Seeing this new site asking for citizen ideas for Philly would be interesting enough any time, but was especially moving because I know Rob Stuart would have said something about it if he were still alive.Rob died suddenly last month, at 49 years old. He was a long time advocate for Philly citizens, anti-corporatism, democracy and participation at the local level.I can only imagine how much he'd have dug this site, with its simplicity and built in network-centric design. Look at the way the Post-It motif instantly makes any one contributor see that she or he is part of a larger community of participants. It also uses the visual vernacular of Post-Its to create a sense of brevity and informality, which lowers the barriers to participation way, way down.Of course, the proof will be in how much use it gets, which often depends more on if there are hot issues…

NYT post-Election Day editorial makes me feel good about the moderation that is hard-wired into the democratic system:These policies, and similar ones in other states, were passed in an arrogant frenzy by a Tea Party-tide of Republicans elected in 2010. Many of them decided that they had a mandate to dismantle some of the basic protections and restrictions of government. They went too far, and weary voters had to drag them back toward the center.We may still be a hamster in the coils of a hungry corporate oligarchy, but moments like this are good ones.

A letter I wrote earlier this year in The New York Times:The Power of TechnologyTo the Editor:Re "Digital Maps Are Giving Scholars the Historical Lay of the Land" ("Humanities 2.0" series, Arts pages, July 26):What is most compelling about your article on the emerging field of "spatial humanities" is how it inverts the faddish misconception that technology makes information more interesting.The article's examples demonstrate that cutting-edge maps are only as valuable as the stories they illustrate. Technology may help make the Gettysburg battlefield and the Salem witch trials more "vivid and personal," but the tools would be irrelevant if our sense of suffering and injustice had not made these events cultural touchstones.When activists organize over Twitter, or donors rush online to help candidates or refugees, or citizens use cellphones and maps to report government corruption, they are driven primarily by the urgency of a cause or crisis. Amid the (sometimes)…