Tag: civic tech
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Taiwan’s Radical Participatory Democracy Training is Coming to New York
This article originally appeared in Gotham Gazette on June 5th, 2018 Many people are wondering whether rapid advances in communication technology will improve or degrade American democracy. Last decade, the answer seemed to be: improved! Wikipedia’s growth showed us the unimaginable “wisdom of the crowd,” WordPress made it possible for the world’s smartest people to…
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For Government, It’s DSO or Die
This piece was originally published on Gotham Gazette on March 28, 2018 Private sector innovations in information technologies are transforming virtually every industry, and the rate of change seems to be accelerating. A decade ago, Facebook was a website used almost exclusively by college students to keep in touch with each other; today it’s one of the…
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Debrief: My 2017 Campaign for NYC Public Advocate
Every vote has been counted, and 74% of NYC voters want Democrat Letitia James to continue as Public Advocate. I congratulated her on her success and will happily work with her to make NYC’s government more open, transparent and participatory. I hope she’ll take me up on my offer. Those experienced in third-party NYC politics…
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Imagining SimNYCity
I was eight years old when I first encountered a computer game called “SimCity.” The general premise of the game was that you were the mayor of a virtual city, and you would use game money to create a place for communities of “Sims” to live. First you set up basic infrastructure like roads, pipes,…