yourowndemocracy is a concept project that proposes a real-time voter sentiment feedback-loop platform merging social networking, direct political engagement, and the design of electronic market exchanges to create a modern online platform for participatory democracy.
2008 Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge Submission
Original GONGBLOG post about YOD with comments
Lunch at Marfa Table, Marfa, TX
Willow loitering on my white chair
A gift of a tin Fiat Cinquecento from my Facebook friend, Italy-based designer Derek Stewart
Cousins Lulu Clementine and Willow Lin in Marfa, TX
Small Press Exhibit at the Marfa Bookstore in Marfa, TX
Little Bear Show on iPod Nano flying back from Orlando
Stuffed giraffe and Barbie doll at home. Photo by Willow
Sister-in-law Shirley and Lulu at Judd Compound, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX
Train Park, Santa Fe
Mar 4, 2010 at 10:39PM Post a Comment "You should never ignore the fact that fools and idiots can still get things right, once in a while, and most of the public are neither fools nor idiots."
-Commenter RichardC on this
Feb 12, 2010 at 10:31PM Comments Off “There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is imitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.”
Confucius
Jan 23, 2010 at 09:57PM 3 Comments According to Bruce Nussbaum, yes.
The Supreme Court Votes Against Innovation
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on January 22
The 5 to 4 vote by the Supreme Court to allow corporations and unions to use their general funds to directly support political candidates is really a vote against innovation and economic growth. It is a vote for Old Technology Against New Technology, the Big against the Small, the Established against the Entrepreneurial, the Well-Connected against the Insurgent. Big corporations,in particular, will now have the means to game the legislative as well as regulatory systems in their favor. They will be able to focus the flows of tax-payer money to their industries and have the government subsidize their companies.
The US government has already become a pay-to-play pit of corruption. The only difference between what happens in Washington and every state capital and what happens in Asia or the Middle East is that America has legalized corruption in the form of lobbying while other countries have not. The Supreme Court decision will only make this corruption worse.
If you’re sitting in Silicon Valley thinking of new businesses that will challenge the status quo, this Supreme Court vote is a vote against you.
My response:
well, it depends on whether or not you think corporations being allowed to air political ads without restriction is bad. which is what the ruling is about. (not about unrestricted campaign contributions). the SCOTUS ruling is really just about messaging (and timing thereof). this is only a problem if you think americans actually listen to political ads. (that may or may not have been a rhetorical statement). :)
i do, however, think this has profound implications for those in the creative fields who get hired to develop these messages. once upon a time design and innovation was safe in its little apolitical bubble. propaganda for consumption and profit's sake.
not any more. pop!
bruce, i do think this will have an affect on the architecture of the political process, and not for the better. if you disliked attack ads, then we're in for a new era of influence peddling dynamics, but this time the dollars are spent on not only politicians but on the electorate itself.
however, i really am earnestly trying to buy your argument that this is bad for "innovation" per se. i don't see it. this ruling allows anyone, traditional or insurgent, to attempt to influence the open electorate's vote, SCOTUS pulled any gates there might have existed, forever down.
again, the thing you might want to think about further, since you traffic in the design and innovation worlds, is how corporate political messaging....will get innovated. and it will. my nightmare is that the creative professions are going to bite on this like any lucrative client engagement (ie, like flies on shit, especially with the recession) without batting an eyelash at the political, ergo societal, ramifications of their "creatively innovative" work.
kinda like giving a gun to a baby, if you ask me.
Jan 13, 2010 at 10:58PM 1 Comment 
Still taken from 6-hour series, "China: A Century of Revolution: Part One 1911-1949" (1989, Ambrica Productions). A must see, amazing historical footage...wow.
Jan 11, 2010 at 08:39PM Post a Comment 
I had the privilege of being interviewed by Ryan McGovern on his live Mashable chat show DesignChat. In this hour-long installment, we covered various rangy topics including my zigzaggy design background, recent experience working for a trading firm and hedge fund, what I'm up to now designing online platforms that attempt to make American democracy more robust, why I like the intersection of design and politics, the problems of rational ignorance in the American electorate, using MRI brain scans to to understand the way people process political information, the profound role of Twitter in my life, what design at mid-career means to me, why open government data is a mixed blessing and how data visualization is only one part of the solution, what unemployed designers ought to be thinking about and doing and why, and whether or not I plan on getting one of the new mythical Apple iTablets....among other things.
