The Technocratic Vision of Citizenville — Part One

(This article was published in winter of 2014 on my old blog at oliviahoang.com, now parked at oliviahoang.tumblr.com.)

“Gavin Newsom”, said the upper right-hand corner of a new book called Citizenville. That was enough to stop me in my tracks at the local bookstore, and I flipped through the book to verify that its prose wouldn’t put me to sleep. Well written and engaging, it passed my test, and I sprung out the money to make it mine.

Newsom has always intrigued me due to his progressive views and boldness. His book delivered on that image, as he takes the reader from page to page of his breathless vision of a future where technology will bring power back to the people and help resolve issues of special interests in government. One example he gave illustrating that principle was when his administration eliminated physical town halls and instead held them via phone, Twitter, and Facebook. Newsom argued that traditional town halls created a barrier for ordinary citizens to be involved because they would have to drive there. In addition, special interests were always overrepresented at these meetings, and the attention was often given to whoever yelled the loudest at the meetings. His enforcement of telephonic and virtual town halls boosted engagement and allowed more diverse views to be represented.

Another suggestion he gave was to take advantage of millenials’ interest in gaming to generate their civic engagement. His game, Citizenville, modeled Farmville where players get points for tending a virtual farm. Citizenville would award players who engage in civic projects such as fixing potholes and landscaping a public space. Their prizes would be things such as a ride-along in a police car and being mayor for a day. So now people can satisfy their competitive nature and also see tangible results in their communities as a result of their games.

The promise of a democracy empowered by technology was an alluring one. Yet something felt missing in his analysis. I didn’t realize what it was until I started writing this post, then it hit me what that invisible elephant in the room was. I’ve read 3/4th of the book so far, and there hasn’t been any mention of how this technocratic governmental vision will help resolve income inequality, which has been rising in SF for years, and now is reaching a boiling point.

While things such as transparency in governmental processes, allowing more governmental data to be open for use by citizens, and making decisions based on data instead of politics are desirable, they aren’t enough to resolve the biggest issues that we face. One example that illustrates this omission is when Newsom mentioned Crimespotting, a free alternative that a concerned citizen created to make Oakland crime data easier to access so people can be aware of crimes in their city. While this raised awareness and helped people protect themselves more adequately, it didn’t really get at the root of the problem: the reason crime is so high in the first place.

Many reasons correlate with higher crime, and one of the biggest reasons is that people who are unemployed and poor can be driven to criminality out of desperation and discontent. Technological disruptions have already changed the private sector by eliminating jobs and putting masses of people out of work. If we are to take Newsom’s technocratic view of government seriously, then couldn’t the same be happening in the public sector?

Suppose Citizenville works out well and the citizens themselves are crowdsourcing their civic commitments so effectively that some government jobs are no longer needed. With transparent information (something else that Newsom proposes), we’ll be able to see the waste of taxpayer dollars and demand that these redundant jobs be cut. Eventually, the elimination will occur since the representatives want to please constituents.

And this is where the hidden genius of Newsom’s technocratic wisdom lies. If enough people take Citizenville seriously and pitch in to fulfill civic projects, then the scenario I’ve outlined above can very well happen, leading to a massive shrinking of government—something that hasn’t occurred since the explosion of governmental entities during the New Deal. This will of course save a lot of taxpayer dollars and make things more efficient, but what do we do with the newly displaced government workers?

I wholly support innovation and increased efficiency in governance, but if we’re to cut government jobs, the we need to figure out how to transition these workers who have lost their jobs due to tech disruption. We’ve already seen the class tensions arising out of disruption in the private sector, and disrupting the public sector would only help to multiply that tension—which can ultimately undermine the social stability that we were seeking with these new technological “government hacks”. Let us not forget that Hitler would not have gained as many followers as he had if there weren’t already class tensions and the notion of “the other” that existed for him to exploit. When people are desperate, they can fall prey to a charismatic leader that may lead them to do terrible things.

I admire Newsom’s forward thinking suggestions, and I do believe that he is sincere in his efforts to create a better world for us all. He is right in that the future is already here—it just so happens that it belongs to the technologists who can seize it. Where that leaves the rest of the people remains to be seen.