Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Smart Citizens, Smarter State
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1971
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.thegovlab.org/beth-noveck.html * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Simone_Noveck * https://www.law.yale.edu/beth-simone-noveck * http://engineering.nyu.edu/people/beth-simone-noveck
RESEARCHER NOTES:
MISCELLANEOUS WRITER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1971.
EDUCATION:Harvard University, A.B. (magna cum laude), 1991, A.M., 1992; attended Oxford University, 1992-93; University of Innsbruck, Ph.D., 1994; Yale University, J.D., 1997.
ADDRESS
CAREER
New York Law School, New York City, law faculty, beginning 2002; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, visiting professor at Annenberg School of Communication, 2005; Stanford University, Stanford, CA, visiting professor, 2007-08; White House Office of Science and Technology, Washington, DC, U.S. deputy chief technology officer for open government and leader of Open Government Initiative, 2009-11; New York University, New York, NY, Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professor at Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, 2012-14, Jerry Hultin Global Network Professor at Tandon School of Engineering, 2014-, cofounder and director of Governance Lab and MacArthur Research Network, 2013-. Yale Law School, senior fellow of Information Society Project, 1998-, Florence Rogatz Visiting Clinical Professor, 2016; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, visiting professor, 2012-. State of Play Conferences, founder and leader, 2003-09; Collective Intelligence Conference, chair, 2017; Imperial College London, member of advisory boards, Open Contracting Partnership and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council at Centre for Precision Healthcare; Global Commission on Internet Governance, member, 2014-16.
WRITINGS
Noveck’s work has been published in Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish.
SIDELIGHTS
Beth Simone Noveck is a law professor who specializes in issues of great popular interest: the Internet, open government, and citizen participation in the democratic process. She spent much of her career at the New York Law School, where she has taught classes in e-government and e-democracy, intellectual property, and constitutional law. She rose through the ranks to full professor, beginning as early as 2003, when she founded the Institute for Information Law and Policy and its Innovation Center. Since 2011 Noveck has been affiliated with multiple institutions, many of them concurrently. She was the Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University from 2012 to 2014; in 2014 she moved over to the Tandon School of Engineering as the Jerry M. Hultin Global Network Professor, where she is also the cofounder and director of the Governance Lab and the MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance.
Noveck was deeply involved with the Peer-to-Patent initiative from its creation in 2007, when the federal government authorized a social networking application for crowd-sourcing of citizen participation in the patent approval process. She was also instrumental in the creation of applications like Unchat and the Do Tank. In 2009 Noveck joined the Barack Obama administration as leader of the Open Government Initiative to increase government transparency at the federal level. Among her contributions were the creation of the Data.gov Web site to improve public access to federal data and Challenge.gov, a host site for competitions and challenges that encourage citizen innovation. Since leaving the White House in 2011, Noveck has maintained her ongoing commitments to the global community. From 2014 to 2016 she was a member of the Global Commission on Internet Governance, which promoted a free universal Internet based on openness, security, trustworthiness, and inclusivity.
The State of Play
In 2003 Noveck was a founder of a series of State of Play Conferences jointly sponsored by her Institute for Law and Policy and the Information Society Project at the Yale Law School, which she had joined in 1998. She later edited a collection of essays from the first conference. The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds offers a serious and scholarly look at the real-world legal ramifications of the digital universe. A gamer immersed in a role-playing war game is unlikely to ponder the topics addressed here, including the laws that govern “property ownership, privacy rights, criminal prosecution, alternative identities, and principles of democracy,” as summarized by Cecily Mak in her review at FindLaw. Noveck and her contributors, however, argue that the future of virtual society may actually depend upon the resolution of what Mak called “the blurred lines between real life and fantasy in a simulated world.” Contributors are not focused on the dangers of individual online social relationships as much as they are concerned with legal issues that affect the very structure of our hard-wired society.
Essayists ponder whether a digital society can or should be subject to existing real-world laws. They explore the legal questions that arise when simulated environments are adapted for real-world purposes, such as education, military training and criminal justice, or medical intervention. In fact, they wonder what role the digital society can or should play in shaping and improving the real world. A commentator at the Harvard Law Review suggested that “experts will appreciate the diversity of insights” represented in this volume. Mak summarized her review: “The issues in The State of Play provide a mere taste of what lies ahead. For those who want to skip over the hype and dive into the issues, it is hard to imagine a better resource.
Wiki Government
Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful emerged from Noveck’s work on the Peer-to-Patent initiative and her commitment to the open government platform of former president Barack Obama. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was awash in stalled patent applications, dependent upon an understaffed professional team to tackle the backlog. Peer-to-Patent leveraged the interactive and interconnected enhancements of the Internet Web 2.0 platform to assemble a virtual army of volunteers to jump-start the approval process. The success of the program inspired thinkers like Noveck to expand the concept of citizen participation to a wide range of potential government functions.
Direct citizen participation in government has traditionally ended after the votes are counted. Only professional experts and government officials have been deemed capable of making decisions and enacting policies. Noveck advocates for greater public participation throughout the entire democratic process. She predicts a greater diversity of opinion, an ongoing evaluation of progress, and a more effective implementation of government policies. She envisions a government not just of the people, by the people, and for the people—but with the people. Much of Noveck’s advocacy depended on the transparency of the Obama Open Government Initiative, but at the time of its publication Wiki Government was seen as a promising option for collaborative democracy.
Shayne C. Kavanagh reported in the Government Finance Review: “Wiki Government forces public officials to reexamine traditional ideas about public engagement and the role it plays in the decision-making process.” Library Journal contributor Jim Hahn cautioned, however: “Buyer beware if you are looking for a Wiki how to”; this volume is “clearly for informed readers only.” S.E. Frantzich concluded in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries: “Some of the ideas remain far-fetched, but so did e-mailing, tweeting, and wild collaboration not so long ago.”
