h a l f b a k e r yIt's not a thing. It will be a thing.
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Governments seem to follow an ancient model. You have a lot of people in a building. People take it in turns to speak, ideally without notes, app tempting to sway the house by rhetoric. Others heckle or support within vaguely proscribed limits. No diagrams, no illustrations, no notes. Someone may attempt
to write down what is said. Binary votes are sought.
Now imagine the same as a zoom meeting. MPs can remain in their constituencies, and attend the house. When speaking, they may share their terminal, and show graphs or animations. People can give feedback using notes. People can fact-check the speeches as they happen and post objections if facts are incorrect. The meeting is recorded, and anyone can get a full replay, and experience the meeting exactly as the members did.
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"app tempting" Definitely a digital phenom ... |
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I think AI and hacking would make this amusing. It's bad enough already with various media spinning the facts based on who's paying them. |
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Your optimism about fact-checking is misplaced. There are true facts to support multiple narratives, and for spicy topics there's censorship (true things that cannot be said). Good luck trying to fix politics using facts and logic; that's not what it runs on. And, allowing politicians to work from home seems like a good way to get less done. Maybe limit the fact-checking to other MPs and this idea would become more workable (and less useful). But have a bun for the idea to add a comment section to political speeches. This comment section would be difficult to manage in a useful way, but it sounds fun. |
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I do not think Zoom Government would be ideal. All it has to be is less visibly broken than what we have now. The UK has the Hillsbrough (Public Accountability) Bill passing through the House of Lords after passing readings in the House of Commons. Both Houses have members who believe that people in public office should tell the truth, but this law should not be acceptable to themselves. They argue that there is a 'tradition of robust debate' which seems to include saying things that they know to be untrue provided no-one can spot it at the time. A record of the meeting would record what they said and how they said it. If you could use diagrams and graphs, it would in time become expected that anyone wishing to make a point should provide their best evidence in a plain and easy to understand form. |
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Polybius suggested a static form of government is never ideal: rulers become dictators, senates become self-serving cliques, and democracies get run by demagogues. The best solution seemed to be when you had several systems running in parallel, each providing checks on the other. Zoom should not change the nature of government but it should make it harder for the Honourable Members (sic) to use tricks of rhetoric and procedure to game the system to their advantage. |
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I do not advocate using AI, but AI is here whether you like it or not. It would be good to know in real time what someone who advocates public spending is also on the board of the company getting the contract, or matters of that kind. This could be done using AI but it could also be done using a conventional search. Objections should always be fact-based: anyone raining an objection would be required to meet the same standards as the speaker being objected to. |
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The book 'Parkinson's Law' argues that the shape of debating chambers influences the organisation of political parties. One set of theatre seats facing a stage suggests a dictatorship. Parallel benches like the House of Commons gives two sides. A half-rotunda gives a spectrum between left and right. A near-full rotunda leads to multiple alliances of tiny parties. The normal Halfbaker solution might be to wonder what could be achieved in zero-G. Zoom Government is effectively government in a Room With No Shape. |
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Put it in orbit for more shapes. Sphere, cylinder, cube, bifurcated rectangular prism, oblate spherepid, funnel.... |
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