Congress may be heading home for a summer break soon with a track record for productivity that would get the rest of us fired from our jobs. Can government of the people, by the people, and for the people be done differently?
Let’s give this idea the Founding Fathers test. If it’s broke, I’d think they’d want to fix it. Just how open to change and innovation were they?
Thomas Jefferson could entertain and treat his guests to ice cream desserts thanks in part to a sizable ice house. But even his ice supply only lasted until about mid-October. Can’t you picture him updating Monticello with a walk-in freezer or two if he were still around? This is also the guy who used a mousetrap-looking device to create multiple copies of letters as he wrote them. I can picture his home office with a wireless, multifunction copier now. The old device he used was, interestingly, called a polygraph. Would our current lie detectors of the same name find favor with the man who began the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence writing about truths? There’s actually a whole lot of support for change in that document.
George Washington, the farmer, wasn’t content to keep on doing things the way they’d always been done. Washington knew it would be more efficient to get his crops growing with a device that both plowed up the ground and dropped the seeds in right away. His new barn design helped make threshing more efficient as well. When he became president, he changed rulership by keeping his head bare of hardware and and his title and wardrobe humble. He even protected other innovators by creating the U.S. patent system. Washington also freed his slaves upon his death. Doing it when the idea first occurred to him would have been a whole lot nicer, but perhaps this was his tiny step toward a country of greater changes.
Benjamin Franklin played around with electricity long before it could be harnessed. Though he didn’t give us the light bulb, he changed our language by giving new meanings to words like “positive” and “negative.” Franklin either invented or improved a variety of practical items to make life better. The one that may best have foreshadowed the need for change was his Franklin stove. He knew that fireplaces were inefficient; too much smoke went in your eyes rather than up the chimney. His enclosed metal units did the job far better. He also either adapted or invented bifocal glasses when in his late 70s. When your vision changes, you see things differently, right Ben?
So, are we ready for something new?
Ready to grab a mobile device and really do our governing of, by and for — for a change? Who better to represent you than you. Technology has changed how we research, shop and kick back (the relaxing kind, not the other kind; well, maybe the other kind, too). Can technology actually do what our Founding Fathers had in mind all along?
Even the economy could benefit. Put some elected officials on the unemployment lines, perhaps, but ideally pull even more of the working class off them. Folks will be needed to create and secure the app. Others will be needed to create polls, send alerts, manage data. People — and places — will be needed for those who don’t have their own devices. Perhaps we’ll all log in with fingerprints. If they were all on file, maybe it would even be a deterrent to crime. If not, even the glove-making industry could make a comeback — big time.
Sure, someone will find a way to capture our voting preferences and start flooding our inboxes with ads for T-shirts, bumper stickers and coffee mugs that promote our own personal agendas. But maybe that’s not all that bad. Sign me up for a T-shirt with a happy polar bear who has enough sea ice to survive the summer. Size medium. Standard shipping. Preferably, made in the U.S.A.
Clare Caddell lives in Winterport and is an elementary technology teacher.