The next U.S. president should harness the digital fluency of the under-30 generation to launch a WPA-inspired Digital New Deal, said Helen De Michiel, national co-director of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), in the S.F. Chronicle (4/11/08). She suggests: "This eager, highly knowledgeable, connected and multitasking first generation of digital natives" could be tasked to build "a networked national public commons that bolsters our international competitiveness.

"Free of commercial data-mining and the ultra-marketing of social networks like MySpace and Facebook, this new online public sphere would evolve into a robust multitude of open channels and spaces where people could safely share ideas, experiment with innovative design, and debate issues and policies. ... Imagine after the 2008 election, a swarm of arts and culture leaders, public interest and policy advocates, energetic young software developers, philanthropists, media reformers and forward-thinking politicians banding together in a broad coalition to construct this Digital New Deal."

Reponding to De Michiel in MediaShift's Idea Lab on PBS.org, consultant Paul Lamb disagreed, saying that public money could be better spent "putting young Americans to work directly in our decaying schools, helping to build stronger real world communities, and addressing problems of poverty, drugs, and social injustice on the street? Technology can certainly be a tool in that fight, not unlike what the AmeriCorps VISTA program is already doing in partnership with community technology centers, but having a 'digital New Deal' without a real world counterpart IMHO is like employing Second Life as a central strategy to solving homelessness."

"Next President Should Launch the Digital New Deal"

"'Digital New Deal' Needs Real Life Counterpart"

   

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