Nick at Podnosh has a very interesting post up here – one that ties in with the ‘eavesdropping‘ theme that I’ve been trailing here a while ago:
Listening in: Not always sinister
“…listening with a purpose is exactly what [public sector bodies] should be doing, otherwise they would be wasting public money. It doesn’t follow that this will be a malign purpose. Listening to the social web can help the police improve the way they spend public money rather than waste it.”
It does kinda beg the question of what elected representatives are for though. Sure – public sector bodies should be keeping an eye on what people are saying about them – but really, this is the role of the elected representative. Because politicians aren’t stepping up to this particular mark, public authorities put themselves in this place.
Will this continue to be the case? Do politicians understand the options that the social web opens up for them? I’d say that they don’t at the moment, but like everyone else, lots of pennies are dropping for them.
We’ll see….
(Apologies – I’ve just realised that the link to Nick’s site was dropped in my editing process. Dunno how that happened – and fixed now!)
