our kids’ product

Our high school students’ online history project tells the epic

history of their own schools’ desegregation, from 1955-2000. It includes

an introductory slide show, a timeline and graph of the county’s massive

demographic changes, a set of oral history interviews, and then a deliberative

forum on the topic, "What should have been done to address school

segregation in 1955?" The project will never be complete, because

students can always add interviews, historical data, and new perspectives.

But it is now ready for a public launch at an event tomorrow. Therefore,

we invite anyone and everyone to visit and participate. The URL is www.princegeorges.org/history.htm

kids in urban planning

I wrote part of a grant proposal today that would allow our high school

students to conduct research connected to nutrition, exercise, and

obesity. They would identify local opportunities for recreational

exercise and healthy food, and also local sources of unhealthy food and

barriers to exercise (such as streets without sidewalks). They would place

these items on an online, public map along with the routes of local buses

and Metrorail. Their goals would be (a) to show local residents how they

can get to healthy opportunities; and (b) to show local policymakers how

inaccessible certain important opportunities are.

At the same time, students could calculate how much unhealthy food (i.e.,

grams of fat) can be purchased in various locations for one dollar, versus

how much healthy food can be bought. These figures could also be displayed

on a map. Students could then compare statistics from comparable areas

such as Takoma Park or Silver Spring, MD.

I have been thinking more generally about how young people—especially

non-college-bound kids and kids of color—can learn to play a role

in local decisions about zoning, economic development, and transportation.

They are disproportionately affected by these decisions, yet they rarely

participate in public meetings or discussions. CIRCLE has identified "non-college

youth" as a group that does not vote, does not attend community

meetings or join local groups, and does not have the knowledge necessary

to participate. Furthermore, habits of participation or non-participation

are usually set in adolescence, so unless we find ways to involve these

young people while they are still in high school, chances are they will

be uninvolved for the rest of their lives. One promising idea is to get

them interested in using technological tools for urban planning, such

as the many wonderful products described by PlaceMatters.com.

deliberation and philosophy

I have been thinking a little about the contrast between public deliberation

and the professional discipline of philosophy. Philosophers

like to make and explore novel distinctions. In part, this is because

they pursue truth, and an ambiguity or equivocation is an obstacle to

truth. Philosophers can do nothing about faulty or inadequate data, but

they can show that A is logically different from B, even when it has hitherto

been seen as the same.

A second reason is that philosophers, like academics in general, need

to say something new. Only original arguments can be published and otherwise

rewarded. Since the most obvious distinctions are well known, philosophers

get ahead by finding obscure ones.

In contrast, citizen deliberators tend to gravitate toward language that

is vague enough to suppress distinctions, when possible. This is because

there is always some pressure to gain agreement, and distinctions drive

groups apart. Citizens may care about truth, but often their top priority

is to reach acceptable agreements, and to that end they may be willing

to overlook vagueness. There is even an art to devising rhetorical formulas

that can accommodate different positions. (Diplomats speak of "creative

ambiguity.") Also, unlike philosophers, deliberating citizens don’t

care much about novelty or originality. Sometimes a new perspective can

have a powerful effect in a public conversation, because it can break

a deadlock or reinvigorate the participants. But at least as often, novelty

per se is an impediment, because people don’t have time to absorb

a completely new idea. Besides, a novel argument may be associated too

closely with its author, so others will not endorse it wholeheartedly.

Thus it will often be easy for professional philosophers to tear apart

a consensus statement issued by a large and diverse group of deliberators.

But professional philosophers would not be able to run a democratic community.

talking about the commons at Berkeley

I’m off to California, so this blog may have to pause until April 23.

I’m going to Berkeley to give a talk at the Center for the Study of Law

and Society (co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology).

My title is "Building the Electronic Commons," and I

will be discussing ideas that I have described elsewhere

on this Website, as well as some new thoughts. This is my abstract:

Legal theorists like Lawrence Lessig, Yochai Benkler, and James Boyle

have defended various versions of a "commons" theory of cyberspace.

They argue for reforms that would considerably reduce property rights,

thereby returning the Internet to its orginal state of benign anarchy

while enhancing innovation and civil liberties online. I argue that

this vision is attractive but flawed. It is politically naive, since

majorities of voters and organized special interests have incentives

to undermine such an online commons. Also, this vision promotes innovation

and negative liberty to the exclusion of other values, including democratic

ones. However, there is another understanding of the "commons"

that is just as venerable and supported by rigorous theory. This is

the notion of a commons as a voluntary nonprofit association (or network

of such associations), governed by rules. I will discuss politically

realistic ways to enhance the role of such associations in cyberspace.

The talk is scheduled for Monday from 12:30-1:45. Details

here.

a new threat to open access

Here’s a troubling technological development, pointed out by Jeff Chester

of the Center for Digital Democracy.

A company called Ellacoya provides

"network traffic control" software and hardware that

allows Internet Service Providers (ISP) to track their own customers closely

and to "enforce a very large number of policies" regarding Internet

use. The technology can, for example, limit traffic from particular sites

or categories of sites to a certain speed, or block connections altogether

to particular sites, or block connections at certain times of the day

for certain customers. The great danger is that ISPs can now speed up

connections to Websites that have paid them for special treatment, while

subtly slowing down other sites. ISPs will certainly have the incentive

to discriminate in this way if they are owned by a major content provider,

such as Microsoft or AOL Time Warner.

This means that if your favorite low-budget nonprofit seems to have a

slow Website, your ISP may actually be responsible. Also, ISPs may slow

down users who want to create and post material, rather than merely consume

it. (Ellacoya says: "Operators can easily discover their top talkers

and then set up restricted bandwidth pools for specific applications and/or

user groups during peak hours.") This kind of discrimination will

be hard to detect, so customers will not switch their ISPs to avoid it.

Yet it strikes at one of the fundamental principles of the Internet. You

should be able to share any kind of (legal) material with anyone without

an intermediary throwing obstacles in your path. Whereas overt obstacles

are easily detected and can often by bypassed, subtle discrimination poses

a serious danger.