Smart Citizens, Smarter State
In Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing, Noveck advances her argument for a more participatory form of democracy. She points out that public participation in government policy making was once commonplace. Professionalism in government became fashionable in the mid-1800s, along with increasing enrollment in tertiary education programs. Developments in social networking and digital communication in the twenty-first century are creating new opportunities for ordinary citizens to reengage in governance on an everyday basis. Consumer input has proved to be successful in the private sector, and Noveck is certain that citizen involvement can work in government as well, along with transparent government and changes in the perception of private citizens as mere onlookers. The key will be “to match the right experts to the right opportunities,” according to Zeynep Engin’s review at Democratic Audit UK. Choice contributor A.E. Wohlers commented that “Noveck offers an optimistic but realistic approach” to smarter government. In the New Internationalist, J.P. O’Malley suggested that casual readers may be discouraged “by Noveck’s jargon-filled academic approach” but also recommended Smarter Citizens, Smarter State as “a valuable contribution to a debate that will continue as technology plays an increasing role in almost every aspect of our lives.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, January, 2010, S.E. Frantzich, review of Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful, p. 982; April, 2016, A.E. Wohlers, review of Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing, p. 1233.
Government Finance Review, August, 2010, Shayne C. Kavanagh, review of Wiki Government, p. 82.
Harvard Law Review, April, 2007, review of The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds, p. 1736.
Library Journal, June 15, 2009, Jim Hahn, review of Wiki Government, p. 85.
New Internationalist, December, 2015, J.P. O’Malley, review of Smart Citizens, Smarter State, p. 40.
ONLINE
Democratic Audit UK, http://www.democraticaudit.com/ (December 6, 2016), Zeynep Engin, review of Smart Citizens, Smarter State.
E-Government, http://www.govtech.com/ (June 8, 2009), Todd Newcombe, review of Wiki Government.
FindLaw, http://supreme.findlaw.com/ (February 12, 2007), Cecily Mak, review of The State of Play.
Governance Lab Web site, http://www.thegovlab.org/ (March 21, 2017), author profile.
New York University Web site, http://engineering.nyu.edu/ (March 21, 2017), author profile.
Yale Law School Web site, https://www.law.yale.edu/ (March 21, 2017), author profile.
BETH SIMONE NOVECK
Jerry M. Hultin Professor and Director
The Governance Lab
PHONE:646.997.3150
EMAIL:noveck@nyu.edu
OFFICE:2 MetroTech Center, 9th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201
SOCIAL:Twitter
Profile
BIOGRAPHY
The Jerry Hultin Global Network Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, Beth Simone Noveck directs The Governance Lab and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Google.org, the GovLab strives to improve people’s lives by changing how we govern. The GovLab designs and tests technology, policy and strategies for fostering more open and collaborative approaches to strengthen the ability of people and institutions to work together to solve problems, make decisions, resolve conflict and govern themselves more effectively and legitimately.
She was previously the Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab. Beth is a professor of law at New York Law School and a Senior Fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project. She served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative (2009-2011). UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government, and she served on the Obama-Biden transition team.
A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, she serves on the Global Commission on Internet Governance and chaired the ICANN Strategy Panel on Multi-Stakeholder Innovation. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Open Contracting Partnership. She was named one of the “Foreign Policy 100″ by Foreign Policy, one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company and one of the “Top Women in Technology” by Huffington Post. She has also been honored by both the National Democratic Institute and Public Knowledge for her work in civic technology.
Beth is the author of Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful, which has also appeared in Arabic, Russian, Chinese and in an audio edition, and co-editor of The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds. Her next book Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing recently appeared with Harvard University Press. She tweets @bethnoveck and writes on Medium @bethnoveck. Her TED talk "Demand an Open Source Government" can be found here.
Beth Simone Noveck
Florence Rogatz Visiting Clinical Professor of Law
Beth Simone Noveck is a Florence Rogatz Visiting Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches the Governance Innovation Clinic on Open Government and Open Data. She is currently the Jerry Hultin Global Network Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and director of the Governance Lab.
Contact Information
Yale Law School
P.O. Box 208215
New Haven, CT 06520
Room 206
(203) 432-9881
Homepage
Education & Curriculum Vitae
J.D., Yale Law School, 1997
Ph.D, University of Innsbruck, 1994
A.M., Harvard University, 1992
A.B., Harvard University, 1991
Courses Taught
Open Government and Open Data Governance Innovation Clinic
Biography
Beth Simone Noveck is a Florence Rogatz Visiting Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School, where she teaches the Governance Innovation Clinic, and the Jerry Hultin Global Network Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and director of the Governance Lab.
The GovLab strives to improve lives by changing how we govern. It designs and tests technology, policy and strategies for fostering more open and collaborative approaches to strengthen the ability of people and institutions to work together to solve problems, make decisions, resolve conflict and govern themselves more effectively and legitimately.
Beth served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative (2009-2011). UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government, and she served on the Obama-Biden transition team.
A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, she chairs the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Open Contracting Partnership. She chairs the 2017 Collective Intelligence Conference and will deliver the UK Annual Campaign for the Social Sciences Lecture. Beth was named one of the “Foreign Policy 100" by Foreign Policy, one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company and one of the “Top Women in Technology” by Huffington Post. She has also been honored by both the National Democratic Institute and Public Knowledge for her work in civic technology.
She is the author of Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing (Harvard University Press, 2015), which will appear in Spanish and Russian in 2017; Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings, 2009), which has also appeared in Arabic, Russian, Chinese and in an audio edition, and co-editor of The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds (NYU Press, 2005). She tweets @bethnoveck and writes on Medium @bethnoveck.
Beth Simone Noveck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Beth Noveck
BethNoveckJI1.jpg
Noveck in 2009
Born 1971 (age 45–46)
Nationality United States of America
Alma mater
Harvard, A.B. 1991, A.M. 1992
University of Innsbruck, Ph.D. 1994
Yale Law School, J.D. 1997
Beth Simone Noveck (born 1971) is the Jerry Hultin Global Network Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and director of the Governance Lab. She was the United States deputy chief technology officer for open government and led President Obama's Open Government Initiative. Based at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy until January 2011, she is an expert on technology and institutional innovation.[1] On May 16, 2011 George Osborne announced that Noveck had been recruited to a position in the United Kingdom government.[2] She is a Commissioner for the Global Commission on Internet Governance.[3] She is the author of Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Government (Harvard 2015), Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings 2009), and co-editor of the State of Play: Law and Virtual Worlds (NYU 2006).
