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NewOrleans 2.0 - by invitation only

What the button resets:

Today I stopped watching and listening to the media, and even a lot of blogs, because such a huge pile of time and energy are wasted casting blame or protecting others (the President, the FEMA director) from it. This morning I saw Diane Sawyer try to get some official to take or spread blame; and not long after that I listened to Rush Limbaugh protect President Bush from liberals who were out to "destroy" the presidency. Great TV and radio, perhaps, but also useless bullshit.

If Katrina has done one positive thing, it has put common ground underneath the left, right and center of the American democracy. We all want better, more responsible, more accountable and more responsive government. Even those of us who believe 'the government that governs best governs least' want government at all levels to at least do the jobs nobody else can do. Especially when the lives of an entire city are at stake.

Thanks to the connected environment in which we now live, we will forge a new kind of relationship with governments at every level. In the future, politicians will no longer operate only with the consent of the governed, but with the participation of the governed as well.

Of course, we've always had participation. But in the future it won't just be the lobbyists and political obsessives who participate. It will be every resourceful soul who knows they have a stake in the system, and knows they can leverage it. That changes things.

This is simply the same old blogsploitation wrapped up in a bunch of high-flown empty rhetoric. "Doc" has been selling this same old "connected" snake oil for some time now, gussied up in glib catchphrases and pompous bombast. What's the a answer to every single question? The internet. Unfortunately, last I heard, waterML and foodSS don't actually hydrate or feed anyone.
And there's the problem with "Doc's" brand of useless bullshit. The SCAL has mostly stopped talking about actually trying to accomplish anything tangible wrt to New Orleans. Sure. you get Jarvis touting giving to charities, but, hell, Nickelodeon does that - my son insisted that 20 bucks of his birthday money be sent to hurricane relief. Instead they've reverted to their usual belief that the hurricane mess is just a technical problem that can be solved by another XML format. And who best to reinvent democracy? Why, them, of course. In the meantime, the discussion becomes almost comically irrelevant. How many of the people made homeless by the hurricane are getting invited to "Recovery 2.0?" Do you think someone with no clean water or food actually gives a flying tessellated fuck about whether you call it Recovery 2.0 or Recovery 0.2? You're arguing about the fucking version number? The fact that the SCAL's attention has now turned to organizing what is basically a BOF at yet another bullshit west coast tech conference makes me glad that these people have as little power as they do. And sad, that they are so obviously incapable of seeing past their own narrow interests.