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Let's not whine about this. We all know the press, politicians, military and corporations are all in cahoots with each other. Let's figure out a way to solve th
by milesf 13y ago
Let's not whine about this. We all know the press, politicians, military and corporations are all in cahoots with each other. Let's figure out a way to solve the problem, the same way SOPA was defeated, by swaying public opinion with creative campaigns.
We need to be forcing the issues, equipping people to ask the right questions at every opportunity.
Techs need to get into the political arena and fight the same way the NRA does, with votes in the booth and dollars in the coffers. Otherwise we're going to have our careers sidelined by suits who still think the Internet can be controlled and censored.
I for one am ready to get behind someone we as techs all trust, who can lead the debate and rally the troops. Who are some names? Shirkey? Lessig? Notch? :)
- nazgulnarsil 13y agoMSM is a branch of government. Understanding this simplifies quite a bit.
- hga 13y agoWell, Fox News isn't entirely, e.g. I saw them reporting on I think Silent Circle and Lavabit while my father was cooking today. See e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Afoxnews.com+lavabit+silent+circle https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Afoxnews.com+lavabit+s... I don't know who works for who, were any of their reporters called on in the press conference?
- malandrew 13y agoIs there a YC for startups changing politics? I know there are startups for creating products for incumbent politicians to have better reach. However many of those are just chasing the money thrown around by the candidates with the biggest pockets during elections. I'm more curious about those trying to change the level of discourse entirely like reddit has been doing with AMAs. We need funding so our best and brightest can afford to dedicate themselves to these endeavors.
- X4 13y agoGood question! I was once about to do something about it, but gave up, because I feared that more powerful tools in the hand of bad people who represent us could eventually backfire and discredit any future work I could do. Things like this have to be released open-source, transparent and anonymously. I don't want to hear, 5y from now: "Hey this guy made politics efficient and turned our pseudo global government into a semi global government. Thank you for that, *hole."
- malandrew 13y agoTBH what I want to see is a politician whose platform is using technology to record and publish everything he does in office and use technology to more effectively interact with his constituents. All the tools built to run his/her office would be open sourced. It's honestly probably easiest to do something like this at the San Francisco city level first as a proof of concept. The scale is right for a first pilot and the number of potential contributors is high enough for it to be self-sustaining. Setting a precedent by going into office and running that office with the intent of disrupting how a politician interacts with his/her constituents via technology would be a gamechanger. Would YC or another VC consider funding a "token" political candidate and a group of smart engineers? Obviously a single individual would have to be the one elected into office, but he/she could establish early on that the decision process is going to be led by interactions gathered from constituents via technology that the engineering team would build.
- X4 13y agoIf you believe in it, would you share your wishes with me? Because I don't know how they could use it to make our lives better. It's like a gun in the wrong hand, in my humble opinion. I just have that fear, because I lost all trust and all respect on Governments and their minions.