Reinventing Government in the Wiki Age

Beth Novick, author of Wiki Government, says that today's technology invites us to "rethink not only our democratic institutions, but our democratic theory."

1 minute read

August 15, 2010, 11:00 AM PDT

By Tim Halbur


Novick, speaking at a Long Now Foundation event, said, "We now can choose from among thousands of different associations to which we want to contribute our time and money and attention, whether for a short or longer time. We can get involved in order to make change happen, to do stuff in the world in a kind of cosmopolitan pluralism. The Internet enables a new kind of equality of power that allows us to think about how we can reengineer our institutions - not simply for the sake of talk, but as a means to an end of achieving things in the world better, faster, and in new and creative ways to attack the complex problems that we confront."

Open government data is one way Novick sees we are on the path to a more democratic system that decentralizes the role of government.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010 in WorldChanging

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

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