Information Agenda

novel by Michael Jon Jensen

http://www.nap.edu/staff/mjensen/tbs-home.htm

There are some Open Society themes.

(1990) a sort of telenovel for the Ted Turner Tomorrow Award, which was to award a half-million-dollars for a winning entry outlining a benign future where social problems had been solved. My framework posited a president who, via popular support acquired from a five-day series of televised presentations, initiated a program of heavy investment in digital technologies to transform the country by enfranchising the disempowered, developed digital libraries and distance education, used the Online Freedom of Information Act to provide universal oversight of government agencies, initiated a community-based expertise-Barter-ing system, and funded a programmer's consortium for the creation of socially beneficial software, among other things.

President Jack Williams: Knowledge can make us free. Providing tools for responsible freedom is precisely what the government's business is. And if I have a mandate, it is to assure that all Americans have access to the tools of education, the tools of wealth, the tools of freedom. Without these tools, we will fail. But with these tools, we will thrive, and we will prosper.

Williams inauguration address with 10 televised half-hour speeches starting the next day. (echoes of Ross Perot?)

0. the Ecological truth (Environmentalism)

1. possible solutions: True Cost Taxation (reminds me of Bucky Fuller's Energy Accounting idea)

2. the Economic truth (Corporate Welfare)

3. solutions: Direct Grant Initiative (response in 30 days)

4. Public Information (paid for by tax dollars) is Public Property... Govt to fund a cheap computer for info access... Communications Agency as a department connected to the US Post Office, in whose buildings most of the large "information node" computer systems would reside. (this was pre-Web - note how this might have led to Mini Tel instead...)

5. the Information Market (Internet as Infrastructure for Economic Development)

6. the Education truth (permanent need for Educating Adults)

7. the Educonomy - Educational Barter (Free School), supported by the community, which is then supported by the state and federal communities... In an ideal world, one half day a week would be expected as an education period.

8. the Government truth - By allowing the population to be closer watchdogs on its congresspeople and Federal agencies, Williams expected to facilitate behavioral reform. (Transparent Society)

9. summary - I am asked, "Aren't you asking for chaos?" And I answer, "No, I'm asking for a choir."