e democracy

e democracy is the offspring born out of the fusion of technology and freedom of expression (one of the fundamental rights of a citizen of any democracy).

e democracy has two main goals:

• to renew interest in civic engagement and participation
• to increase transparency in the working of a democratic government

It does this via the electronic medium of the internet and the World Wide Web.

I have looked at three e democracy sites:

• e democracy site of the United Kingdom
• e democracy site of Australia
• e democracy site of India
  

I thought these three sites would be interesting because of the following reasons:

• site of a developing nation (India) vs sites of two developed nations (Australia and the UK
• newer site (Australian) vs older site (UK)
• site of a former colony (India) vs site of the former coloniser (England)

e democracy site of the UK
Search engine optimization - None of these search keywords produce this site in the Google search results list:
e governance UK
e democracy UK
e governance Britain
e democracy Britain
Home page - Does not provide an overview of what the concept is, who this site is for and for what purpose
Search - Elaborate
Data organization - Very poor
Level of content - Seems rather technical
Style of writing - Informal, conversational, amateurish, unprofessional effort
Typography - Very poor
For example, drop down menu options are not visible and merge with the background. There is no difference between links and expanding text/ drop down menu items.
Navigation and site map accuracy - Very poor
For example, there is no way to re-trace your steps, unless through the browser.
The Header and Footer don’t appear consistently on every page. Either this should have been used or some other form navigation links in a navigation bar that appears consistently on the right or left of every page, with the entire sitemap and a clear indicator about where the reader is with regard to the entire hierarchy.
Credibility - Dubious
For example, what is the relationship between MySociety and this site? Where does the donation money go?
Links - Largely point internally
Download time - Slow
For example, the MPs and Lords tab take a very long time to load. This is because of the long list and also because of the images.
Multimedia, audio, video - Very few instances
For example, the Debates tab has a few audio/video links. But they don’t seem to work.
Interaction - Minor
For example, the site asks readers to rate the responses, provide feedback.
Recommendations - It seems like the site is created and maintained by a group of British techie volunteers with a keen interest in British politics. I think it is also aimed at similar folks - British techies interested in British politics. If it intends to reach a broader spectrum of British citizens interested in politics, then it needs to have more scope for interaction, community building, and text needs to be better managed and organized.

e democracy site of Australia
Search engine optimization - None of these search keywords produce this site in the Google search results list:
e governance Australia
e democracy Australia
Home page - Fairly well done
For example, it has clearly outlined steps about the various things one can do on the site. However, since no one is required to perform them in that order, they don’t need to be numbered! Numbering automatically presupposes a hierarchy, an order. I would have preferred an introduction to the concept of e democracy and then a list of what you can do with the site.
Data organization - Very well organized into meaningful chunks
Typography - Impressive
Navigation and site map accuracy - Fairly well done
For example, the header and footer repeated across the pages tie them all together, and provide the reader with a sense of the whole, the reader’s relation to that space, and the ability to navigate to other parts.
Credibility - Most credible site of the three
For example, I like the way the Donate section provides some background about the donation aspect.
Links - Both internal and external
For example, each representative has a list of external links that provide more information. The links also have accompanying descriptions that guide the reader about where the link will go.
Download time - Very quick
Interaction - Seems to be well integrated with its target audience. However, the blog link at the bottom takes you to another site. This was confusing. I’m not sure how the two sites are related. They look very different. I think these two sites should be merged for content and presentation.
Recommendations - Although the writing style is very professional, I felt it was an Australian site only while I was on more personalized pages like the Help, About us. Otherwise, it feels like it was written by someone in the UK, for an English audience. It does have a very British feel to it.

