Its A Series Of Tubes

This is an interesting article. It brings to mind the announcement that President-Elect Obama plans to distribute his weekly address as a YouTube video posted at Change.gov. Obama's candidacy was based in part on a platform of using technology to make government more transparent. Now that he's about to take office, debates are beginning to form over how best to utilize technology to engage the public and make government not only more transparent, but more accessible. These debates are distinct from the very serious technological issues of Net Neutrality, copyright and patent reform, and Internet security, and seek to bring our whole framework of governance into the twenty-first century.

First of all, lets look at our government from an technological point of view. Government - as we technologists see it - is a legacy system written some 230 years ago by developers who have long since moved on. The developers who came after them have generally been cautious of making any substantive changes, opting instead for minor revisions and, when new features became necessary, generally attempting to follow the techniques documented in the original framework.

The original design was very Unix-like: small, elegant, and decentralized. The platform was designed by a committee that opted to compromise efficiency for performance by limiting the scope and roles of the departmental subsystems. The ten original features were added at the last minute when some of the developers balked at adopting a platform considered not user-friendly enough.

Since the original deployment, the platform has been modified a number of times with features being added and removed. Other features have been extended or deprecated, often in creative ways by super users. There has been a growing tendency for the super user to have root access without sharing the password other power users, circumventing the original platform design of decentralized roles.

Now what we have is a maintenance nightmare. Over the last 8 years we've seen the talent pool of developers dwindle. Hence, we've relied on contractors who generally ignore the existing infrastructure and rewrite from scratch in languages they make up as they go along. The work is done for expediency and efficiency, without regard for stability, performance, or maintenance costs. What's worse, the contractors knew they'd be gone by 2009, and that another group of developers would have to solve the problems they leave behind. As a result, we have one of the most resource hungry systems in the world, and the poor performance to match. For example, one job has run for 6 years and still not completed. No one is really sure what the job is supposed to accomplish, but the one thing it has done is suck up a ton of resources to attack another system and try to install a copy of our system in its place. At least our new lead developer has indicated he'll kill that job, albeit without the '-9' flag, in the hope of freeing up some much needed resources.

We need to face the notion that we somehow downgraded to the Windows Vista of governments. We had the Windows XP of governments before the last administration got their hands on it. But instead of going back to our Unix-like roots, they placed a priority on DRM and the appearance of security, and delivered a system that requires more resources than we have to run. They made cosmetic changes to the interface to distract from the fact that the filesystem is bloated and mismanaged. It was made to look modern, but at its core it was rewritten for an entirely different time and for an entirely different audience. Not to mention that its unable to defend itself against viruses and worms.

Hopefully our new developers will be looking at ways to install the OS X of governments: very user-centric with the freedom of Unix. Less gets done but people are generally happier. Or how about the Linux of governments: almost nothing is done for you, but you get the basics. And if you're determined enough, you can make the interface suit you, and have lots of resources left over for the things you really need. Either of those platforms offer the user total responsibility, and hold more promise than Windows every will.

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Yeah, well, maybe we won't get a whole new OS for Christmas. How about some Web2.0 stuff? Like Wikis for pending legislation. Only members of congress (or their staff) can make changes, but anyone can add a comment. Use a moderation system to hide frivolous comments and ensure that relevant comments rise to the top. Where a moderation system would work really well is in the thousands of public comments that are submitted to, say, the FCC when they request public comment.

Unfortunately, I get the feeling we'll be more likely to see something like this than a more complex moderation system. Note that at the time of posting, "repeal the DMCA" is the third ranked suggestion. Of course we all know the problems with the DMCA (anti-circumvention provisions come to mind first), but repealing it would also get rid of safe-harbor provisions. How many people who clicked "vote for" thought of that?

In any case, it's not as if legislators are just going to look at the top five things on the list and implement them. At least, one hopes not.

On Election Eve

Up until now I've resisted posting anything political (except this). I've tried to keep the blog focused on fitness even though I knew I would eventually sprinkle in a few anecdotes that would give away some of my unusual views. I've always been fascinated by the history of governments, the law and the courts. After all, those who can't remember the past are doomed to repeat it, or something like that.

My four years of college-level political study can be summed up in one sentence spoken by my professor at the beginning of my second term: "Politics" he said "is the art of who gets what, when and how". The art, mind you. Art is abstraction, and like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. What are we to make of a system of services whose function is enshrined in art? It was agreed upon long ago that we need no ruler, yet we have the party of the last eight years who subscribe to the notion of a "unitary executive" - a dictator. No one will deny that we are each in possession of certain inalienable rights, yet the recognition of those rights depends on the composition of a panel of nine. We all know from our elementary school days that Congress shall make no law and so on, yet those laws were made anyway, and serve each day to cheapen our remaining inalienable rights.

The first election in which I voted was the presidential election of 1980. I was eighteen. The choice that year was between the incumbent, a farmer from Georgia with a funny family, and an actor from Hollywood who was famous for making movies with a monkey. The farmer didn't seem to inspire a lot of confidence and he couldn't gain a consensus for any of his ideas. Jobs were scarce, especially for young people, and all the older adults talked about how high the taxes were, and how much more everything cost than before. Then there were some religious people who overthrew a government that our government had previously overthrown, and they took the employees of our embassy in that country hostage. The farmer said that if we gave him a second chance he could solve all those problems.

The actor was inspiring when he spoke. After all, he was an actor. He said all our problems were caused by an evil empire of people who didn't like to own stuff. He said that because of them, there were people in our country who didn't want us to own stuff either. He said he could protect us from that evil. He said that the problems with the religious people could be solved by being even more religious than them. He said that for all of us to have a job and live well, we would need a great army so no one - especially the people who didn't like to own stuff - would bother us. Strength was the answer. Strength - and low taxes. America would have its glory without all that respect and collaboration hogwash that the farmer talked about.

The actor made sense for all I knew. It was simple and easy. He made sense to my friends too. We helped vote the actor into office and he set about making country strong again. But the actor was only an actor and he believed so deeply in his ideals that he couldn't see where he'd gone wrong. We got our low taxes but the country was nearly bankrupted. We got our great army but it became a burdensome beast. Moral outrages were invented and used to justify one war after another on the citizenry in the name of better religion. The promises of health care and education and small government and fiscal responsibility turned out to be just promises, and we all stood by and watched as the public coffers were emptied into the pockets of the actors supporters.

This election year feels a lot like it did in 1980. Like there's something real at stake. The party of the actor has offered us an old man with a poor temperament and a grifter sidekick as their candidates and told us they are different. But these "new" candidates haven't said anything different than the actor did 28 years ago. Because many refuse to accept that fraud, the actor's party and its "new" candidates are willing to incite the mob in an attempt to sully what they can't keep. What a disgrace they are.

I have had enough. I've had enough of the climate of fear. I've had enough of the cronyism and graft and austerity and debt. I've had enough of war. I want my civil liberties back. I want my privacy respected. I want my retirement protected. I want clean water, good roads, good schools, and health care. I want somebody smart to run the government for a change. Somebody who isn't an actor or a privileged son, who is about my age, and who has actually had to go out and earn a living. No more old Cold Warriors. We need new ideas and fresh faces; people who can understand the shifting cultures and technology of the modern world. If I have to pay more in taxes for it, so be it. If I've learned anything since 1980, its that nothing worth having is simple and easy.

Tomorrow is a big day. Vote your conscience.