WRITTEN ON March 10th, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Uncategorized

The top three questions on Webcameron this week* are all Ideal Gov questions about the nature of e-enabled society we’re moving into. He places a poor computer system at the heart of the junior-doctor crisis; says he’ll scrap the ID database as well as the cards (because it’s so expensive and puts all the ID eggs in one basket, in a phrase used to him in this context by Martyn Thomas); and why we don’t want satellite-tracking based computer-driven road pricing.

He’s brisk and to the point, with simple production values giving an impression of uncomplicated urgency and ease with the new medium.

It’s 40 years since the “Mother of all demos ” blew away the idea that computerisation meant centralised automation of society. Engelbart showed that networked computerisation would “Augment” and empower people (in the biggest mind-expansion, Stewart Brads predicted, since acid).

Engelbart’s insight has now trickled into UK political discourse. The technologically determinist view that massively centralised databases provide a sound foundation for an automated “New Britain”, which NGOs have challenged for years, is under mainstream opposition attack. And it seems to be working. Without changing his stance, Ross Anderson has turned up in the mainstream (in content, if not in style. And of thinking, not of power).

Of course there are smart Labour people who get this too. But can they change their group orthodoxy mid-flight? Who in power listens to critical friends?* cheers Glyn