Shaping Network Society

The Millenials Speaking: Feedback is Everything

This is a guest article by Sebastian Haselbeck.

Feedback, to someone my age, is everything, whether we are aware of it or not. Everything we do on the web has instant repercussions, creates immediate reaction, which prompts counter-reaction, back-pedalling or refinement: there is a feedback loop in most things we do on the web. We are used to friends commenting on what we post on Facebook, we assume that emails are replied to within a certain number of hours, we get a rating for our transaction on Ebay, and all this spoils us (The Economist calls us feedback junkies). We grow up in a world where we increasingly expect actions to produce immediate reactions. These expectations are translated into how we see our society at work and what we expect from services in the real world, we want them to work like our Facebook walls. This does not just apply to Fixmystreet.com or Recovery.gov, it applies to a wider change in thinking, and it might explain our disillusionment with politics, because failure to immediately deliver is much worse in today’s society than in the decades before. The standards we apply to the public sector are higher today. Everybody knows what is possible, because we use interactive software like Cloud 9 Software, gadgets and technology every day that show us how. A culture of feedback means that the citizens’ expectations need to be a) managed by politics and b) translated into proper governance mechanisms. At this purely theoretical level this has nothing to do with deliberative democracy yet. What we need to wrap our heads around is that we are no longer recipients of societal or public sector action, we are part of a feedback loop. We want feedback for our actions (elections, opinions, our participation in consultation platforms, etc.), and we expect politicians and administrations to appreciate and make use of feedback as well. And in that sense, please comment, I want feedback, please!

Sebastian Haselbeck is a graduate student at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy and webmaster of the Center for Public Management and Governance. He is currently doing an internship at Intellitics Inc., an early e-participation start-up based in San Jose, CA.

About Sebastian Haselbeck

Sebastian Haselbeck is a graduate student at the Erfurt School of Public Policy and webmaster of the Center for Public Management and Governance.

02. March 2010 by Sebastian Haselbeck
Categories: Blog | Tags: Culture, Feedback, Society | 3 comments