Over at the Policy and Performance blog of the U.K. Government think-tank IDEA, Ingrid Koehler is brilliantly pursuing the opportunities digital media offers government.
In a recent post, Ingrid asks a crucial question linked to the Government's recent report on Digital Britain and countless initiatives - including Digital Mentor - that seek to apply social media to the delivery of public services:
Does digital inclusion mean social inclusion?...If you give people the tools and build the infrastructure for digital engagement, will they just engage?
One answer has to be: it depends on what the infrastructure is - and who designs it.
A Call to Farms is one of the best books I've read so far this year.
It's a series of essays linked to a journey that a group of people took in 2008 through Illinois and Wisconsin in search of the Radical Midwest: places, people, community groups, artists, social activists who offer alternatives to "business as usual" in the land of corn and greed. (You'll find the project blog here; and the Midwest Draft Flickr pool here.)
In the book, Chicago-based photographer and artist Claire Pentecost opens one of her essays saying
I live in a laptop, I live in the Internet, I live in airplanes and airports, I live in my library, in radio broadcasts, I live in my camera and often in other people's cameras.
In a sentence, she expresses the immersion but also the 'penthouse and pavement' glitz-funk of the "digital revolution".
Pentecost then goes on to think about why the news media might lead government officials to roll out terror prevention programmes in ways more informed by the antics of Jack Bauer in 24 than lofty ideas of constitutional justice:
People in power operate in a selective and sensational media world, a spectral bubble where they cannot feel the consequences of their own acts.
Wow!
This makes me think...
Digital inclusion may enable social inclusion - but who's setting the terms?
Is 'digital inclusion' simply about extending the availability of 'tools' that allow people to create the tight, self-referential networks that the media-savvy now have - and love?
And how 'inclusive' will these new networks be if there's little dialogue between them and no-one gives a toss about life outside of their, er, bubble?
No one doubts the value, joy and urgent need to extend the 'digital franchise'.
But is there a social responsibility dimension to issuing new equity that needs a bit of thought?
Because I assume that the last thing people want is trillions and trillions of new bits of inconsequential, closed communication.
Bubble image courtesy of Jeff Kubina.
