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17 Oct 08

Online technology can help any website use people, not pundits, to drive public debate

Interesting poins by Robert Niles, encouraging use of online technology combined with random sampling techniques to get public opinion front and centre, vs. having pundits either create or estimate the public mood.

www.ojr.org/...1548 - Preview

local_government punditry public_opinion politics politicians robert_niles knight_foundation

10 Jan 08

In 2008, let us challenge the Politics of Apocalypse | spiked

The issues that Furedi raise have been bugging me for a couple of years now -- ever since running into James Kunstler and his ueber-successful economic project of making a living off scaring the pants off people. I find refreshing Furedi's spin on the matter -- that we seem to be losing "humanism" (in what I feel is a medievalist world view), and I appreciate his lament that "Public figures appear to have lost the capacity to reassure or lead people." Disaster sells, including at the polls/ in the voting booth.

www.spiked-online.com/index.php - Preview

apocalypse criticalthinking frank_furedi opinion political_correctness public_opinion spiked_online

In the past year, the threat of doom – from weather, terror or disease – became an everyday, even banal issue. It’s time to inject a dose of humanism into public debate.
any doubt expressed on the issue of climate change is looked upon as an act of bad faith or ‘denial’.
- - which is scary in itself - on 2008-01-10
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- Public figures appear to have lost the capacity to reassure or lead people. Instead, they frequently opt for evoking frightening futuristic scenarios where the line between fiction and reality become unclear. In every respect, the sensibility that underpins public debate today can be described as a ‘crisis of nerve’. This crisis over the future coexists with a powerful sense of disorientation about the status and worth of the human species itself. Increasingly, humanity is represented as the biggest problem on the planet, rather than as the harbinger of a better future.
- One consequence of Western societies’ obsessive preoccupation with the apocalypse-to-come is that less and less creative energy is devoted to confronting the all too important problems that exist in the here and now. Take the global credit crunch unleashed by the sub-prime home loan crisis this year for instance.
  - - exactly - on 2008-01-10
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- In terms of its material impact, this was arguably the most significant event of the year. After more than a decade of economic stability, the world economy faces the threat of a major recession with important implications for people’s lives. This threat may not make an exciting plot for a sci-fi movie, but it has a direct bearing on the quality of life of millions of people. It also raises important questions about an economic system that is so heavily reliant on using fictitious capital to reproduce itself. Unfortunately, however, today’s future-frightened public debate about economics seems more interested in finding ways to transform capitalism into a carbon-free, green-leaning system than in discussing the steps we need to take to minimise the destructive impact of a global recession on people’s lives and aspirations.
- Worst-case thinking, the principal legacy of 2007, will most likely thrive in the years ahead. That is unless we can rediscover a sense of purpose in what it means to be human.