Friday, May 18, 2012

[loclkojy] Understanding the average Joe

The accusation is often made of legislators and rulers "out of touch" with the "ordinary person": too many layers of insulation, too different levels of social class leading to communications difficulties and ultimately bad social policies.

Assuming non-cynically a benevolent legislator who wants to do good for the people, how can technology decrease the distance between the governors and the governed?  Rather than the difficult social problem of actually decreasing the gap, we instead try to solve a communication problem.

It seems possible: technology can be used to measure people and analyze the results.  Instead of a census every decade (because that's the limit of what old technology could handle), how about one every minute?  (Measuring what?)

The opposite direction (bottom-up): using technology to remove the need for benevolent legislators.

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