This growing crescendo of optimism about technology-enabled citizenry has me feeling a bit uneasy. I don't think it's as innocuous as people want to believe, and I see a couple of problems down the road. As we get swept up in our enthusiasm for the "Government 2.0" initiatives and play the hero in our little echo chambers, I hope we don't lose sight of the real challenges here.

I love stories like this: "Craigslist founder uses iPhone to snap a picture of a crowded streetcar, sends it to city hall, and the problem gets fixed." It's so heartwarming and optimistic.

In today's connected, mobile society, we're going to see more and more stories about citizens taking advantage of technology to participate in local government, with a bit of "wisdom of the crowds", "social networking", and other favorite topics sprinkled in.

This growing crescendo of optimism about a “technology-enabled citizenry” and the idea that “the people cry out, and the mighty government/corporation hears their groans and gives them relief” has me feeling uneasy. I don't think it's as innocuous as people want to believe, and I see a couple problems down the road.

All the stories tend to reassure you that you need only to send a 140-character rant into the ether of Twitter, and the mighty Comcast (Frank, aka @comcastcares) will hear your plea and make things right. You need only send a quick text message about a pothole, and the mighty city hall will hear your pleas. The Internet becomes a magic conduit who answers all your prayers. It's a trope as old as time, and it's what people want to hear.

No doubt, there are valid reasons for these stories’ popularity. Local governments are rapidly adopting geolocation and social networking technologies, after all. At An Event Apart and Web Directions last year, I was surprised to learn how many of the attendees worked for local government agencies, and how sophisticated their use of these technologies is.

The Cost of Instant Gratification

For starters, the stories pander to people's twin desires to both play the hero and be as lazy as possible. Here in Seattle, for example, the carpool lanes even used to be plastered with the phone number 764-HERO, which motorists could call to report carpool cheats. The implication?  Be a hero by making a call to tattle on your neighbors. The number is now defunct, but the idea lives on in many of these "Government 2.0" sites.

The true costs are hidden from the citizens.  It costs a citizen just a few seconds to report the issue, but there is a big cost on the back end to monitor, filter, and respond to the citizen input.

Corporations are investing heavily in tools that allow them to collect customer feedback and passively monitor quality, as well as new ways to "listen" on channels like Twitter. After all, if you’re out to make a profit, it's great to make feedback frictionless for customers. We played on this idea with the recent "Windows 7 Was my Idea" campaign. Our television ads show various "real world" folks claiming that someone from the Windows team heard their feature suggestion and implemented it in Windows 7. The ads are tongue-in-cheek, but they hint at how the Windows team processed an unprecedented amount of customer feedback collected over many different feedback channels to design the product.

In contrast to corporations, though, local government is different. Governments are non-profit monopolies, so it's silly for them to ape competitive corporate tactics. More importantly, government is supposed to be "for the people, and by the people." If we train the citizenry to feel that the cost of government participation is free and borne magically on the back end, we’re establishing the wrong precedent. Sending an iPhone snapshot is not participating – it's copping out. We need citizens who will do the legwork to organize their neighbors, get some shovels, and fill in the potholes. Governance "by the people" is about rolling up your sleeves and interacting with your neighbors, not playing a video game on your cell phone.

Unequal Access

More disturbing, though, is the precedent this sets in establishing privileged access to government for elites. Are we really comfortable with a system that gives privileged treatment to people who can afford data plans and GPS-enabled devices? Have we become so isolated from real people, that we gullibly accept that Craig Newmark represents the common man?

Once again, it’s fruitless to look to for-profit corporate practices for guidance here. Comcast monitors Twitter because they know that elite Twitter users represent a higher portion of profits than non-users. Playing favorites with rich folks is part and parcel of being a for-profit corporation. It has no place in government.

A favorite argument about the drawbacks of a non-profit government is to talk about how inefficient the US Postal Service is. Companies like Federal Express and UPS, it is claimed, prove that free-market competition is more efficient than non-profit government services. But this only serves to underscore my argument.

The Postal Service was created to provide equal access for all citizens, regardless of whether you lived on a remote farm or in a plush penthouse in the city. It was not optimized for profit. We citizens considered it unacceptable to charge poor, rural citizens more for service, even if  it was more expensive to deliver that service. This foresight has paid off, as states like Washington switch to Vote By Mail. At first glance, Vote By Mail is another instance of "instant gratification", but unlike Craig Newmark's iPhone, it’s based squarely on a foundation of equal access. Everyone has equal access to the mail system.

Likewise, the government has always required that access to essential utilities like electricity and telephone service be equally extended.  But in recent decades, we've seen an erosion of equal access, particularly with respect to telecommunication services. In the case of our data plans, the inequality is downright scandalous. People with unlimited data plans can pay less than 1/100th of the price per megabyte that the majority of less well-to-do subscribers pay. It seems unacceptable that the average person would have to pay 100 times more than I do, simply to report a pothole.

As we get swept up in our enthusiasm for the "Government 2.0" initiatives and play the hero in our little echo chambers, I hope we don't lose sight of these critical characteristics of good governance: meaningful citizen participation, and universal access.