'Ambient Media sounds to me like flyposting - obviously *not* flyposting, because that is illegal and naughty and wrong, but similar. It also sounds like the kind of terminology that should be discouraged by a judicious kick to the groin of the utterer.

Don't knock e-petitions, the rest is fair game but e-petitions are going to be worthwhile; especially if the petition to make it law that issues raised by petition that have sufficient signatures should be put to a referendum*, the results of which would direct government policy and action gets approved. Imaging getting to decide for ourselves if congestion car tax (monitoring etc) is ok.

*When ID cards are required for voting the infrastructure will exist to make holding referendums a lot easier, so we can have them any time we feel there is a need to reign in the Government.

Is quite interesting...

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=102387457

"he executed the e-petitions strategy which has resulted in many millions of people engaging with the website..."

They forgot to add "and being ignored or fobbed off with bland platitudes and irrelevant twaddle."

Still, as long as it makes the little people feel as if the Government actually gives a damn about what they think...

Following a typo for my own in www.directionlessgov.com I was surprised to see how many government sites actually published with this misspelling. The word I typed incorrectly was 'recyling'. I then tried a few more words...

democacy

goverment

enviroment

Quite fun really.

The "e-petition" site was an excellent innovation.

Its a bit like those buttons you get at pedestrin crossings -- you know the ones you press and then wait five minutes for the green walking person, or dont press and wait five minutes ...

All those people adding thier names to e-petitions may have spent thier time complaining effectivly by writing to a real newspaper or bugging thier MP, instead they were neatly distracted and could safely be ignored by a government that knows whats good for us.

As someone working in the industry, I offer this definition:

Advertising that you can't easily avoid, but which conveys no other benefit to you. Posters, basically.

Actually we don't write the nominations for the New Statesman New Media Awards 2007, they are open to the public. That means they can vary in quality, but also makes them as accessible and inclusive as possible.

So the whole point is - if you aren't that impressed by the current bunch, come tell us who you think really would deserve that coveted half time orange....

http://www.newstatesman.com/nma/nma2007/

Yeah, the e-petitions are getting fob off responses; the Government always tries fobbing things off when the message is not what they want to hear. Now if every person who received the fob off responded with an intelligent retort to the PM by email, or better yet in writing it would be harder to ignore.

It is hard to attract the Government's attention, especially when they do not want to listen, harder still to get them to change their minds to bring them in line with the feelings of the people, but that is no excuse not to keep at them. Democracy is not perfect but that is no excuse not to use the tools available to get your message across.

e-Petitions have made it more convenient to make a point. Previously the Government would either not respond to written petitions (because it was impractical) or they would send out a form letter; so being able to email a response has made it easier for them, meaning they are more prone to respond; in turn opening the door for individual responses to their response...

... there are few other legal methods of expressing displeasure with the Government, I would urge those with issues to use it and for the Government to listen.

To be honest, getting fobbed off by mass response to an e-petition probably saves Johnny Taxpayer a little bit of money as opposed to getting fobbed off by a (in this case what looked like) pre-prepared printed response by my MP to the debacle of fingerprinting primary school children for library books.

From my perspective, it feels like there is an ever growing divide between the public and the government representing them.

It appears that 'We're the Government, we'll do what we like [tm]' is the mission statement of the day.