Jim Giles, consultant
Tech-savvy campaigns get mixed results, as the Arab Spring shows (Image: William Dupuy/Picturetank)
Gavin Newsom's Citizenville shows that technology can empower people, but the book fails to explore deep-rooted problems within the democratic process
THERE'S a lot of crime in Oakland, California. But until a few years ago, citizens had little way of assessing the scale of the problem. Then Michal Migurski hurt his back. It was Christmas 2006 and Migurski, a computer programmer, was stuck at home in Oakland, looking for ways to use his time until his back healed. He knew about the area's crime problem and decided to create an online map showing where and when crimes had been committed - something local government had failed to do.
Migurski's crimespotting.org website gets enthusiastic coverage in Gavin Newsom's Citizenville, a homage to technology's ability to empower people and reform government. If committed and skilled citizens like Migurski can access official data, for example, they can create services that governments don't have time for or aren't well equipped to provide. The internet has already disrupted a swathe of industries, from journalism to telecommunications. Citizenville is packed with examples that show that it is government's turn.
For the book, Newsom - California's lieutenant governor - talked to a host of Silicon Valley luminaries, from Google founder Sergey Brin to Tim O'Reilly, tech publisher and one of the most high-profile advocates of the idea that technology can transform government. The result is a 239-page tribute to what the valley does best: suggest radical and scalable ways to do things better.
Unfortunately, Newsom's unfettered enthusiasm for the power of the internet and smartphones to transform social and governmental problems makes for a shallow read. Take his analysis of FarmVille, the incredibly successful Facebook game in which players run virtual farms. Why couldn't a similar game be used to help govern a real city, he asks? It's an intriguing idea, based in part on the argument put forward by Jane McGonigal, a game designer, that gaming can be used to solve real-world problems.
But doesn't FarmVille's appeal have much to do with its lack of real-life responsibility? Newsom only touches on this before rushing off to his next tech-inspired solution.
It's a frustrating approach because Newsom was mayor of San Francisco between 2003 and 2010, and rolled out some bold tech-based reforms during his tenure, so he is well placed to discuss the benefits and difficulties of applying technology to governance.
Some of the most interesting parts of Citizenville address ideas that did not work, like radical transparency. After becoming mayor, Newsom decided to post his diary on the web, until his chief of staff pointed out that fundraising meetings would be visible. Newsom relented, accepting that voters don't like to see politicians asking for money.
It's a great example of how technology is just part of the reform equation. To truly empower, technology will have to deal with many entrenched problems, ranging from the shameless distortions that most elected officials spout to the huge number of alienated people who don't register to vote. Any proper assessment of technology's power to change needs to do more than consider the solutions it offers. The impoverished democratic process in the US will not improve until the causes of this situation are part of the discussion.
Broader initiatives exist, of course. Political scientists who study how misinformation spreads have teamed up with technologists to create systems for reining in erroneous memes, like the claim that Barack Obama is not a US citizen. Public health experts are studying not just the internet's ability to communicate health information but also the extent to which that information changes behaviour. It is this kind of thinking, which accepts that technology is only part of the solution, that is missing from Citizenville. I was left wishing that Newsom had focused on just a few of the issues he writes about, and had taken his research beyond the confines of Silicon Valley.
This article appeared in print under the headline "There is no app for political reform"
Book information:
Citizenville: How to take the town square digital and reinvent government by Gavin Newsom and Lisa Dickey
Penguin
$25.95
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