e democracy site of India
Search engine optimization - The following keyword gets Google to list this site as second site in the Google search results list:
e governance India
Considering how poorly done this site is, I am surprised how the SEO score is so high and so accurate.
However, the following keyword does not produce this site in the Google search results list:
e democracy India
There appears to be several state-wide e governance initiatives in India! One for each state!
Home page - Does not provide an overview of what the concept is, who this site is for and for what purpose
Data organization - Very poor; too much colour and clutter
For example, the About page contains a list of poorly articulated points, with sloppy formatting. However, the content is very good. It needs to be re-written in web style writing and placed in the home page, with better formatting.
Typography - Very inconsistent. There also seems to be something wrong with the whole site. It appears like a document that was cut and pasted on the web browser. There seems to be a lot of grey background. The Events seem to be copy pasted from some home-made Excel spreadsheet. The tabs/ links on the header seem to dynamically change with every mouse click!
Credibility - None at all. The whole site seems to promote only the man behind it.
For example, the White Papers section seems to promote only the creator of the site. There’s only one white paper by him. How it is connected to the concept of the whole site—I have no idea.
Links - Most links are internal. Most links are broken!
Search, Interaction - Completely missing!
Recommendations - The whole site needs to be re-written, data organized in meaningful chunks, all broken links and images fixed, a forum for interaction needs to be created, more information about constituencies and MPs needs to be provided.

Clearly the winner is the Australian site. Followed by the UK site and then the Indian site.

One issue that I have observed is that there is no single definitive web portal name that pops up when I think of e democracy or e governance in - whether in India, Britain, Australia, or anywhere else in the world. For example, if I think of web mail portals, I can draw up a mental list of - Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL. If I think of ecommerce, I can think of Amazon, ebay. This one-to-one correlation between examples of a portal and the concept of e democracy or e governance, seems to be missing.

This maybe because there is a great deal of ambiguity about what to call this new concept! There is terminology confusion - because of too many terms and not any one definitive term for this new phenomenon. (e democracy, e governance, e participation, etc)

To see this at work - have a look at the See also list in the wikipedia article about e democracy and the See also list in the wikipedia article about e governance page. They are quite different and appear to be mutually exclusive.

Nature or nurture?

‘The Program Era’ - the way to go, at least a financially viable way to go, for most authors now seems to be in ‘teaching a creative writing program at University’!

So, apparently, many authors in the US, unable to grapple with all this flux and the recession, and still wishing to make more than ends meet, are now teaching ‘Creative Writing’ programs at various institutes, community colleges, and universities. Sort of Catch-22 like situation, there have also mushroomed overnight, several courses designed to meet this purpose. And you know what? There are several takers for such courses too!

Talk about potboilers! This seems like a cauldron.

And then to think about Sonya Hartnett’s views on Sally Warhaft’s question about her opinion on ‘Creative Writing courses’ and whether anyone can be taught to be a good writer...

She said, and I paraphrase - no these courses can’t create a brilliant writer who can produce a brilliant piece of work. These courses can create A writer. The writer will write. But will the book win an award? Unlikely.

She did take the extended analogy of Ian Thorpe and extended her swimming metaphor to conclude rather dramatically about how she could be taught to swim, and she’d probably swim - only to reach the end of the pool, puffing and probably bleeding. Will she swim like Thorpe? Unlikely.

Writers, swimmers, jugglers, god knows what else - all born, presumably...

You either have it or you don’t!

Re-thinking the book

Bob Stein in The Future of the Book talked about some absolutely daring and different concepts of our concept of the book! To think that we will have to re-think not only the book, as no longer being a physical object, but to re-think everything else associated with a physical book - right from the bookshelf!

The future of the book maybe a whole new process...

An author has an idea; he/she gets this idea out via a blog; gets some faithful followers; they discuss this idea; it goes back and forth; thus emerges the ‘book’. This is the creation process.

The consumption process will also sort of be the same. The ‘book’ is released; readers read it, come back and start a discussion with the author.

Total collaboration and participation.

So, the magical, mysterious author/ omniscient narrator persona will no longer exist. That dichotomy is on its way out.

To think of being able to blog with creators LIKE Van Gogh, or Bach, or Oscar Peterson, or Oscar Wilde, or Lawrence Sterne, or James Joyce, or Frank Kafka!!

I’m excited now. Really excited. Trifle apprehensive. But still excited.

And there’s more to come...since there’s no real ‘going to the press’ business, the book can continue for however long it wants to. No sequels and second editions. No out-of-print business. No second runs. No hard back, no paper back. Just an ongoing process. Literally endless.

All I could think about was - what about copyright? So who owns the ‘book’ or the ‘ideas’? The one that started the ‘blog’ or the bloggers that actually contributed to it? The publisher or the editors that compiled all the views, opinions, refereed and re-worded, filled in lacunas where needed?

