Group items tagged

"There is a civic hacker in you! He or she is in there... I promise! Today, technology has evolved into a perfect storm of open source tools, code, social networks, and lots of data. Civic technologists thrive on all of these getting together with like-minded hackers and turning all these sources into useful applications, websites and visualizations."

"There is a civic hacker in you! He or she is in there... I promise! Today, technology has evolved into a perfect storm of open source tools, code, social networks, and lots of data. Civic technologists thrive on all of these getting together with like-minded hackers and turning all these sources into useful applications, websites and visualizations."

"The Baby-Boomers and the Millennials are both worthy of special attention. They are large groups: there are 77 million Boomers and 82 million Millennials. Millennials are showing strong interest in civic participation and reversing some of the declines observed among youth since the 1970s. Meanwhile, the Boomers are reaching the period of life when typically we see the highest levels of civic engagement, thanks in part to resources such as savings, networks, community ties, and knowledge that accumulate over time. The two generations are linked in that most of the Millennials' parents are Boomers. "

"Hey, developers! Here's how you can have more say in city, state or national government than ever before."

"Transparency, participation, and collaboration are key components to open source but also to the open government movement. During the month of May, Opensource.com will feature stories where open source and government are transforming communities. From May 12 - 23, we'll highlight some great people and projects in open government, open data, and civic hacking, and we'll provide resources on how you can get involved yourself. Get a head start on Open Government Week by checking out our latest reports on open source in government."

"The global trend toward democratization of the last two decades has been accompanied by the resurgence of various politics of "identity/difference." From nationalist and ethnic revivals in the countries of east and central Europe to the former Soviet Union, to the politics of cultural separatism in Canada, and to social movement politics in liberal western-democracies, the negotiation of identity/difference has become a challenge to democracies everywhere. This volume brings together a group of distinguished thinkers who rearticulate and reconsider the foundations of democratic theory and practice in the light of the politics of identity/difference.\nIn Part One Jürgen Habermas, Sheldon S. Wolin, Jane Mansbridge, Seyla Benhabib, Joshua Cohen, and Iris Marion Young write on democratic theory. Part Two--on equality, difference, and public representation--contains essays by Anne Phillips, Will Kymlicka, Carol C. Gould, Jean L. Cohen, and Nancy Fraser; and Part Three--on culture, identity, and democracy--by Chantal Mouffe, Bonnie Honig, Fred Dallmayr, Joan B. Landes, and Carlos A. Forment. In the last section Richard Rorty, Robert A. Dahl, Amy Gutmann, and Benjamin R. Barber write on whether democracy needs philosophical foundations.\nThis is an excellent yext for someone interested in models of the public sphere. While all the authors are proponents of the deliberative model of democracy (as opposed to, for instance, the liberal, interest-based, technocratic, communitarian, or civic-republican) many of them place their arguments in the context of other models. So, the book reads like a symposium of like-minded people, rather than like a rally of true believers.\nAlmost all of the essays are accessible to a generalist, but several really stand out (especially those by Benhabib, Fraser, and Young)."

"The first lesson from her work is that it's important to get the value proposition correct. Many of the nonprofits aren't delivering value to people, and the thing that will get people engaged will be if it's valuable to them. For-profits are nailing the value proposition for consumers, which is why consumers are flocking to them."

"This post was first published at Consortium News. In the realm of physics, the opposite of matter is not nothingness, but antimatter. In the realm of practical epistemology, the opposite of knowledge is not ignorance but anti-knowledge. This seldom recognized fact is one of the prime forces behind the decay of political and civic culture in America."