Official White House Email Address

[Don Gilbert]

I am very positively impressed by the US president's step to
receive his countrymen's views electronically.  Even if its
only impact is to provide some kind of opinion poll,
that is a good step toward providing better communication
between the US government and it's people.  I look forward to
the day when some future network political forum can provide
for more individual's input and discussion in country and world
policies.  I hope we eventually can replace the occasional paper
voting ballot for "representatives" with more direct, electronic
voting on many issues.  Perhaps this e-mail address is a first
step toward that.  Though Dave Kristofferson suggested this
as an example of the email devolving to opinion polling, I would
be happy if I could send one of these messages, and expect it to
have an effect on government policy :

YES ON BOSNIA INTERVENTION

versus

NO ON BOSNIA INTERVENTION


On a related track, the biovote at net.bio.net means for establishing new 
newsgroups here which Dave Kristofferson (and his colleagues) have put 
together, along with the discussion of new groups, is the kind of forum 
and voting mechanism that might well be applied to other things in biology and
politics which need group consensus.  Do we biologists have anything
else interesting we might vote on, and see if we can put this
mechanism to new uses?  (Yes, I know you don't want to vote on
the truth or falsity of your experiments -- much of science doesn't
lend itself to voting).    How about electronic voting for who will get 
the next grants from NSF/NIH/other?  Or at least which subjects in biology
deserve the most/least research funding?  Or start with things
farther from the pocketbook -- where to have the next society meetings?


-- 
Don Gilbert                                     gilbert at bio.indiana.edu
biocomputing office, biology dept., indiana univ., bloomington, in 47405