Background[edit]
She graduated from Harvard University with an AM magna cum laude, and University of Innsbruck with a PhD. She graduated from Yale Law School with a JD.
She directs The Governance Lab and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance, which is designed to improve governance in governments and elsewhere.
She is currently the Jerry Hultin Global Network Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. She was formerly the Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab. She is a professor of law at New York Law School and a Senior Fellow at the Yale Law School Information Society Project. She served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative (2009-2011). UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government, and she served on the Obama-Biden transition team. She’s also designed or collaborated on Unchat, The Do Tank, Peer To Patent, Data.gov, Challenge.gov and the Gov Lab’s Living Labs and training platform, The Academy.
She serves on the Global Commission on Internet Governance and chaired the ICANN Strategy Panel on Multi-Stakeholder Innovation. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Open Contracting Partnership. She was named one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy,[4] one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company[5] and one of the “Top Women in Technology” by Huffington Post.[6] She has also been honored by both the National Democratic Institute[7] and Public Knowledge[8] for her work in civic technology.
She is the author of Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful,[9] which has also appeared in Arabic, Russian, Chinese and in an audio edition, and co-editor of The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds.[10] Her latest book Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing appeared with Harvard University Press in 2015.[11]
Previously, Noveck directed the Institute for Information Law & Policy and the Democracy Design Workshop at New York Law School where she is on-leave as a professor. She is the founder of the "Do Tank," and the State of Play Conferences, and launched Peer-to-Patent, the first community patent review project, in collaboration with the United States Patent and Trade Office. She has taught in the areas of intellectual property, innovation, and constitutional law, as well as courses on electronic democracy and electronic government.[12]
Beth Simone Noveck
Co-founder and Director
Resources
Twitter
Medium
Governing Profile
Forbes Profile
Google Scholar
Smarter State Website
Books by Beth Simone Noveck
Smart Citizens, Smarter State
Wiki Government
The State of Play
Downloads
Beth Simone Noveck's Photo
Beth Simone Noveck's Photo in High Res
The Jerry Hultin Global Network Professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and the Florence Rogatz Visiting Clinical Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Beth Simone Noveck is Co-Founder and Director of The GovLab and its MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance. Beth focuses her research, teaching and activism on the impact of technology on public institutions and solving public problems.
The GovLab strives to improve people’s lives by changing how we govern. It designs and tests technology, policy and strategies for fostering more open and collaborative approaches to strengthen the ability of people and institutions to work together to solve problems, make decisions, resolve conflict and govern themselves more effectively and legitimately.
Beth served in the White House as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and director of the White House Open Government Initiative (2009-2011). UK Prime Minister David Cameron appointed her senior advisor for Open Government, and she served on the Obama-Biden transition team. Among projects she’s designed or collaborated on are the Network of Innovators, Unchat, The Do Tank, Peer To Patent, Data.gov, Challenge.gov and the Gov Lab Academy.
A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, she is chairing the 2017 Collective Intelligence Conference. She is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Open Contracting Partnership and the EPSRC Centre for Precision Healthcare at Imperial College. She is also a Program Committee Member of the 2016 Conferences on International Open Data, Open Data Research, Data Science for Government, and the Data for Good Exchange. She was named one of the “Foreign Policy 100″ by Foreign Policy, one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company and one of the “Top Women in Technology” by Huffington Post. She has also been honored by both the National Democratic Institute and Public Knowledge for her work in civic technology.
Beth is the author of Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing (Harvard University Press, 2015), which will appear in Spanish and Russian in 2016; Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger and Citizens More Powerful (Brookings, 2009), which has also appeared in Arabic, Russian, Chinese and in an audio edition, and co-editor of The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds (NYU Press, 2005). She tweets @bethnoveck and writes on Medium @bethnoveck.
From Linked In:
Experience
Yale Law School
Florence Rogatz Visiting Clinical Professor, 2016
NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Jerry M. Hultin Global Network Professor
Company Name NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Dates Employed Jul 2014 – Present Employment Duration 2 yrs 9 mos
The Governance Lab
Founder
Dates Employed Jan 2013 – Present Employment Duration 4 yrs 3 mos
MIT
Visiting Professor
Dates Employed Sep 2012 – Present Employment Duration 4 yrs 7 mos Location Media Lab
CAMBIA
Board Member
Dates Employed Jul 2011 – Present Employment Duration 5 yrs 9 mos
New York Law School
Professor
Dates Employed Jul 2002 – Present Employment Duration 14 yrs 9 mos
Yale Law School
Senior Fellow, Information Society Project
Dates Employed Jul 1998 – Present Employment Duration 18 yrs 9 mos
New York University
Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professor
Dates Employed Jul 2012 – Jul 2014 Employment Duration 2 yrs 1 mo Location Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
White House
United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer; Director, White House Open Government Initiative
Dates Employed Jan 2009 – Jan 2011 Employment Duration 2 yrs 1 mo
State of Play Conferences
Founder
Dates Employed 2003 – 2009 Employment Duration 6 yrs
Obama-Biden Transition Project
Senior Advisor, Technology, Innovation and Government Reform Policy Team Dates Employed Jul 2008 – Dec 2008 Employment Duration 6 mos Location
Stanford University
Visiting Professor, Communication Department
Dates Employed Jan 2007 – Dec 2008 Employment Duration 2 yrs Location Stanford, California
University of Pennsylvania
Visiting Professor, Annenberg School of Communication
Company Name University of Pennsylvania
Dates Employed Sep 2005 – Dec 2005 Employment Duration 4 mos Location Greater Philadelphia Area
Education
Yale Law School
Degree Name JD Field Of Study Law - 1997
University of Oxford
Dates attended or expected graduation 1992 – 1993
From New York Law School: Listed as on leave from 2012
http://www.nyls.edu/news-and-events/new-york-law-school-welcomes-back-professor-beth-simone-noveck-from-the-executive-office-of-the-president/
New York, NY (January 11, 2011)—New York Law School is pleased to welcome back Professor Beth Simone Noveck, who returns to the Law School for the Spring 2011 semester after serving as the nation’s first Deputy Chief Technology Officer and leading the Administration’s Open Government Initiative since January 2009.