I think 30 years from now, there probably won’t be a concept called ‘copyright’. We will all collaboratively own everything I think. No fences. No mending walls. Robert Frost will like that. Back to the pre-copyright era. No IP, no patents. It’s freedom of expression, after all!!

I also think we will see a major set of changes once the google book settlement case is decided. Not sure in whose favour the courts will rule! Wonder what will happen to projects like googlescholar, Project Guttenberg, etc, if the ruling is not in their favour.

If I couldn’t photocopy...

Photocopying. I take it for granted. I was born in an era where this was possible and was part of the way I did a large amount of my written work. There's nothing illegal about mass-scale photocopying. It is an expression of my appreciation. Or perhaps outcry!

Why am I talking about this?

Zoe Rodriguez in a session, Digital Rights Management, at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, talked the problems that a technological breakthrough like 'photocopying' brought with it, back in the 70s. Illegal mass distribution of almost any printed material that anyone could lay hands on and get to a photocopy machine!

I had never thought of this. I was not around in the 70s when this must have caused so much stir and panic among publishers and authors, just like digital rights and copyrights in cyberspace is now causing the same spike in anxiety levels for several stakeholders.

Back home, in India, when we (yes, my family and other strange animals) sometimes ended up in a remote ‘no cell phone range’ area, I would crib about my cell phone not working thanks to poor telecom support in rural areas, India’s developing economy status that doesn’t seem to change at all, the bleak future, etc etc.

My mother’s uncharitable, rather puritanical response would always be, ‘Stop cribbing about not being able to use your cell phone. You weren’t born with it you know. Get over it and stop being such a parasite, so reliant on something that’s so new to all of us and something you never grew up with.’

My mother and I, well, we love each other - from a distance - a huge distance of India and Australia! Suffice to say, that we don’t get really get along in any civil measure. And although I’d never admit it to her, the woman does have a point. I have never been able to counter that logic and develop rhetoric to vanquish that argument. Sigh. It is superb; flawless. Damn. Hate it. Because my mother came up with it and not I.

Besides silver spoons and other fancy china and cutlery, I was definitely not born with (and I use this metaphorically) - cell phones, the internet, itunes, iphones, Skype, ipods, Kindles, google, YouTube, googlescholar, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, etc etc.

I was born in an era where mail was only used as a noun, like airmail, the mail, and not as ‘I’m going to mail you my assignment.’! We never did say:
‘I’d Facebook you’,
‘Just Google it’,
‘Do you tweet?’,
‘Let’s Skype tonite’ (though some of us said, rather pathetically, ‘Let’s Groove Tonite’!),
‘I’ve written on your wall’ (when we said that, which we rarely did, we meant something massive - like a compound wall; yes, there was a physical, concrete, brick and motor structure! And to write on a wall - for the whole world to see - meant it was an act of defiance; a protest of gigantic proportions!)

But I was definitely born with the wheel, women’s right to suffrage, piped water, electricity, telecom, automobiles, air travel, and photocopying! Ok, not in that order!

To think of a world where I can’t photocopy? I can’t imagine that.

Now I get the feeling, that perhaps 30 years from now, the next generation will say the same thing about ubiquitous digital copies of texts!

It doesn’t seem so bad or that bleak now.


Surely there’s an answer, a set of new solutions to make everyone happy, right?

Learning to learn via ebooks

You know when the Coca Cola (I think) marketing team was rethinking their marketing strategy and looking at consumers’ demographic and consumption profile, they employed an out-of-the box sort of approach. Instead of thinking about competition in a linear way, they looked at all the various ‘drinks’ that Coke’s target audience was consuming and realized that Coke was not just competing with other ‘carbonated unhealthy’ drinks - but with ALL drinks. Yes - I mean, water, milk, coffee - all sorts of DRINKS in the non-alcoholic sub-section! And I think that’s the history behind the re-marketing strategy that Coke employed - where Coke needed to become the substitute for all DRINKS. So every time some one was thirsty and thought of drinking water or milk (yikes!) - Coke wanted them to reach for Coke! It was no longer Coke vs other similar soft drinks like Pepsi, etc. But, Coke vs ALL DRINKS! This ‘Coke is the substitute for any non-alcoholic drink’ (thirst quencher) strategy obviously got Coke a much wider market share and a lot of unhealthy folks - of ALL age groups.

