As much as I am loathe to paraphrase that clichéd Ben Parker quote, I had a nightmare a few nights ago that made me worry about the good work we do here at TOPP Labs. There was nothing specific about it that worried me, but I did have a general sense of foreboding and unease about the tasks that we’re taking on and the responsibilities they entail.
But first, an anecdote… There was a time in the mid-20th century when progressive voices saw community boards as a tool for bringing community-based planning to neighborhoods throughout New York City. The most optimistic of them saw this as a way to curb the excesses of the centrally-planned urban policy that had scarred neighborhoods from East Tremont to Bay Ridge under the leadership of Robert Moses and others. Many progressive activists today, especially those within the livable streets movement, see the community boards as at best ineffective and and at worst obstacles. The failure of community boards to effect change is often laid at the feet of the community boards—either because of flaws in their design, as was the case with the Atlantic Yards project, or because of a lack of members, funding, technology, and training. While many have looked to community boards as a voice for “the community,” others argue that the system does not effectively facilitate community-based planning and may even serve to hinder it.
As we move towards encouraging open government and increased transparency, I wonder if we’re not being sufficiently critical about the tools we are building. Just as free access to government data enables us to build tools to encourage progressive change, it also enables others to cripple the machinery of government or hijack them towards ends we cannot foresee and wouldn’t necessarily support. Tools like Uncivil Servants, which allow progressive transportation advocates to underscore parking permit abuse and push for reform could just as easily be reconfigured to highlight the abuses of cyclists and push for policy changes with which progressives would disagree.
Just as activists on the right are now concerned about being surveilled by the very systems which they built, we should be careful with our own efforts. As we build tools, create processes, and establish precedents designed to affect how government operates we—and the entire open government movement—should be mindful of the potential unintended consequences of our actions and take responsibility for correcting for them as best we can.
I think you’re right to be concerned. And apart from all other, wilder political unknowns we are creating every day, there are still “basic” issues like personal privacy that we may very well be losing sight of. Google, file that away for me forever, will you? Thanks.
Of course the obvious answer is that the things we create embody our core values – transparency, democracy, thoughtfulness. In this model if our tools are misused there’s three reasons:
1. The tools were made wrong, we messed up, we should improve them
2. Our conclusions about how things should transpire given the right value base are wrong, in fact our understanding of the world is wrong, there is some unknown virtue to the outcomes that we need to come to terms with
3. Our values only truly express themselves when they are pure and complete – the flaws in the outcomes are the infection of a flawed world. Humility might imply this is inevitable, but you should try anyway
The flaws in community boards might be a case of 3 – the core idea is fine, but embedded in the government it becomes enabling of the status quo, or perhaps an obstruction to alternate forms of community input.
That said, I’m not sure that our values are so pure or so neutral as abstract ideas like “democracy”. Nor do I want them to be. There are hidden values, intuitions, axioms we don’t want to admit to, that underlie our “principles”. These principles help us come to terms with the fact that we all have axioms, and they don’t agree, and this is inevitable and eternal. So unintended consequences are somewhat intended, I suppose.
Where do you think transparency projects such as http://filibusted.us/ fall on the spectrum of surveillance? In other words, do you see a hard line between providing a better view of already public actions (like senate votes) and collecting data on other, less-public-but-still-public acts (like http://www.uncivilservants.org)?
Thinking some more, I think maybe a distinction is between values and strategy. Something like community boards feels like a clearly positive thing in terms of its values, but often the effect of a thing is more in terms of its strategy. When a clear strategy eludes us, we might fall back on a value-based proposition — put something good out in the world and expect good to come back. This does not seem unreasonable. But a strategic proposition is more direct, more focused, and especially in an environment where there are people acting consciously and deliberately and those people are not in line with yourself, the potential for things to be manipulated or misdirected are high.
I think people shy away from strategy because the danger there is not as much other people misdirecting the work, but that the strategy itself is misinformed or misguided. The potential simply for mistake is high — with a value-based activity a mistake usually just results in something less effective, while a strategy can easily be counterproductive.
I *completely* and enthusiastically agree with your concern, Rolando. The best way to avoid this complacency, IMHO, is to make sure you don’t have a bunch of “yes men” around–encourage dissent and other points of view, even if it “hurts” to acknowledge another viewpoint.
I’ll be honest, I give this feedback particularly to TOPP because when I spoke to you guys at a job interview in the past (of all places), you seemed to be very steadfast on Open Source as a one-size, fits all licensing solution: which may be true 90% of the time, but remember it only takes 10% to bring down an otherwise good idea.
Now don’t get me wrong, I totally believe in the value of the work you’re doing at TOPP–I think the work you do is great, but as you note, with great power (and today power generally equals money, particularly in politics) comes great responsibility.