 Post
the Finances is not alone in
its innovative approach to increasing citizen
oversight of our government. The
Open Government Information Awareness at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media
Lab has similar aims. Its goal is to empower
citizens by providing a comprehensive, easy-to-use
database of information on individuals, organizations,
and corporations related to the U.S. government.
Everything you can know about the activities
of our government, from political campaign contributions
to defense contracts, will be available at this
site.
Christopher
P. Csikszentmihlyi, Assistant Professor of Media
Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab has already
expressed an interest in working with Post
the Finances to achieve our
mutual goals. e-mail address. csik@media.mit.edu
Web site: http://www.media.mit.edu/~csik
Great
minds think alike!
It is like
follow the leader. Though Mozena
may not be as sophisticated about garnering
publicity from the monolithic media, he nevertheless
has been relentless in seeking to inform the
public of his idea. His web site is one of the
results of his work. The appearance of the MIT
project is interesting because more than three
years ago, Mozena contacted
professors at 25 of the most heavily enrolled
colleges in the nation about the "Post
the Finances" project, as well
as professors from many of the Ivy League schools.
The idea was to plant a seed throughout the
academic community, so it could germinate.
A number of
professors responded, and a discourse ensued.
Now, with M.I.T.'s
exciting project, we may be seeing the results
of the groundwork Mozena laid.
Since the U.S.
government is rapidly increasing its knowledge
of the private lives of citizens, both Post
the Finances and the Open Government Information
Awareness are timely contributions to citizen
empowerment and a defense against government
abuse and even tyranny.
It is high
time citizens banded together, using the unlimited
resources offered by the Internet, to affirm
in a 21st century context Lincoln's ringing
declaration that the United States is a government
"of the people, by the people, and for the people."
See Wired
magazine's article on MIT's
Open Government Information Awareness project.
For more on
Mozena's activities in information
technlogy, see the Web site of the ETEXT.net
Electronic College Textbook Publishing,
of which he is chairman. He pioneered the company
back in 1994, which put it on the cutting edge
of college electronic textbooks internationally.
About 7 years ago, the print and online Wired
magazine published a feature about Mozena's
company.
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