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the federal government is not attached to Moore's Law

Here's an area for both some disruption and some lobbying. Let's build tools that allow members of Congress to aggregate messages being sent to them, and to associate those messages with congressional districts. Let's come up with a way for a member to see what their constituency is saying about any particular issue they'd like, and let's provide that as an open service so that anybody can see what a particular constituency is saying. That way, when a member has a track record of voting against the desires of a substantial portion of his or her district, we've got a record of it, and it can get brought up in the next election.

Right now, your voice online -- in the mediums you participate in, not only don't matter: legally they can't matter. Online identities don't count when it comes to the official record

E arli er writers such as Chillingworth had argued that human understanding was limited, Locke tries to determine what those limits are

"Though the familiar use of the Things about us, takes off our Wonder; yet it cures not our Ignorance."

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Education reformers have long called for U.S. kids to log more time in the classroom so they can catch up with their peers elsewhere in the world, but resistance from leisure-loving teenagers isn't the only reason there is no mass movement to keep schoolchildren in their seats. Such a change could cost cash-strapped state governments and local school districts billions of dollars, strip teachers of a time-honored perk of their profession, and irk officials in states that already bridle at federal intrusion into their traditional control over education.

Texas already forbids school from starting before the fourth Monday of August, a provision designed to save money on utility bills and increase business for tourist destinations and other summer attractions. "Ultimately the states, not the federal government, should have the final word on this and other public school decisions," said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry. In Kansas, sporadic efforts by local districts to extend the school year at even a few schools have been met by parental resistance, said state education commissioner Diane DeBacker.

it would also be a mistake not to take seriously the role of new communications media in understanding civic life. In democratic states, citizens need information about what challenges a government faces and what it’s proposing to do about it to be effective citizens. And citizens need to be able to connect with one another to discuss, debate and propose solutions. What a communications medium makes possible has a shaping influence on civic life.

 To do just that, on his first full day in office, the President signed two critical documents that have shaped the Administration: the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government and the Executive Order on Ethics. As a result of the Memorandum on Transparency, we have since Day One, worked to empower the public – through greater openness and new technologies – to influence the decisions that affect their lives.

Globalization has shaped our era. Technology has minimized distances; ideas, values and news cross borders quicker than ever before. New definitions and complex debates over our identities as international and national citizens have arisen as a result. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. puts it: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”