Dave Hughes

Local Politics and New Technology 7/8/92 Roly Roper
The following article is abstracted from the Whole Earth Review, March 1985 - somewhat old, but not dated.

I have transcribed it because I think that it has an important message for anyone who shares my feeling that politics is too important to be left to the politicians; that the promise of `people power' through new technology,so hoped for in the '70s, wasn't wrong, it only got snowed under by commercial interests. ---

Telecommunicating The Neighborhood ROM - Computer aided local politics by Dave Hughes (Col. US Army, retired) You can contact visionary Dave Hughes, a retired West Point teacher, using his pioneer computer network bulletin board [US](303/623-2391), if you can log on - it's busy 20 hours a day. I used the plain vanilla telephone interview: Hughes speaking all the way.- Kevin Kelly

About two years ago the city planners of Colorado Springs decided that they were going to tighten the city ordinance that regulates working out of your home. I saw in the newspaper a small legal announcement that this was coming up before the planning commission, so I went down on behalf of the whole community of 12,000 people and 200 small businesses living around old Colorado City. It was clear that if the city enforced the ordinance rigorously it would make home-based entrepreneural activities suffer.

I was the only person in that city of 300,000 who actually stood up and testified against the ordinance. They could have just ignored me and rolled over me with a tank. But I did not argue backyard repairs on cars; I argued high tech. As a consequence the planning commission tabled the matter for 30 days. I brought the text of the three page ordinance home with me and typed it into my computer bulletin board.

I drew attention to it with a notice on the menu. I had alread built up a little reputation among those who dial my bulletin board as a serious place for discussing public and political problems, so I put it up on the board saying I didn't like the actual text of the law.

I began to collect on the bulletin board other implications of the law that I had never thought of. For instance, though I don't have anything to do with direct sales, somebody pointed out that the text would have prohibitied Amway and Shaklee products, and all those kinds of businesses, which are a very great growth part of our economy.

Well, if you have the time and the bucks, you can buy an ad and form a big organization, hold a press conference and mobilize public opinion. What I did was, I sent a letter to the editor of two local newspapers and simply said that I didn't like the ordinance and anybody that has a computer and terminal can dial 623-2391 and read the ordinance for himself. I got a responce of over 250 callers into the board over the next 10 days, over and above the normal number of callers.

What I didn't anticipate was that some of the callers were high-tech people who worked in larger plants - specifically Digital, Rolm Corporation, and Walter Drake (a mail order house here).

They not only read the ordinance individually but flipped it on the printer, printed it and xeroxed, circulated it through the plant and the next thing I knew thousands of copies of this ordinance were being circulated throughout the city although I never went to any meetings and never xeroxed nothin'.

Some of them went to the press and to the council and started taking there own individual action and I never had to. The next thing knew, the TV and everybody got on to it. They also began to put the heat on the city planners. In the end the council never knew what hit them.

At the next meeting 175 people showed up. I didn't represent anybody except myself. People came in and wondered angrily why the mayor was letting the planning commission prevent people from making income from out of their homes. There was at least one person who captured the text on his computer, rewrote the thing and uploaded it again - revised it.

Well, that's a piece of cake with a wordprocessor program. Normally nobody puts out that kind of energy no matter how concerned because the effort to get involved with local politics, the effort to do your civic duty, the effort to mobilize public opinion takes a great deal of energy.

But suddenly the economy of effort that computers gives makes it possible for people to electronically mobilize opinion.

We eventually only came together in time and space at the actual hearing. We sent the ordinance back to the planners four times and each time I put it back on the board until it was totally resolved.

It actually became an issue during the city campaigns for mayor, but by the time of the elections it was an acceptable ordinance - the steam had run out of it. Finally, on its own momentum it came in front of the city council for appproval and not one person stood up on behalf of or against it and the mayor shot off his mouth and wondered where all those people were who were angry.

So I wrote an open letter to the editors of the newspapers. I said, "Well, look Mr. Mayor, it's now an acceptable ordinance. But the more important point is that the public hearing was held in the ROM of a neighborhood computer and where were you?"

--- The Whole Earth Review ran this article again last year in a fuller form under the heading "Electronic City Hall" where it was noted that after initial resistance the city of Colorado Springs now runs two BBSs of its own, one to publicise its intended actions and receive public comment,the other as a database lookup of council services and by-laws.

A couple of years ago I wrote to our own Commission For the Future several times suggesting that they should set up a multi-line BBS to advance their aims. I have yet to receive a reply.