As Egyptians head to the polls for a historic constitutional vote, the world watches and waits to understand just how structural long-term changes to the country’s governance system will be. While mainstream media stories focus on admittedly appealing narratives of technology-enabled change, numerous groups and institutions continue to work outside the spotlight to build a new political structure.

Reboot’s focus is on understanding rapidly changing mechanisms of social interaction, and leveraging them for better societies. As practitioners at the intersection of governance, technology, and social science, we help our clients build effective programs and identify optimal investments that will lead to a better future. Developments in MENA in recent weeks provide many examples of the type of systemic change that is possible. Likewise, these events will prove instructive on the larger patterns of social change we are all observing.

How are new communication technologies redefining the form and function of governance? How should these tools mature to more effectively enhance service delivery, improve the outputs of policymaking, and expand access to the political process?

We were privileged to host an event on Monday to discuss these topics and, as it turned out, quite a bit more. We hosted this event in recognition that ‘open-government’ and ‘Gov 2.0’ have yet to reach their full potential in practical government applications. Our expert panel and highly engaged audience sought to articulate why this was and what we can do to realize the new opportunities ahead of us in the field of governance. From the nature of participatory government to issues of digital divide and access to education, they proposed ideas on how we can evolve a governance system that isn’t just different, but better.

The nature of citizen-government interaction is changing. Rhetorically familiar terms like Gov 2.0 and participatory democracy have emerged to describe this shift. Yet for all the exciting developments, from projects like SeeClickFix to OpenStreetMaps, we have yet to formalize an approach for institutions looking to leverage social media in the design and function of government bureaucracies. A critical next step in ‘social media for social change’ will be the maturation of these tools and their expanded, formalized use in political engagement and the delivery of critical services.

“Citizen 2.0: Social Media and the Future of Participatory Government” is thus a conversation not of what’s and why’s, but of when’s and how’s. Hosted by Reboot, this timely session will discuss how to bake the capacities of social media deeply inside government service delivery and policymaking here in the United States and abroad.

Personal Democracy Forum hosted a highly thoughtful conversation at NYU last night. As is their wont, they convened some very bright but divergent minds to discuss Wikileaks and what recent developments in online and offline advocacy suggest about the future of internet freedom.

As it turned out, Wikileaks was only the nominal topic of conversation. Discussion quickly progressed beyond spoiled-on-arrival narratives of press freedom and Julian Assange’s liberty. The conversation was as much about internet rights as it was about the fundamental social contract between citizen and state. If you care about the future, this is the conversation to be having right now.

What does the future of society look like? It’s an audacious question, and one apt to stop many of you from reading further. Yet despite the derision it may welcome, let us remember that productive consideration of this question has brought us many of our most enshrined ideas, from thinkers such as Confucius, Plato, and Sartre. Our clients, through the work they do, ponder this same question in operational contexts every day.

Throughout history, passionate citizens have endeavoured to improve and redefine the nature of society. The rate of change possible in our modern day, however, largely outstrips previous generations. Our new tools are intrinsically additive, and are increasing the opportunities, replicability, and scalability for social change. While techno-utopianism is admittedly dangerous, the ability to fly across the globe in a day, visit the moon, access a vast and ever expanding library of human knowledge from digitized biology to the chemical formula for nuclear energy are indeed changing our societal complexion. The present challenge is to steer change towards constructive rather than deleterious ends.

I had the privilege of engaging in a five-way Twitter debate today with some of the smartest people I know in the open government community. Clay Johnson, Tom Lee, Alex Howard, and Javaun Moradi are all working, in their own ways, to develop a coherent, cohesive, and inclusive vision for the future operating system of American democracy.

Despite the limitations of the medium, we managed to have a substantive conversation about the role of crowdsourcing in the process of collecting public comment on government policies and regulations. The conversation was prompted by the sharing of a blog post by Anil Dash on the White House’s recent ExpertNet initiative.