"citizens can feel part of a bigger project. They can create a shared willingness to act, their preferences can be aggregated, and can give rise to collective action as well as collective discussion."

I don't want to alarm you, but I suspect that Miliband is aiming to become the next Borg Queen rather than a mere Prime Minister.

...which can be hard to decipher with the myriad cynical references, can we stop using the phrase, "drinks the Kool Aid"? I'm not American and I don't care about some silly shortcut reference that tries to imply the user is cool and the subjective is loopy.

Responses which suggest I have been drinking too much Dandelion and Burdock welcome.

I'm a subject, not a citizen, thank you very much. Miliband's getting ideas above his station.

............. talk doesn't cost them anything. They actually get paid for it.

Knowing what Web 2.0 can do is all very well...and it is encouraging that David Miliband appears to know more and/or is prepared to learn more than the average Joe ... but how IT is done is that which they will have purchase. You can be assured that choosing the right Web/Systems Architect will make Britain Great and an absolute fortune ...choosing the wrong one will cost the country dearly as we know IT does with the catalogue of monumental failures.... money no object.

Given the state of IT in Great Britain today, it is clear that a change is needed to show a Lead which actually Leads to the Export of Expertise and the Delivery of Secure Social Systems of Equitable Governance.

from the ubiquitous wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool-Aid#.22Drinking_the_Kool-Aid.22

it's a very applicable reference considering the abundant evidence of the blind acceptance of the Web 2.0 panacea.

I am using the Google Maps API.

Has anyone seen what is displayed in the upper left corner of the <a href="http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/">Google Maps API</a> page?

>BETA<

It's a freakin' ENORMOUS API and SDK. I understand how difficult it is to debug, but it's already in Version 2.

That's right. We're at Version 2, and we have yet to leave Beta.

No wonder Microsoft is so scared of Google. Google has stolen MS' business model.

Maybe we'll be seeing Government 2.0 Beta soon... or maybe they'll just jump straight to Government Big Brother Edition...

Quote-

Miliband said the web had polarised debate into competing extremities, where the truth was decided by whoever shouted the loudest.

Not at all like government talking heads turning up on BBC with Dodgy Dossiers, screaming about us being 45 minutes from attack by Saddams WMD, and Blair standing in the Commons lying through his perfect teeth about it, while all evidence to the contrary, like the debreifing of Hussien Kamel, or Dr David Kelly are silenced, no siree, because that kind of extremism is acceptable.