Sanford Dickert

Editor's note: Below is a recap of the "The Power of Information to Transform Government" session at the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC

Jonathan Adelstein, (FCC Commissioner)

Affordable high-speed broadband - importance is that all other issues are impacted by the availability of broadband. We can reduce costs of healthcare, e-learning/education.

We STILL do not have an inter-operable broadband public safety network. Smart electrical grids to overcome our vulnerabilities.

A cry for real broadband access.

Steven Clift (E-democracy.org)
Points out the many different governments efforts on eDeomcracy - Korea has an eDemocracy portal. We need an Democracy.gov - the State Government says there is one, but we can not promote it in the states.

In Estonia, todayIdecide.com website - proposals are sent forward to the Ministers and now it is being shared amoungst other countries. They are so transparent that they now publish their salaries, allow for personal access to your own information.

Everything will be online - which is where we need to be. Why doesn't government allow for the transparency? Why doesn't GOVERNMENT allow us to convene within their democracy?

No investment in eDemocracy at present - those in power will not open themselves up by enlightened ????. Need an executive order, to make this happen.

We are #1 in making noise and making money - most of democracy is local geographically, but the discourse in the cyber world is national. Need candidates need to make their commitments BEFORE they get elected. And, after they get elected - they should have six months to accomplish their executive orders.

Need to update Open Meeting Laws - need to make it mandatory - with agenda, minutes, etcetera. Should be the moment it is done. All meetings should be digitally recorded - need to have this publicly available. continue reading »

Editor's note: Sanford Dickert is in California at the Supernova conference this week. Check out all of our Supernova coverage from Sanford and Shannon Clark.

Supernova Panel: "Whose Social Graph is it?"

Tantek Celik (Moderator, @t) , Dave Morin (Facebook, @davemorin), Kevin Marks (google, @kevinmarks), Joe Smarr (Plaxo, @jsmarr)

KMarks: OpenSocial is open to anyone - open to millions of users, designed to be an abstraction, and who owns the social graph? Individuals have shared custodial ownership of it. Sites have custodianship over user data due to the social contract, they do not wish to violate it.
Goal of OpenSocial is to have an abstraction.

JSmarr: Feeling of openness, helping people stay connected. Openness is empowering users to make a tool they want to work together. When you know it is really open, users are mashing up things the company never expected, in novel ways - what is driven by is by the user. Information you share, you should have control an access to using it.

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Kevin Werbach: Opening remarks
SuperNova is People - all of the connections during and after the event.

Why called SuperNova?

• An explosive end, but also a beginning - impacts of increasingly pervasive networks
• Decentralization is happening - intelligence and control are moving from the centers to the edges, an inexorable shift, but not necessary smooth or uniform
• Decentralization matters - redefines industries, etc

The Network Age:

• Networks are everywhere
• Networks have distinct properties (emerging science called “network science”) - can study them and model them, what social interactions are like in a network

Challenge in Networks:

• Network dynamics are not obvious: power laws, small worlds, long tails, network effects, structural holes, etc
• Undermines existing business models an social expectations

Opening Conversation: Defining the Challenges

Clay Shirky
[preso] Challenges with groups - published his book (Here Comes Everybody) and now is seeing the things that are not in the book. How do we support Collective Action?

Example: Bellarusian youth doing a Flash mob - got arrested for the Flash mob and people were not allowed to organize in October Square. Leader thought that physical world would work. Could not stop the organizing before they were a group, and the students used media to drive to action - which then created more media.

Nothing says dictatorship as getting arrested for eating ice cream (with photos).

Lots of actions that have come together - but almost all of the stories of collective actions are “stop” movements. Always about getting a group to stop doing something.

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