This suddenly popped into my head yesterday at a seminar called Leading the E-Revolution at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. You know why? The host, Catherine Godfrey, brought a whole new angle to the actual competition for e-book applications like the Kindle! We have been actively debating Kindle vs the obvious competition - print books. But she said, from a higher education publishing point of view - the actual competition for applications like the Kindle is laptops! If the kindle had features like the laptop - which includes, taking notes, editing texts (as we do or should do, in the margins of actual textbooks!), etc - then there’s something! Interesting, huh?

Just to digress a little, I think we are predisposed to looking at all these issues of new-age digital technologies vs traditional print, etc - largely from a fiction and news production, consumption point of view. We never think of this in relation to the massive education industry - which really is the biggest stakeholder and most profitable market share, I might add, for the publishing industry as a whole. I thought it was interesting to look at an economically viable end of the spectrum, which we tend to forget to consider while debating these hot issues.

Integrating digital and traditional forms of learning - is the only way to go for this market apparently. This is not only for University level (undergrad largely), but also for high school curriculum in Australia. The mode is fast becoming an interactive, participatory sort of learning - where kids learn on the LMS, email their tutors (expect and get immediate responses), ‘read’ a book not in isolation, but together in an e-group and then discuss it via blogs. E-learning products are apparently the way to go for academics, teachers and students.

It’s interesting to keep this in mind especially when you think of an Australian National Curriculum - that is common throughout Australia - something that is being actively reviewed and looked into, besides other issues like parallel importation, emissions trading scheme, etc

You’ve Got Blog Notification?

I really liked the concepts that Prof Michael Wesch of Kansas State University (US), talks about in his anthropological study of YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

What I thought was most striking was the concept of ‘loss of communities over time’, which he draws from Robert D. Putnam. There are several reasons why massive communities of suburbia are ‘disconnected’ today (viz: the movement away from the ‘corner grocery store’ to ‘large supermarkets’, sort of like the concept explored in the film ‘You’ve Got Mail’). They seem to be connected only via physical roadways, etc. Hence the sense of general isolation, and declining community life.

Amidst this - the blogoshpere - seems to offer new forms of communities, emerging social networks. What he calls, ‘person to person connectivity’ or ‘networked individualism’ (Barry Wellman). Where everyone is increasingly networked but also very individualized! There is more desire for community, and for stronger relationships. With increasing commercialization, there is a longing for authenticity. Hence there is a whole new ‘imagined virtual social community’ that is now building itself through webcams, screens, as opposed to the 'imagined community' concept of Benedict Anderson.

Another emerging theory is that of the ‘asynchronous invisible audience phenomena’. Taking the example of vlogs that are uploaded on sites like You Tube, he explains how it’s so strange that people are now talking to a lens, a camera - not to ‘real’ people!

There’s also a ‘hyper self awareness’. Sort of an extension of psycho-analysis, introspection via recorded images of oneself and other self preoccupations. Sort of an instant replay and ‘RE-COGNITION’.

When the ‘real’ people actually see these personal videos of people they have never physically met before, they view them without any context! What he calls a ‘collapse of context’! So what appears to have no real audience also seems like everyone is watching!

Also, watching another human being through a computer - gives one the freedom to stare for as long as required. This is because of the reassurance that comes from the ‘anonymity of watching’, which is not possible in real life! You can stare at anyone, replay their videos, without making them uncomfortable or awkward. They don’t see you watching them.

All in all - there is tremendous connection, without constraint.

I loved this whole academic analysis of a contemporary, social, cutural phenomena like vlogs. I was in my own reverie and musing over all this, when I boarded my Tram outside University. Almost everyone on the tram, irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, whatever, - had ear phones plugged in (probably connected to an ipod or some such music producing micro-chip device) and/or ‘with’ a phone! That’s when I suddenly realized the intrinsic irony of our networked generation. Any guesses?

