To be blunt, I thought it was pretty underhanded and sandbaggy of Jack to post that piece unsigned, in a context where I had no way of engaging him. (I refuse to sign up for Tumblr just to comment on a blog entry.) I’m glad he chose to repost it on his personal blog, so at least I could address his points, but surely he understands that only a relatively tiny percentage of the people who saw his original rant on the official IBM site will ever see my response.

It’s not that I don’t understand Jack’s feelings, but I find them rather astonishing in their naiveté. If the twentieth century taught us nothing else, it’s that people can be perfectly lovely personally, and still participate in monstrous things. By extension, oughtn’t we judge an institution like IBM by the impact of its actions on the world, and not on the goodness its employees may well nurture in their hearts?

The things I’m calling out in that talk are structural— are the consequences for design of large-scale public-sector organizations’ structural affinity for large-scale private enterprise — and I think that’s self-evident to anyone not approaching the talk in bad faith.

This is what I wrote on Jack’s site:

“I’m perfectly willing to believe, Jack, that you care and care passionately about your city, even the life of cities in general. There’s no reason to do anything other than take you at your word.

But a business — any business, including mine — is by definition heartless. Surely you know better than to ascribe emotion to an institution incapable of any such thing.

And it’s the institution I’m interested in, as a structure and a scale. The function of an (and again: any) institution is to reproduce conditions that are congenial to its survival. Whatever the individuals within that organization might feel, the institution is guided by a different logic. So no: I don’t believe, nor do I believe *you* actually believe, that IBM loves cities, or particularly cares about them except as a market and a particular kind of differentiated terrain for its operations.”

But for the repeated “particular,” I’ll stand by that statement to the day I die. It doesn’t make me happy that my take on things rubs Jack, or anyone, the wrong way, but I can’t and won’t apologize for refusing to participate in a category error.

PS “Mr. Greenfield” is my dad. You can call me Adam.

PlaceSpeak focuses on place-based consultation. Authenticating people to their residential addresses makes it possible for them to weigh in on topics affecting their neighbourhoods. It’s not just about being “real”, it’s about contextualizing your input according to where you live.

Online engagement has generated varying degrees of responsiveness from the general public. The City of Vancouver, for example, has received considerable input in a variety of consultations. In most cases, they require 24/7 moderation to combat the trolls, (which speaks to your point about anonymity). However, the feedback is of limited value from a research perspective as the identities and locations of the respondents are unknown.

Anonymity breeds contempt, as a rule. People are less likely to act out if they’re themselves. My personal take on it is that there are lots of ways to be anonymous on the web but if they want to be taken seriously in the context of public policy development and decision-making, then they have to be culpable.

Good luck with your degree!

We met at OpenGovWest . Nice work on the post. CEOs for Cities (and a bunch of foundations also developed a platform that uses a “stickynote” approach. I like it because it supports short, frequent engagements on a variety of subjects (Memphis, skills; Chicago, bikes, etc.). I’m not sure about impact yet (might be too early), but the idea is compelling) and you can see the FB shares on the page itself – you could feed info by topics to different people who could use it. We wrote about it here:
http://enhancingworkforceleadership.org/post/give-minute-commuity-engagement-around-skills-and-whole-lot-more

I wholeheartedly endorse the criticism by Crowdbrite of the the current public hearing system. I have been on both sides of this – as an official and as a concerned citizen and it is indeed disfunctional. I have also been around on-line discussions to be very wary of how easily these can be taken over by those determined to impose their views on others.

We must do better at getting public involvement in decision making. The current – and growing – level of cynicism is very bad for civil society. I am not enamoured of technology for its own sake, but the current format – let’s run an open house where no-one is allowed to make speeches – is clearly only helping those who run “public consultation” as a way to check the boxes, not actually listen to what people are saying.