The IILP Archive
The Innovation Center is honored to build upon the successes of its forerunner program, the Institute for Information Law and Policy (IILP). The IILP, founded by Professor Beth Noveck, has for ten years helped New York Law School students learn about intellectual property and technology, connect with industry and practice groups, and engage in the development of law in a variety of practice areas. The IILP’s programs, projects, and conferences had a significant impact on law and technology, and we invite you to review our history.
Since its founding by Professor Beth Simone Noveck in 2003, the. Institute for Information Law & Policy (IILP) has engaged students in conducting scholarly ...
From State of Play contributor information: 2006:
founder of the State of Play annual conference on law and virtual worlds and director of the State of Play Academy, a center for learning and scholarship within the virtual world. She is an associate professor of law at NY Law School, where she heads the Institute for Information Law and Policy and the Democracy Design Workshop, an interdisciplinary "do tank" dedicated to deepening democratic practice through technology design. Noveck teaches in the areas of e-government and e-democracy, intellectual property, and constitutional Law. She concentrates her writing on law and technology with a focus on the intersection between technology and the design of legal and political institutions. Beth Noveck is the creator of civic and social software applications, including Unchat, Cairns, the Gallery, and Democracy Island. ... She did graduate work at Oxford University. She is a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
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From Library of Congress:
State of Play:
"The State of Play is an extremely comprehensive look into digital worlds and how those worlds are evolving cultures, changing lives, reshaping the way we think and communicate. If you want to understand where modern culture is headed and learn more about incredibly fascinating experiences taking place in virtual worlds, pick up and read this book now."
-Richard Garriott, a.k.a. Lord British, Creator of Ultima Online and Executive Producer, NCsoft
"These essays, by the best thinkers in their fields, will be read, debated, taught, and cited in court cases as we struggle to figure out how to live in a world which is part digital and part social, part real and part imaginary."
-Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
The State of Play presents an essential first step in understanding how new digital worlds will change the future of our universe. Millions of people around the world inhabit virtual words: multiplayer online games where characters live, love, buy, trade, cheat, steal, and have every possible kind of adventure. Far more complicated and sophisticated than early video games, people now spend countless hours in virtual universes like Second Life and Star Wars Galaxies not to shoot space invaders but to create new identities, fall in love, build cities, make rules, and break them.
As digital worlds become increasingly powerful and lifelike, people will employ them for countless real-world purposes, including commerce, education, medicine, law enforcement, and military training. Inevitably, real-world law will regulate them. But should virtual worlds be fully integrated into our real-world legal system or should they be treated as separate jurisdictions with their own forms of dispute resolution? What rules should govern virtual communities? Should the law step in to protect property rights when virtual items are destroyed or stolen?
These questions, and many more, are considered in The State of Play, where legal experts, game designers, and policymakers explore the boundaries of free speech, intellectual property, and creativity in virtual worlds. The essays explore both the emergence of law in multiplayer online games and how we can use virtual worlds to study real-world social interactions and test real-world laws.
Table of Contents
Part I: Introduction 1
1. Introduction 2
Jack M. Balkin and Beth Simone Noveck
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Amazon.com
Smart Citizens
Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” expresses an ideal that resonates in all democracies. Yet poll after poll reveals deep distrust of institutions that seem to have left “the people” out of the governing equation. Government bureaucracies that are supposed to solve critical problems on their own are a troublesome outgrowth of the professionalization of public life in the industrial age. They are especially ill-suited to confronting today’s complex challenges.
Offering a far-reaching program for innovation, Smart Citizens, Smarter State suggests that public decisionmaking could be more effective and legitimate if government were smarter―if our institutions knew how to use technology to leverage citizens’ expertise. Just as individuals use only part of their brainpower to solve most problems, governing institutions make far too little use of the skills and experience of those inside and outside of government with scientific credentials, practical skills, and ground-level street smarts. New tools―what Beth Simone Noveck calls technologies of expertise―are making it possible to match the supply of citizen expertise to the demand for it in government.
Drawing on a wide range of academic disciplines and practical examples from her work as an adviser to governments on institutional innovation, Noveck explores how to create more open and collaborative institutions. In so doing, she puts forward a profound new vision for participatory democracy rooted not in the paltry act of occasional voting or the serendipity of crowdsourcing but in people’s knowledge and know-how.
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Wiki Government
Collaborative democracy—government with the people—is a new vision of governance in the digital age. Wiki Government explains how to translate the vision into reality. Beth Simone Noveck draws on her experience in creating Peer-to-Patent, the federal government's first social networking initiative, to show how technology can connect the expertise of the many to the power of the few. In the process, she reveals what it takes to innovate in government.
Launched in 2007, Peer-to-Patent connects patent examiners to volunteer scientists and technologists via the web. These dedicated but overtaxed officials decide which of the million-plus patent applications currently in the pipeline to approve. Their decisions help determine which start-up pioneers a new industry and which disappears without a trace. Patent examiners have traditionally worked in secret, cut off from essential information and racing against the clock to rule on lengthy, technical claims. Peer-to-Patent broke this mold by creating online networks of self-selecting citizen experts and channeling their knowledge and enthusiasm into forms that patent examiners can easily use.
Peer-to-Patent shows how policymakers can improve decisionmaking by harnessing networks to public institutions. By encouraging, coordinating, and structuring citizen participation, technology can make government both more open and more effective at solving today's complex social and economic problems. Wiki Government describes how this model can be applied in a wide variety of settings and offers a fundamental rethinking of effective governance and democratic legitimacy for the twenty-first century.
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Open Government Initiative Since 2017
WASHINGTON – Wondering who is visiting the White House? The web-based search has gone dark. Curious about climate change? Some government sites have been softened or taken down. Worried about racial discrimination in housing? Laws have been introduced to bar federal mapping of such disparities. Federal rules protecting whistleblowers? At least one has been put on hold.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has made a series of moves that have alarmed groups with a stake in public access to information – historians, librarians, journalists, climate scientists, internet activists, to name a few. Some are so concerned they have thrown themselves into “data rescue” sessions nationwide, where they spend their weekends downloading and archiving federal databases they fear could soon be taken down or obscured.
