Technology and Government

As with the past few assignments, this particular one has truly allowed me to take a deeper look into a very important current issue: technology and government. The question brought up on Slashdot makes readers reflect on exactly what kind of change it is that we have all been talking about, and how we are going to get it get via technology.

It is known that Barack Obama reached a much larger audience during his campaign through his website and youtube videos. I can personally say that the internet influenced my political views during this historical time in our country. Specifically, I just posted a youtube video of Obama on my blog last week that dealt with net neutrality. I can honestly say that with all of the websites that I read to understand the topic, Obama's speech (broadcasted from an MTV interview with a younger audience) is what helped me to most understand what was going on, and seeing him speak about the issue made me feel confident in where he planned to lead our country in favor or net neutrality.

Point is, Obama cannot just leave behind the younger audience that he has spent so much time uniting and making his followers. There is a whole new crowd in the political atmosphere and it is crucial to keep their eyes on the issues. Speaking on behalf of the new generation that is involved, I think it is a great idea for Obama to post weekely addresses on his website.

Focusing on other uses of technology, rather than just Obama's interaction with the public, one of the most interesting ideas that I came across was in a response to the Slashdot question posted by rwa2:

"The easiest way to give the control back to the people would be to give them some control over how their taxes are allocated. Right now, we pay a certain percentage of our income in taxes, and the government decides how much to budget for each department. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually "earmark" your tax dollars? Don't want to support the war in Iraq? Want a certain percentage of your taxes to go support the Dept. of Education or NASA space exploration instead? This would be a great way of directly measuring people's priorities, and give people the sense that the work they do to make money does not go towards what they consider "waste"."

Contrary to what it may seem, I did not copy the his whole repsonse to take up space, haha. I really feel that this response says it perfectly. Although I do not believe in electronic voting, I haven't been since I saw the movie 'Man of The Year' with Robin Williams (check it out) I do however think that allowing the public to fill out an online tax 'allocator' I guess you could call it, would truly solve a lot of problems. Using technology to our advantage in this way is like bringing our government back to a democracy that truly listens to the people. It actually reminds me of a lot of the goverments that I have been learning about in world civ this semester, like the very first republic and democracy with the greeks.

There are alot of ways that technology can help our government, but we definitely cannot go rushing into it. I am confident that Obama will lead us in the right direction.