The Virtual Government

The Virtual Government

 

As Mr.Anthony Miyazaki states in his blog The Virtual Government - Will Online Governing Change Our World? the government is becoming everyday more of a web based institution. In many ways, as mentioned in the mentioned blog, government interaction through the internet is a good thing. This postiveness thrives upon the fact that government can be more efficient when it comes to processing and can reach out to even more people then television. As heard, during Obamas campagin, when targeting the younger public to vote Facebook played a key role in reaching millions of young voters.

 

Yet, theres is something about the government going virtual that bothers me which is the deminishing of face to face interaction. On usual ocations government has some face to face interaction even though many times this interaction is not genuine (its a political thing), but for its survival it does reach out to the mases. Politians head out to see and in some cases live the way their people live and from that experiance can base imuch needed desicions or policies. Even with this kind of political interaction many feel that more often than usual government base decisions on political and convinience reasons and ignore the majority of the root to the governed problems.

 

I believe if Government were to go completely virtual this phenemenon would worsen. Theres no doubt the government could reach more people and ultimately be more efficient in processing given information, but the face to face interaction will completely vanish. If this were to happen would the people be forgotten? I bring this up more strongly now because last night I was watching a movieMaid in Manhattan, during the movie this politition was heading out to the bronx in New York City to talk about the projects and the complications of conditions that exists in them. He was told by the main lady in the movie that instead of talking about them (sure he had researched them and had a pretty good idea about what goes on in them), but that he experience them and then talk from his heart ultimatly being more effective and more efficient than otherwise.