Smart Citizens, Smarter State
J.P. O'Malley
New Internationalist. .488 (Dec. 2015): p40.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 New Internationalist
http://www.newint.org
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Smart Citizens, Smarter State
by Beth Simone Noveck (Harvard University Press ISBN 9780674286054)
Over the past decade an explosion of data has revolutionized the world in ways that were previously unimaginable. In Smarter Citizens, Smarter State, Beth Simone Noveck argues that, by using technology to their advantage, citizens around the globe can now participate in the democratic process with far more authority and intellectual clout than they used to.
Traditionally, democratic accountability involved just casting a ballot once every four years, and then trusting government in the process of decision making. Noveck believes that technology has now bequeathed to us a noble civic duty to contribute to democracy on an ongoing basis: using our skills to enhance transparency and openness of government.
Some readers may be turned off <
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Smarter Citizens, Smarter State is <>
*** JPO hup.harvard.edu
STAR RATING
***** EXCELLENT **** VERY GOOD *** GOOD ** FAIR * POOR
From public deliberation to public collaboration
Shayne C. Kavanagh
Government Finance Review. 26.4 (Aug. 2010): p82.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Government Finance Officers Association
http://www.gfoa.org
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WikiGovernment: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful By Beth Simone Noveck Brookings Institution Press 2009, 224 pages, $28.95
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WikiGovernment draws on the author's close involvement n Peer-to-Patent, a program in collaboration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, to reach conclusions about how technology can lead to better collaboration between citizens and their government. The patent office was experiencing such a tremendous backlog of work that applicants could expect to wait years for their applications to be processed. Further, the quality of the reviews was suspect--in one publicized case, a 5-year old boy and his attorney father patented a method for swinging on a swing that involved a method "in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side-to-side motion by pulling alternately on one chain anal then the other." (The patent was revoked after much public ridicule.)
In response to this state of affairs, a proposal was made to pilot a peer review system for patent applications. Interested parties could apply to help review a patent by gathering background information on previous related work (which is essential in determining if the application represents a significant innovation), evaluating and annotating this background information, and discussing the application itself. Convening a community of experts was intended to improve the timeliness and quality of information available to the patent officer. The program attracted 2,300 volunteers, who worked on 84 applications. Evaluation of the pilot program showed that patent officers were twice as likely to use Peer-to-Patent submissions to support their decisions, compared to information submitted by the applicant. A post-project survey showed that the patent officers were also generally supportive and positive about the results of the program.
MOVING TOWARD COLLABORATIVE DEMOCRACY
The essential thesis that underlies this book (and the Peer-to-Patent project) is that public participation in government has traditionally been limited to deliberation, but Web 2.0 technology has created significant opportunities for collaboration. Deliberative democracy encourages groups of diverse constituents to come together and have a civil discourse about the issues facing the community in order to put forth a representative public opinion of what government should or should not do (often in response to the finished work product of a professional staff of consultants). This public opinion might be used to modify the existing work product, or perhaps inform the approach that professional staff or consultants will take in developing the work product. Hence, deliberative democracy places citizens directly in the role of discussant, with only an indirect role in decision making.
Collaborative democracy is about using Web 2.0 to bring together ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Exhibit 1 describes the essential differences between collaborative and deliberative modes of public participation.
New social and visual technologies are demonstrating that people can be effective at solving difficult problems when given the opportunity to come together as part of a network. The traditional assumption in government has been that only professional staff or officials have the expertise to solve public problems.
WikiGovernment challenges that assumption, using the Peer-to-Patent experience as well as examples from successful private social networks and Web 2.0-enabled collaborative phenomena. From this research, Noveck distills ten lessons for moving toward collaborative democracy:
1. Ask the Right Questions. The more specific the question, the more relevant the responses. Overly broad questions lead to irrelevant and unmanageable feedback.
2. Ask the Right People. Use self-selection to allow expertise to find the problem.
3. Design the Process for the Desired Ends. Define the goal of the process upfront, and design the collaborative process to achieve that end.
4. Design for Groups, not Individuals. Divide the work into smaller chunks, which can be distributed to members of a team. Group work allows participants to participate in short bursts of time and produces good results.
5. Use the Computer Screen to Show the Group to Itself. If participants feel they are part of a group or movement, working across a distance will be more effective.
6. Divide the Work into Roles and Tasks. Define the specific tasks that must be completed as part of each assignment. Use visualizations to define available roles in the collaboration so participants can choose their roles (e.g., contributor, reviewer, coordinator, etc.).
7. Harness the Power of Reputation. Allow group members to rate the effectiveness of their colleagues. Attention to reputation is essential to encouraging quality submissions.
8. Make Policies, not Web Sites. Look for opportunities to redesign processes that are internal to the government in response to opportunities created by collaboration.
9. Pilot New Ideas. Use pilot programs, competitions, and prizes to generate innovation.
10. Focus on Outcomes, not Inputs. Pursue explicit performance goals and metrics.
CONCLUSIONS
<
SHAYNE C. KAVANAGH is senior manager of research for the GFOA's Research and Consulting Center in Chicago, Illinois. He can be reached at skavanagh@gfoa.org.
Exhibit I: Collaborative versus Deliberative
Modes of Public Participation
Deliberative Democracy versus Collaborative Democrat
Connects diverse viewpoints Brings diverse skills to
to public policy. public policy
Quality measured by Focused on the effectiveness
procedural uniformity and of decision making and outputs
equality of inputs
Requires an agenda Requires breaking down a
for orderly discussion problem into pieces that can
be parceled out to members
of the public and officials
Debates problem before Occurs throughout the
action or discusses decision-making process
solution after it has been
reached
Seeks consensus as a A means to an end--doesn't
desirable end unto itself emphasize participation
for its own sake
Kavanagh, Shayne C.
Noveck, Beth Simone. Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful
Jim Hahn
Library Journal. 134.11 (June 15, 2009): p85.
