the categorized suggestions, there could be a category for "most popular suggestions" or something similar to aggregate the best of the best of all categories.
- People could "lobby" for their suggestions on popular TV shows, advertisements, Twitter, etc.
- There would have to be a moderator of course to weed out non-productive suggestions, but there would have to be some accountability on that (like publishing the deleted suggestions on a separate list)
Wouldn't it be great to throw something like this out there and just see what our collective wisdom allows to rise to the top? The only reason (I think) a system like this doesn't already exist is that there is no money in it. We have the capability, why not use it?
Disclaimer: My motives for desiring such a system are selfish and stem from a prideful suspicion that I myself, a lowly farmer actually may have a suggestion or two that this country could benefit from, but which are lost in the volume of mail that my representatives receive and is likely never even viewed by them.
3 comments:
My question about why we don't have a certain thing in this world of rapidly advancing technology is why on earth do I still have to switch my laundry from one machine to another. Can't they make ONE machine that does it all?... But I'm pretty sure my ancestors would die all over again if they heard me complain about that.
Anyway, your suggestion seems good in theory. But I can just see the opposition right now. For starters, nobody's gonna want to log in. I can already hear the shouts of "Big Brother". Some guy is gonna get into a car accident the day after he posted some scathing comment and it'll be all over the place that the govt had him killed.
Then there's the spammers and extremists. There would be so much garbage that it wouldn't be worth looking at. Then there's the fact that you can lead a politician to knowledge, but you can't make him learn.
But I think it's an interesting starting point for some kind of improvement along those lines.
Two things: First, I think they do make the laundry machine you speak of - it is just that technology always seems to start out very expensive.
Second, re-read through all your criticisms (except the one about paranoia about the government) and apply them to a site like YouTube to see if they hold true. Spam and garbage is naturally "filtered out" and while, it is possible to view low ranked videos, they just don't get seen much. Content rules in this day and age.
Your point about the politicians is very true, but if an idea were to be polished in this forum and it becomes very popular, then what politician could ignore it?
In my opinion it is an illusion that politicians really want to do what the people want. They generally want people to want what they want and somehow seem to think that Joe and the rest of us do not have a clue.
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