Stick it to the e-Man!

I'm a firm believer that if any organization is going to be behind on upgrading and updating technology and practice to the modern times, it is the government. Upgrades and changes cause profound social and economic problems. This is terribly unfortunate. Due to the extreme personal subject matter of politics, it takes entire generations to create social change. Updating governmental practices to practical online resources is difficult because it is being done by people who do not understand the Internet.

Government websites are often completely text-based, cluttered, unattractive, and difficult to navigate. It is certainly the case that government websites have a lot of information and a lot of purposes to serve, but there are much better ways to organize and disseminate such things.

Many government computer systems run on dated operating systems like Windows 95 or Windows 98 for a number of reasons. One would be the cost of completing a nationwide computer upgrade; licences to operating systems would need to be bought, PCs would need to be upgraded, and computer illiterates (digital immigrants) would need retraining. Another reason for not changing is that Windows 95 is a successful and more solid platform than Microsoft's more recent releases. (Or so I've been told by intelligence members of the military.)

Cornfield and Rainie discussed the lack of fundamental change in the political process due to the internet, and I feel that the reason why this hasn't happened yet is because it is such a new media. Just this election (and maybe the previous one) were members of the first group of digital natives old enough to participate in political campaigns and/or follow them online. It will become more prevalent in the future, I believe that political campaigns will be fought and won in cyberspace.

Here is a link to an article about John Edwards' Second Life campaign. Apparently, some right wing Republicans took it upon themselves to vandalize his area.