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Noveck (director, Inst. for Information Law & Policy; New York Law Sch.) reports on the unexpected success of a pilot initiative to develop a type of Web 2.0 collaborative model for the patent review process, easing the monumental work of patent examiners with the peer-to-patent initiative. Noveck initially proposed this peer-to-patent initiative in a blog post and subsequently refined it into a platform for e-government with authentic citizen participation. Here she presents what she considers the best practices for online community experts contributing to the evaluation of patent claims, together with examples that show the importance of interfaces that foster group work. She also points to probable governmental applications, like substantive commenting on regulatory issues for the environment or education. VERDICT Noveck's approach to e-governance is to study where citizen online collaboration can have an impact, and she shows that one can design for participatory democracy with compelling results. <
Hahn, Jim
Noveck, Beth Simone. Smart citizens, smarter state: the technologies of expertise and the future of governing
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Regardless of the functions carried out by government, policy making underpins virtually any activity pursued by government. Within a policy environment that is increasingly influenced by the growing networking capabilities of the new information communication technologies, the subsequent delivery of government services can be enhanced in terms of both effectiveness and legitimacy. <
Noveck, Beth Simone. Wiki government: how technology can make government better, democracy stronger, and citizens more powerful
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Noveck, Beth Simone. Wiki government: how technology can make government better, democracy stronger, and citizens more powerful. Brookings, 2009. 224p index afp ISBN 9780815702757, $28.95
Taking a very different approach from the "y'all come" school of strong democracy, Noveck (New York Law School) argues that a self-selected set of citizens can improve the policy process by sharing their experience and expertise. The argument builds on a case study pilot of peer-patent for enhancing the patent process, and investigates what could be done through collaboration in other realms of government. Will technology and its variants are seen as tools for going beyond traditional government reliance on recognized experts to include a more diverse and geographically broad group of participants. Unlike voting and polling as tools for civic involvement, the model emphasizes regularized opportunities for input, structured tools for engagement, and the selection of final contributions to a task based on the participant's judgments of utility. <
The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds
Harvard Law Review. 120.6 (Apr. 2007): p1736.
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THE STATE OF PLAY: LAW, GAMES, AND VIRTUAL WORLDS. Edited by Jack M. Balkin and Beth Simone Noveck. New York: New York University Press. 2006. Pp. viii, 304. $24.00. Virtual worlds are increasingly real. Millions of people participate in multiplayer online role-playing games, inhabiting these simulated environments not to escape but to experience the complexities of organized society. In a provocative collection of essays, Professors Jack Balkin and Beth Noveck enlist an impressive roster of scholars and designers to explore the legal questions raised by the proliferation of virtual worlds. What is the balance of rights between game players and game owners? When should the state regulate the virtual-world industry? What is the nature of property in virtual worlds, and is it possible for virtual-world inhabitants to violate real-world duties? What privacy rights does a person relinquish upon entering a virtual world? Moreover, what can virtual worlds teach us about how real-world societies ought to be structured? Novices will find these essays to be an accessible introduction to virtual worlds; <
By Democratic Audit UK 12/06/2016
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Book Review: Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing by Beth Simone Noveck
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How can we increase public participation in governance? In Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and The Future of Governing, Beth Simone Noveckargues that institutions should develop new technologies of expertise in order to better utilise the skills and experiences of citizens. Zeynep Engin strongly recommends this book for those looking to understand how technological developments can enable governance to become more participatory as part of the new trends in public decision-making.
Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and The Future of Governing. Beth Simone Noveck. Harvard University Press. 2015.
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Smarter Citizens Smarter StateWhen Beth Simone Noveck recently visited London to launch her book, Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing, at a series of events, it was not a big surprise to see huge crowds and top-level interest from academics, civil servants and politicians. The former leader of President Obama’s Open Government Initiative, the current Commissioner for the Global Commission on Internet Governance for the UK and the co-founder and director of The Governance Lab (NYU and MIT Media Lab), Noveck insightfully takes advantage of her unique global position to introduce a comprehensive picture of how governments make policies today. The book provides historical context to describe the ‘rise of the professional government’ and the ‘limits of democratic theory’, followed by the current developments of, and new horizons for, governance in the twenty-first century.
As a researcher with a keen interest in linking machine learning and statistics tools to social science and public policy, it was an enhancing experience for me to read about how ‘governance’ was changed in parallel to the standardisation of measures as the new tools for controlling social conditions and the rise of professional training in universities after the mid-nineteenth century. Noveck describes how these developments shaped the modern design of political institutions and public decision-making, which ultimately made ‘professionalism key to the legitimacy of government actions and public participation the exception rather than the rule’.
Smart Citizens, Smarter State is mainly devoted to challenging contemporary political theories by focusing on new procedures and tools to attract and involve citizen participation in everyday governance. Going beyond the existing practices that are ‘deeply distrustful of citizens and their abilities’ in formal decision-making processes, Noveck convincingly argues that the future will have to be very different. The culture of decision-making that is ‘top-down in orientation, unnecessarily complex, and lacks the mindset or skillset for experimentation’ will eventually have to adapt to, if not be fully replaced by, bottom-up mechanisms in ways that the commercial sector is very much taking advantage of today.
Credit: floeschie, CC BY 2.0
Credit: floeschie, CC BY 2.0
At the time of writing, an online petition to ‘make it illegal for a company to require women to wear high heels at work’ had already gone beyond the 100,000 signature threshold in just two days after a woman was sent home for refusing to wear high heels in her workplace. The UK Parliament will now consider the issue for a debate. More obvious examples in recent years have also emerged from the Occupy movement and the ‘Twitter-fueled Arab Spring movement’ in multiple nation states, clearly demonstrating the power of new technologies that allow public voices to be heard behind the closed doors of policymakers beyond the occasional act of voting every four/five years. With reference to these current trends, I believe the following lines from Noveck best describe the new key challenge at this stage:
Occupy noticeably lacked managerial control of the kind that political parties, unions, bureaucracies and companies have depended on. To the surprise of most, these protest movements were nevertheless effective at capturing the public imagination […] But after the spring comes the fall. Technologies like Twitter and Facebook were well suited to complaining about government, expressing moral outrage, sharing information, and coordinating protests, both physical and virtual. They did not and do not provide the infrastructure for governing itself […] Social media activists have made effective use of technology to marshal supporters but have yet to learn how to convert that energy from challenging power into changing it.
