The title of Lawrence Lessig‘s recent essay in The New Republic, “Against Transparency: The perils of openness in government,” is a bit of a misnomer. Lessig isn’t unequivocally against openness and transparency in government. Instead, he says we shouldn’t see transparency as “just a big simple blessing,” or a silver bullet solution to political problems, and he makes the case for a more nuanced view.
Tomorrow, Nora will interview Lessig about openness, transparency, and government. Do you have a question for Lawrence Lessig? Leave it in the comments below.
[Original image by Robert Scoble]
The critique seems to be that information alone does not enable good decision making. But isn't that larger question a project outside of government, involving people becoming more experienced in using larger amounts of information to make better decisions? What we need of government is to break down the barriers to accessing this corporate and government information to enable society to then mature in how we make use of this information.
If nothing else, Transparency in government and business provides motivation for politicians and others to maintain a record of "clean" decisions. An old definition of Integrity is "doing the right thing when No One is watching". But these days, integrity is hard to document.
That said, Transparency can lead to a social paralysis wherein we spend so much time documenting our actions and analysing the documented actions of others that nothing of substance gets done, and we sink into a morass of gossip driven dialogue.
I am reminded of a poem by Carl Sandburg called Primer Lesson:
Look out how you use proud words.
When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back.
They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can't hear you calling–
Look out how you use proud words.
I believe strongly that yes, those we elect are in positions of trust, and should be acting in our best interest, but that appears rarely to be the case. I believe this paralysis via information overload was mentioned in "Blink" by Malcom Gladwell, and is worth the read. However, I think the application here is different than what Doug says – it's not to allow us to participate in the decision making process, but rather to ensure that our trust is not being betrayed in the name of self interest.
I think that questioning whether transparency is always good, is a step in the right direction. It makes me wonder if Lessig has people like Foucault in mind. To paraphrase Foucault, the effect of any technology is dependent upon neither the 'essence' of the technology, nor 'what the individual does with it', but rather it depends on what context (read culture/history) you plug the technology into.
So, in the culture/history in which we live, transparency might be useful – but that could quickly change as the context/history changes. Further, it warns us not to assume that 'transparency' will work the same way in other cultures as it does here.
It's also interesting to speculate about how 'transparency' can and will be abused. Can't you just imagine someone or some government with an axe to grind abusing 'transparency'?
Qs for Lessig:
Does invoking the term 'transparency' assume that what's said in a 'transparent way' is closer to the Truth (with a capital T), and is that part of the possible danger in the use of such a term?
And isn't the term liable to quickly loose credibility as we inevitably see it abused by people/agents trying to sound sincere?
Shouldn't we be suspicious of precisely those people who have a need to be seen as transparent?
Might the idea of 'transparency' function differently in different cultures? Can you speculate on this?
Combining the interview with Lessig with the piece on data visualization brought out a point for me. The manner in which data or information is presented is at least as important as the underlying information itself. Transparency for its own sake makes available all kinds of data that can with the processing power available today be "visuallized" or presented in a way to prove a point or advance an agenda despite the inconvenient fact that the information underlying the visualization does not support the position.
It places us all in the position of being constant skeptics and having to challenge at all times the facts behind the position or assertion.
Media seems to fall victim to this often as the amount of time available for good investigative journalism is cut to meet deadlines for a 24 hour news machine.
the thing abotu gov't openess is that it would seem to me to more complicated than it appears. one hand you have the old way of doing things closed doors-files that the general public is denied access to and so forth. You also have what Great Britain would call the Freedom of information act where you can access information as long as your not in a hurry and state a legit reason.
If i was the govt 't i would only release things to the public that don't upset 'bigger pictures'. You can't say anything and everything.and if your smart enough to get elected you sure are smart enough to know how to play this ball game.
Gov't Transparency isbut another fence to balance upon.
Another issue to toss intot he stew pot
and another button to push that will only heat up, just give it time!