Class 10-Public Policy and Emerging Topics in Technology and Government

Where do we go from here with Government and Technology? Recall that we started the quarter in our first class asking the most basic questions such as, "What is Government?", "What is Democracy?", "What is Technology?". As we progressed through the quarter, we heard from public sector professional guest speakers. Tonight we handed out examples of the automatic e-mail reply sent by Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein. Does this constitute the highest level of e-government? What could be done to improve responsiveness to citizens? How can one public official effectively serve thousands or hundreds of thousands of their constituents? We discussed the "Election 2.0" article about emerging trends in how technology is shaping the political process. Already we are seeing the use of technology that we did not see in the last election. The efforts by Republican Ron Paul to successfully raise more funding online than all other candidates. The use of YouTube by CNN to have ordinary citizens to submit questions to candidates, an example of how technology can flatten social structures (no media bias here if the citizens are asking the questions). On the other had, questions Education, Health Care, and Iran were missing from the debate; professional reporters would probably have not missed such questions on major issues.

Chapter 10: Democratization and Technological Change was the final chapter in our text and fit with our class theme of emerging topics in technology and government.