Citizen's Briefing Book - 24 Hours Left!

The Obama team has cooked up an exciting experiment in participatory government - The Citizen's Briefing Book. In this app you can create, rank and comment on ideas and suggestions to the new administration. It's only running until Sunday (tomorrow) 6pm Eastern Time!

There are a lot of entries. Like tens of thousands. And if it's an idea you've heard before, there at least a few copies out there. I'm still searching and crawling through them, but here are a few that I thought were interesting:

Encourage Trade Schools - Arne Duncan mentions this one in his reaction
A Decentralized Smart Grid - Steven Chu mentions this one in his reaction
Provide Dis-Incentives for Urban Sprawl

and

Advanced Nanotechnology - What, When, and Why

This last one was made by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. Right now it has a mere 400 points! I encourage everyone with any technological foresight to quickly make an account and give this one a boost, and any others you think are important.

Of course, this system has vital flaws. Anyone can create as many accounts as they can create email addresses. There is massive redundancy. The top issue is Pot Legalization (it's several of the top 20), and the "Truth About Extraterrestrials" appears several times in the top 50. The president is not going to read all of these.

But even the less popular items will be read by someone in the White House, and some of them will stick. This is less like writing a letter to the president's auto-response-trained staff, and more like Andrew Jackson's open White House. In fact, Obama plans on having an Open White House on day 1. The real question is, will there be a 1400 pound wheel of cheese?