I have tons of virtual social networks spanning the globe, but I don’t know the neighbour next-door! (A very 21 c version of Robert Frost's famous 'Good Fences Make Good Neighbours' philosophy!) I think it odd to make conversation with the person sitting beside me in the train, reading the same article that I am probably reading in MX (the faithful, omnipresent companion of the late-evening Connex commuter), who probably has an interesting, maybe similar maybe opposite, but nonetheless equally arresting point of view about - the articles, the paper, or how it is read by everyone taking the late evening trains from the CBD into Melbourne’s suburbia, or how a tiny minority expresses downright disgust and refuses to be part of that ‘mass’ phenomena and will never read it, etc etc (would only be caught engrossed in The Financial Times or Finnegan's Wake). These are all issues. All debates. All great ideas for blogs, for opinions. But we’d probably blog about it, and get a million responses about it online, but probably never discuss the same thing with the person next-door!! The ironies of our lives...

Whose voice is it anyway?

After four weeks into this subject (Writing and Editing for the Digital Media), reading all the ‘readings’, participating in the class discussions, reading all the blogs and responding (after hibernating for 4 weeks!) - there is one issue that keeps popping up every time I think about this phenomena called the WWW, internet, Web 2.0, hypertext, etc. I'll admit that my approach is more of a ‘half-empty glass’ kind of approach, rather than a bright, sun-shiny one.

I do love the euphoria of this whole new virtual imagined community sans borders, surpassing time zones - blogging away, uploading home-made videos, creating virtual social networks, getting their voices heard, becoming the reason for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year: You (in December 2006), etc. What I think about is - who is this ‘You’? And hence who is NOT this 'You'? I know several of them. They fall under this category, not because they are:
(a) puritanical and resist any new change (sort of prudish, wowsers)

(b) arch pessimists (the ‘Nay’ - this won’t work folks)
(c) phobic and scared to try new things (I fall under this category)

(d) just plain indolent and/or indifferent

The reason is because they are so completely excluded from everything! ‘Oral’ communities - where there is NO exposure to any form of ‘written’ language (any language, in any written medium!). What are called ‘No literacy’ societies. http://faculty.law.pitt.edu/hibbitts/or-lit.htm
There are several such societies that have never seen a newspaper in their lives. Where NGOs work with them to try and set up a library so they can see what print looks like! As you may imagine - all this also accompanies other sister concerns like no electricity, no piped drinking water, etc. And they are not in this condition because of war or because they are refugees, or anything. Just by virtue of being marginalized for centuries. Centuries of oppression and disadvantage. Then of course there are those that are probably slightly better off than them - but have no exposure to the English language! NONE of these people, and several others excluded from this phenomena because of several other reasons - comprise the ‘You’ that Time magazine hails as the Person of the Year!

So, is the WWW a truly global phenomenon that is setting the whole world free? That’s the myth. Like the Gutenberg Myth. Gutenberg Myth social theorists and anthropologists try to dispel the notion that the single technological invention of the ‘printing press’ - released the whole world from illiteracy, as SOON as it was invented. The counter theory states that there were several other social and technological phenomena (cost of paper, etc) that needed to be in place before the whole world was set free! (Scott D.N. Cook, ‘Technological Revolutions and the Gutenberg Myth’, Internet Dreams, London: MIT Press, 1997).

The internet has set some people ‘free’. Many others are still trapped exactly where they were even as far back as 50 years ago! I wonder about the ‘excluded’ just as I am happy about the ‘included’... But if you are happy to accept that those it excludes don’t matter and only those that matter are the neo-liberal, democratic voices of the heard, then yeah - it’s global! Not many seem to want to admit or even discuss the large sections that are very much in the realm of exclusion! It’s just something to bear in mind I thought, while we revel in all the great things happening with the internet and all its spiralling, snowballing, cascading effects on our lives ... (changes in news journalism formats, using bloggers’ opinions as credible sources in polemical pieces, print newspaper vs online, subscription for online news, twitter being hacked, etc etc!)

So, is the WWW a truly world-wide phenomenon that is setting the whole world free? It definitely has the potential to BE - maybe 10, 20, 100 years from now. But right now - it’s anything but ‘global’.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=zgBrXkE6p9wC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=Technological+Revolutions+and+the+Gutenberg+Myth&source=bl&ots=ru_Y4PKTKX&sig=DHB2rQlABZgmxTXI61FpNF8dWoI&hl=en&ei=p5SKSs--KMGdkAWJr6gk&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=&f=false