Rhythm

We saw Babel a couple of days ago... totally disappointing! I am getting tired of those movies that show the world as only full of tragedies and disasters - well, it is, but com'on! What do we learn from watching an American woman being stitched up without anaesthesia in a village in the middle of nowhere in Africa AGAIN? I have seen this movie before... “If you want to be understood, listen” seemed to be a good theme for a movie, but the parts of the film were not glued well together to give that “whole” feeling that carried a message.

I guess what made me feel even worse was realising I have the same disappointment towards the theme of my PhD thesis... "I have seen this movie before"... “What is the message?”…And that is what I feel when I read most PhD thesis... why on earth someone is studying this? What is the purpose? I know most of the time theses just focus on that little tiny detail that other theses did not cover... but... I don't want to have this feeling about MY thesis. Four years feeling like that?

I have just started to develop the theme into first, a literature review paper (this will definitely be useful if I am able to pull off a new perspective for this review, a new look at things), and later, my thesis project. The theme? Broadly, eGovernment indicators. Too broad? Well, yes. When I get to the point where I can state my thesis theme in only one sentence I will be happy. Can't now. But I can try to explain more or less where I want to get...

My disappointment at the existent eGovernment performance indicators and benchmarking reports, such as Accenture's, the UN's, and all others that rank countries websites or focus mainly on the delivery of "services" to "customers" started back in São Paulo, when I was working with eGovernment cost-analysis indicators. So many questions relating to policy relevance kept coming to my mind...

How can one measure innovations?
How can we actually track new (better) ways of interaction between the government and the society?
If we measure the number and sophistication of services online and more means better, what if one service becomes completely obsolete and seizes to exist or it merges with another one as we move to online interactions - is that portal ranked lower?
Why eGovernment studies and surveys are often detached from eDemocracy themes? Isn't democracy a form of government? Is the government only a service provider? What is the definition of service? What is government after all? (I am in a period of defining things in my life...:))

Hmm… I guess I am basically concerned with the transformations in relationships (government, businesses, citizens) that are related to eGovernment and how we can track them (now I am thinking how not to fall in a deterministic view of technology, society and transformations... but I will leave this to a whole new post). I hate the feeling of being completely lost and confused and not knowing where to go!

Oh well. For now, I will leave you with a clip of the only good scene of Babel: the one at a Japanese dance club. It made me think... do I need music or a feeling of rhythm in my life?