Aside from seriously flubbing a few audience questions (sorry, @kaleemux) and not-so-trivially mixing up "Billions" and "Trillions" (eg, real economy GDP vs metaeconomy aggregate value; I had a little brain short circuit bouncing from video window to chat window, ack), it was great fun to be a part of this meandering conversation. Props to Ryan for really trying to make this live video chat work as a legitimate interactive interview format - it really does have its obvious power and benefits. Thanks to the twenty or so folks who tuned in, and definitely follow @DesignChat on Twitter for future show updates.
Thanks for the generous invitation, Ryan. Click here for the 70 minute streaming segment on Mevio.
Dec 16, 2009 at 10:09PM 2 Comments Dec 10, 2009 at 10:35AM 1 Comment
Updated on Feb 3, 2010 at 07:54AM by
Gong Szeto
A few months ago, my family and I visited Houston (where I grew up) to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday. My brother Nam's family and mine went to visit the Houston Children's Museum one afternoon, and I was delighted to discover their new Kidtropolis exhibit, which is an incredibly elaborate and detailed microcosm of that brilliantly expresses the interplay between public and private, between democracy and capitalism in the United States.
Dec 6, 2009 at 03:34PM Post a Comment "The magnitude and cause of global climate change are uncertain. We shouldn’t adopt expensive countermeasures until we have certainty. In other spheres of life — picking a spouse, educating our children, buying life insurance and stocks, avoiding cancer and so on — we admit that certainty is unattainable, and that we must decide as best we can on the basis of available evidence. Why should the impossible quest for certainty paralyze us solely about acting on climate change? As Mr. Holdren, the White House adviser, expressed it, not acting on climate change would be like being “in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog.""
– Jared Diamond in “Will Big Business Save the Earth?”
Oct 5, 2009 at 03:04PM 1 Comment 
I'll be speaking at the TEDxTamaya on November 22. Topic will most likely be on how confused we are as a democratic and capitalist society and things we might do to sort it all out. Thanks to Alisa Gilbert for the invitation. Looking forward to meeting the many esteemed speakers, especially the hyper-prolific Adarsh Pallian.
From November 11-14, I will also be attending the AIGA/Winterhouse Aspen Design Summit, a "select group of 60 designers, change leaders, NGOs, foundations and experts coming together to engage actively in opportunities to demonstrate design thinking in crafting solutions for large social problems, as well as to use existing networks and programs to accelerate change." Thanks to Bill Drenttel for the invitation and I'm very much looking forward to working with these outstanding summit participants.
(And somebody tell Marc Alt that it's way too cold to ride a motorcycle in Aspen in November. We'll go snowmobiling instead, dude!)
Gong Szeto
1) Followup report on the Mayo Clinic working group's outcome on ChangeObserver; 2) I was not able to speak at TEDx unfortunately, due to having to rush back home to Santa Fe from Tamaya to see if Willow was ok after banging her head against the edge of a door. She was fine, thank goodness. 3) Aspen teammate Helen Walters from BusinessWeek writes about her experience
Sep 18, 2009 at 08:06PM 4 Comments 
Just returned from a great Cusp Conference '09. My talk "Is Democracy a Design Problem?" is on Slideshare. Thanks to SamataMason for putting on a terrific and thought-provoking 2 days. I will blog a bit more on this topic soon, as I need to catch up on some sleep. Meanwhile, for those who asked that I post my slides online, here you go. Thanks for all the conversations about this very challenging topic. If Cusp posts a video of my talk in the near future, I'll post it here as well. Nice shoutout from @VisualizeChange. :)
Gong Szeto
I received this awesome email yesterday:
Steve Mack <smack@acm.org> (Unregistered) commented on Is Democracy a Design Problem?:
Gong, I was at Cusp 2009 and really enjoyed your presentation. Is there any way you can get the audio from Greg and synch it with the slides, to recreate the full presentation? I would love to share it with my son and the teacher of his 11th grade AP Government & Politics class. It was a really succinct distillation of a number of intersecting ideas.
To have this shown in a high school AP Government & Politics class? Man, that's flattering! Dave Mason generously said he'd create a slideshow with my Cusp09 audio track - I'll post it here when I get it. Thanks Steve!