Noveck promotes experimentalism as a response to what she calls ‘our design challenge’ of finding new forms of citizen engagement in government policy-making. ‘The availability of new tools (technologies of expertise) are making it possible to match the supply of citizen expertise to the demand for it in the government’, she writes, providing a comprehensive reasoning as to why this may require a complete rewriting of the legislative framework that regulates existing processes. She points out that beyond traditional credentials (for example, university degrees and membership of professional bodies), we now have the opportunity to describe expertise in other formats (lived experience, specific skills, location, etc) that may be more useful for many contemporary problems. What we need at this point is the scientific method to enable transition ‘from faith-based decision making to evidence-based decision making’.
The key terms that I believe best describe the spirit of the book emerge as ‘targeted expertise’, ‘crowdsourcing’, ‘experimental governance’ and ‘citizen engagement’. Instead of the traditional advisory committee model that mainly relies on stakeholder representation (missing the epistemic value of committee membership) and typically produces a report or a set of recommendations over months or even years, Noveck suggests that new technologies should allow us ‘to make consultation on a day-to-day basis and to strive for constant conversation with an engaged and knowledgeable public’. Going beyond ‘crowdsourcing widely to crowdsourcing wisely’ <
Noveck cites a huge body of literature, encompassing a broad range of resources from key research publications to government documents, and links to websites that could significantly help anyone planning to enter into this field. She also provides a rich overview of the existing online expert networking platforms in various sectors, such as HeyPress, GradBerry,CyberCompEx, VIVO, EgoSystem, Health Tap and GitHub, and insights into the working principles of larger companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay and Amazon, giving a strong base for how an expert networking strategy might be developed to increase government efficiency. In the chapter ‘Experimenting with Smarter Governance’, she explains the development of Project Aristotle of the US Air Force Lab, the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team (or ‘The Nudge Unit’) advising the government on the use of randomised controlled trials (RCT), The Tobin Project, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Experts.gov andHarvard Catalyst Profiles. Through this, she reaches a framework identifying the key important questions that empirical experiments can provide answers to and formulating potential research agendas along those lines. Readers are also provided with a representative collection of recent applications to illustrate the crowdsourcing of ideas, opinions, funds, tasks and data-gathering processes in the policy context.
In the chapter ‘Bringing Smarter Governance to Life’, Noveck starts with the background of the ‘Brain Trust’ as a diverse group of creative thinkers that counselled President Roosevelt when developing a response to the Great Depression, focusing on its more important role ‘to debate, develop, solicit and refine policy’. She then describes how an ultimate twenty-first century ‘Brain Trust’ could be developed through more efficient use of technology ‘to unlock three kinds of knowledge: expertise within government, credential expertise outside of government, nontraditional forms of distributed know-how’, leading to a more democratic system for citizen-government engagement. Noveck adds that:
the recognition of citizen expertise does not mean jettisoning the professionals and substituting some kind of web-based plebiscite – far from it. Making good use of citizen expertise will require even better trained managers and leaders. This new breed of professional – if we can call it that with a wink and a nod – will need to know how to work and talk and decide with citizens rather than for them…
I strongly recommend Smart Citizens, Smarter State to the new generation of scientists emerging at the interface of computing and public policy. Those with technology and ‘hard’ sciences backgrounds would hugely benefit from a comprehensive understanding of government and policy domains in order to set new research agendas with significant potential for wider impact. At the other end of the spectrum, those with politics and social science backgrounds would find it very helpful for understanding the current technologies of expertise and the new trends in public decision-making, offering great promise for transforming the ways that governments should operate under the ongoing data revolution.
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Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Democratic Audit blog, or of the London School of Economics. It originally appeared on the LSE Review of Books. Please read our comments policy before posting.
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Zeynep Engin is the Founder and Lead Investigator of Data for Policy, an independent initiative to promote interdisciplinary and cross-sector discussion for more efficient use of data in policy-making processes. The inaugural conference was held at the University of Cambridge in 2015, and the initiative receives further support from many prominent institutions, including the European Commission, London School of Economics, Imperial College, Office for National Statistics, Royal Statistical Society and other key stakeholders. Zeynep is also a Policy Fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy, University of Cambridge, and affiliated with the Department of Computer Science at University College London as an Honorary Senior Research Associate. She holds a PhD in statistical pattern detection from Imperial College London.
Beth Noveck's Wiki Government (Book Review)
Federal deputy CTO writes on how government can use social networking to collaborate more with citizens.
BY TOD NEWCOMBE, EDITOR / JUNE 8, 2009
Beth Noveck, Wiki Government book cover/Image courtesy of Brookings Institution Press Beth Noveck, Wiki Government book cover IMAGE COURTESY OF BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS
Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful
By Beth Simone Noveck
Published by Brookings Institution Press, 2009
224 pages; $28.95
Review by Tod Newcombe
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is a government bureaucracy awash in paperwork and slowly strangling on limited resources. With a backlog of nearly 1 million patent applications awaiting review for approval, one of the very cornerstones of American democracy and capitalism has been in danger of collapsing.
Part of the problem was the lack of experts who could evaluate the flood of incoming applications. To help USPTO solve its problem, law professor Beth Simone Noveck turned to the rapidly emerging world of Internet-based social networking to transform the process and let anyone with Internet access collaborate with the agency in reviewing applications. The result was the Peer-to-Patent program, which, in 2007, put together a far-flung team of technologists, lawyers and policy-makers who opened a tradition-bound agency's doors using technology that distilled online collaboration into useful expertise that has sped up the review process.
Noveck has taken that experience as a launching pad for leading President Barack Obama's Open Government Directive. As the president's deputy chief technology officer for Open Government, Noveck has the formidable task of leading the drive for more transparency, participation and collaboration within the federal government. Her new book, Wiki Government, is Noveck's vision for turning that mandate into action.
The book's central theme is that we need to rethink democracy in the digital age. Using technology, Noveck says collaborative democracy can strengthen public decision-making by connecting the power of the many to the work of the few. "The private sector has learned that better decision making requires looking beyond institutionalized centers of expertise," said Noveck. Now it's time for government to do the same. "The future of public institutions demands that we create a collaborative ecosystem with numerous opportunities for those with expertise to engage."
Technology is the key that can allow smart people to share their knowledge and expertise with the government institutions that need it to solve today's complex problems. But as we all know, the Internet can be an amplifier, bringing on mass participation that can overwhelm the lofty goals of participatory democracy.
