It’s late on Friday afternoon – here’s some brain-candy to chew on over the weekend. Here’s Douglas Rushkoff – one of the most established commentators on interactive communcations explaining the cost of transparency. It’s liberating stuff – yet a lot of it seems so straightforward in Rushkoff’s hands. It often reads like the bleedin’ obvious. [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Transparency’
Towards a local authority-wide schools data-hack project
It’s a regular theme of this blog that transparency and open data – while undoubtedly being good things – can often create situations in which democracy is diminished rather than enhanced. The other day, for example, I posted my misgivings about guerilla webcasting of council meetings. (Shorter version: can result in selective reporting, poorer press [...]
Against transparency?
Here’s Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford University questioning the benefits of government transparency: “There is no questioning the good that transparency creates in a wide range of contexts, government especially. But we should also recognize that the collateral consequence of that good need not itself be good. And if that collateral bad is [...]
Less cynicism? Or less scepticism?
The Birmingham News Room – a well-executed information hub managed by Birmingham City Council has been launched and there’s a good write-up from Nick Booth over at Podnosh. I don’t have much to add to his account of it, and I’d urge to to have a good look around and think about the idea., but [...]
Adversarial politics, transparency and independence – some questions.
Here’s a good post from an Australian blogger on the question: Is adversarial politics damaging to our democracy? (It’s actually an update on a previous post with that title). Here the adversarialism is opposed by a more attractive ‘deliberative’ model of the kind advocated here. The flipside of this argument is put very well by [...]