As we mentioned a few blog posts back, we started a discussion recently about how can we briefly describe what we are for. David Hardwick once suggested that we should be the party of open, and there is a certain ring to that.
So after talking about it, we decided to adopt the wording that Eric Zoltan was using on our Youtube site:
We are the Party of Open! We stand for open government, open culture and open innovation. We are the anti-monopoly and the pro-human party. Pro-Human means a high regard for your individual privacy and your right to free expression. It also means an end to the concept of “Corporate Personhood”.
If you want something even more brief then you could try:
The Party of Open: Open Government, Open Culture, Open Innovation & People First
We fully expect this summary will evolve over time.
Pick one:
The party of open (information/sharing)
The part of closed (protection of “privacy”, secrets, withholding information)
You absolutely can’t have both if you want to be respected and sustainable.
If you are saying “I’m going to take whatever information I want from you, while only allowing you to have the information I want you to have.” you’re going to sound exactly like all other politicians, corporations, and governments. Sorry, that’s just the way it is. If you want to be different, aim for the opposite of what everyone else is doing. How about saying, “I’m going to take only what you offer me, and I’m going to offer you everything to take freely.”?
Thanks for commenting!
Speaking for myself, I hear what you are saying, Turil, though I disagree with you that all of an individual’s secrets should be open. Would that we lived in a non-judgmental society where people could be completely open.
However, we are increasingly faced with governmental and corporate power that are closed. They maintain that individuals cannot have privacy, but governments (in their claimed role of protecting the people) and corporations (in their claimed role of protecting their owners) must have privacy. Their system protects the powerful and harms everyone else. That is one of the reasons why we advocate for open government and putting people first.