Ftl lightning Talk
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The document proposes a solution to address the problem that politicians are making laws about technology that they do not understand due to influence from lobbyists rather than experts. The solution is to build a translation tool that establishes interested communities to identify needed changes to statutes, and helps guide those changes through the legislative process. The tool would provide data feeds and an editor for summarizing and version controlling proposed statutory changes, but challenges remain in developing the user interface and managing data and version control issues.
Ftl lightning Talk
- 1. Fork the Law Legislative Participatory Democracy
- 2. Participatory Democracy Getting people elected? Rallies and stuff (yawn) The machinery of politics remains in place Laws are still beyond the participants’ reach
- 3. The Problem Politicians are making laws about technology that they do not understand. The only “help” they can get is from lobbyists. Large companies are better represented than people Experts who want to, can’t help
- 4. Specific Challenges Technologists and politicians speak different languages Congressmen are strange animals Statutes are complicated Congressmen have no idea who the experts are Industry sounds like a good place to find them “Beltway bubble” prevents a good picture of reality
- 5. Our solution Build a “translation” tool Establish interested communities to identify change Help walk that change through legislative process
- 6. The tool Data feeds about the statute Editors where data can be summarized Complex, linking version-controlled statute editor Branch/merge of competing projects
- 7. Our Challenges UI/UX anyone? Uh... Interesting version control problems Data management issues
- 8. Our Team Me! (Law student, engineer, privacy researcher) Meredith L. Patterson (Computational linguistics, securing the internet, etc.) Dan “TQ” Hirsch (SE: Google, startups) Cathy Elliot-Jones (Attorney, activist) Adoring fans and supporters
- 9. Still quite rough We obviously lack UI/UX expertise
- 10. Thanks!