The Feds and the Net
Earlier this year, Dyson published Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age (Broadway Books). This summer, she shared her thoughts on the government's role in the ever-expanding world of the Net.
On politics: Politically I'm very agnostic. I'm certainly not a member of a party. How much faith I have in government is about how much faith I have in human nature. Which means it really varies according to who's in charge.
The more rigid a system gets, the less it is able to receive feedback and respond to it, and the more likely people are to abuse their power. No system is going to work unless the individuals within it make sure it doesn't get too rigid.
Our system now is too rigid. Incumbency offers huge advantages to politicians. We also have a fairly large bureaucracy whose original goal was service, but which now has people in it more concerned with self-preservation. That's not unique to government; it's what happens with large institutions.
On federal officials and the Net: In many ways they don't need to deal with the Net; the best thing they could do is to ignore it. [President Clinton's Internet adviser] Ira Magaziner has come up with an extremely enlightened policy. In setting up a framework for electronic commerce and devising an Internet domain name policy, he's saying, "We have the power, and we want to get rid of it. But you have to figure out how to do it." He's telling the Internet community, "Come up with your own governing board, and I'll gladly turn power over to it."
I spend a lot of time with a lot of governments. Compared to most, the U.S.
government is enlightened. That doesn't mean I think it's perfect.
On overseeing the Net: We do need better tools to reduce the incidence of getting stuff you don't want when searching for information. Whether it's pornography or something about furniture when you wanted to get stock information. But that's not an issue for legislation. There are huge deals now between companies and Web portals to make portals run better. There are lots of things that we just haven't gotten around to yet. But trying to legislate about this stuff is like racing something that's going way too fast. You'll never catch up.
On government Web sites: We're still right at the beginning. It's all in the early stages. Sites such as Thomas [for congressional information] and [the Security and Exchange Commission's] EDGAR [database] are wonderful. They have really made a difference. On the issue of privacy on the Net, I found the Federal Trade Commission site very useful. They post virtually everything there. Magaziner has not only posted stuff, but has solicited feedback on the Net. And that has really helped him.
The city of Barcelona, which had set up call centers so that citizens could get services over the phone, is taking that information and putting it on the Web. People will get it through kiosks and home Internet connections. So we're not alone.
On reinvention efforts: The concept of making government more market-oriented is totally appropriate. In general, it really makes a lot of sense. There are things that belong to government. But there are so many things where a service that is funded centrally could be contracted out. I'm thinking of schools. You can still have government funding, but you could create a much more competitive market.