There are also a number of "softer" stories about computer systems that newspapers ought to run more often, spotlighting issues of public access to the information we've all paid so much for government to collect.
Many revenue-starved governments are looking at ways to make money. The possibility of selling of tapes of property tax records, or
It's worth investigating as we network more and more to see what it means for streamlining government and improving public access. Politicians are increasingly seeing the Internet and other online capabilities as a great way to reach out and tell their side of things. That's worth following up. There are issues of children's access to the sometimes raw discussion channels and chat lines of adults in online services and bulletin boards. There are concerns about child molesters and pornographers using the lines to recruit new victims and trade their materials with each other. There have been occasional scandals afflicting some of the national on-line services in this regard in the past three or four years.
Computers are changing the way we relate to each other, through e-mail, on-line chat services, and more. George Gilder, among others, has written interestingly about the changes being wrought.
E-mail, for instance, causes people to communicate in different ways (more candid, sometimes painfully, or rudely so) than we do in person.
Can it?