Here’s a talk I gave last semester on the subject of “What is Gov 2.0?” It begins a bit slowly; you might want skip to minute 1:30.
If you like this talk, you might also enjoy this article I published in Perspective magazine on the same topic:
Just as Wikipedia obviated the professional encyclopedia class, empowering amateurs to create, so too might technology be able to render professional government less essential, empowering citizens to provide for the solutions to the problems fellow citizens face. Rather than the government provisioning services in exchange for tax money (like a vending machine), the government can (like a platform) enable citizens to participate in provisioning services to each other. This is the “new compact between government and the public” that Tim O’Reilly refers to when he outlines his model of “government as a platform.”
At the heart of Gov 2.0’s promise is idea that we can participate in our democracy by building cool, innovative stuff in the public sphere. It’s a new way of conceiving of “public service.” Activism is not just about shouting at each other or lobbying the government for change. Activism is also about building real solutions to real civic problems that fellow Americans face in their collective lives.
Hackers as radical democrats: how cool is that?