Noveck's solution is to design a governance process that sets up an egalitarian, self-selecting mechanism for gathering and evaluating information and transforming raw data into useful knowledge. Much of Wiki Government tells of how the Peer-to-Patent project worked, creating online networks of self-selecting citizen experts and channeling their knowledge and enthusiasm into forms that patent examiners can easily use.
The book details the design challenges the Peer-to-Patent team faced in creating software that could manage online participation and it explains how law, policy and technology can be revamped to help government work in more open and participatory ways in a wide range of policy areas, including education and environment.
Like so much else about the young administration in the White House, it's too early to tell whether Noveck's vision of a collaborative, wiki-based government is taking hold. New Web sites, such as Recovery.gov and Data.gov, offer some tantalizing glimpses at what may be coming, but little else.
But as Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google Inc., explained, Wiki Government translates the lessons of the Internet for public policy-makers, providing the know-how for political institutions to engage the public in solving complex problems and creating a better democracy.
You can't ask for a book to do more than that.
Considering the Intersection of Legal Rules and Virtual Spaces:
A Review of The Essay Collection "The State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds"
By CECILY MAK
----
Monday, Feb. 12, 2007
Jack M. Balkin and Beth Simone Noveck, ed. The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds (NYU Press 2006)
For both those readers curious about, and those completely immersed in, the "new" virtual worlds, the recently-published essay collection The State of Play will not disappoint.
The collection's essays take on a truly mesmerizing topic: how emerging digital worlds are influencing, and being influenced by, our non-virtual lives. <
As a whole, the collection will enlighten readers as to what the future holds from a technology perspective, and the legal issues we'll face getting there. The collection leaves the reader full of new insights, yet inspired to learn more. Legal professionals, in particular, will benefit from the direct style of the writing and argument, and the challenges posed in each piece.
In short, this collection is a must read for those with a stake in the future of virtual worlds or serious gaming - or simply a keen interest in the topic.
Game Gods and Game Players
In this review, I'll separately assess the four subtopics into which The State of Play is divided. The longest and most dense section of the book, "Game Gods and Game Players" contains four essays that generally address the rights relating to game play, and how law will help shape those rights.
A consistent theme among the authors contributing to this section is that those who inhabit virtual worlds should not take their right to play for granted. For example, Edward Catronova in "The Right to Play" argues that the right to play is a right of all humans and is one that should be preserved.
Catronova argues that while gamers may be enjoying their newfound freedoms and abilities to perform basic human tasks in their avatar forms, such "real life activities" could actually dominate and threaten what makes virtual worlds so precious to their inhabitants. He is not alone in calling upon the law to define play spaces as separate from our other activities on Earth.
Property and Creativity in Virtual Worlds
The second collection of essays focuses on questions of property rights, politics in virtual worlds (and in the worlds that create them) and how to protect gamers' creations. Should laws from our "real" lives influence, or even be enforced in, virtual worlds? As people invest more resources into their virtual lives, should our legal regulations follow them in, in order to protect all that they become, create, and accumulate on the other side?
While the idea of applying real-world law to virtual space may seem far-fetched, some of its particular applications raise important questions: For example, can a EULA or click-through Terms of Use Agreement justly allocate all ownership of creative works made by players in a virtual world to the game's administrator - despite that face that players are not being paid in the sense that workers under a "work made for hire" agreement would be? Can a musical works' rights owner collect royalties on "performances" of its copyright content that occur only before a few hundred avatars in Second Life?
In the essays in this section, these questions are not answered, but rather explored in a manner that leads to even more questions - and greater intellectual and legal challenges.
Privacy and Identity in Virtual Worlds
A similarly charged topic is that of the blurred lines between real life and fantasy in a simulated world. For many gamers, the allure of a virtual life is the ability to recreate oneself: to be more attractive, wealthier, smarter, more intriguing. For others, it might be to diminish these qualities, so that one is known purely for one's intellect or ideas. Either way, we remain human, and such unclear lines can result in human pain - a pain that is quite real for those who experience it, even though it is born out of a non-reality.
In "Who Killed Miss Norway?" Tracy Spaight explores a haunting example of such attachment. Miss Norway was a clever gamer on the game LegendMUD. She formed a successful business and led a group of traders that evolved to be known as a strong and respected guild. When Miss Norway simply disappeared (logged off for the last time), it was rumored that, in the real world, she'd died in a car accident - which led to a genuine memorial on LegendMUD that collected heartfelt remembrances. (Meanwhile, her guild gradually crumbled without her leadership.) The author's research, however, suggests that there may have not been any real-world death -merely a simple way for Miss Norway to cleanly exit her (or his) virtual community.
In a world where online gaming and virtual communities are only getting more sophisticated and appealing, these essays highlight the risks we all take if we do develop close ties to our virtual-life counterparts. If part of the appeal of embarking on a virtual life is the ability to create and protect your own virtual identity, the authors remind us that we must proceed with caution: The person a user falls in love with within the game, for example, could be an entirely different being outside it.
Virtual Worlds and Real-World Power
Finally, the collection concludes with several pieces on the extent to which our worldly legal rules reach - or should reach -- into a virtual reality. Questions posed include: Can we use virtual worlds as testing grounds for innovative approaches to our current legal framework? Can we (as gamers in a virtual world, or in our real lives) reasonably be expected to recognize and abide by rules defined by a particular space?
For example, David R. Johnson, in "The New Virtual Literacy: How the Screen Affects the Law," concludes that the new virtual worlds present us with an opportunity to view our on and offline organizations and communities in a new and enlightening way. Urging that such experiences can offer an opportunity to grow, Johnson argues that all involved should have a sense of their duty to make the most of this unforeseen opportunity. In contrast to several pieces that address the shaping of applicable law for virtual worlds, Johnson suggests, conversely, that we use virtual worlds to help shape and test real-world laws.
<
Author's Note: Contributors to State of Play include: Jack M. Balkin, Richard A. Bartle, Yochai Benkler, Caroline Bradley, Edward Castronova, Susan P. Crawford, Julian Dibbell, A. Michael Froomkin, James Grimmelmann, David R. Johnson, Dan Hunter, Raph Koster, F. Gregory Lastowka, Beth Simone Noveck, Cory Ondrejka, Tracy Spaight, and Tal Zarsky.