The Purer Democratic Path Forward…

Since we are hardly ever ready for change, we may as well pursue it now!

Photo: Jurre Houtkamp, Unsplash.

“Change undermines our fantasy of sovereignty.” – James Hollis, Living Between Worlds.

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My ideas have always tended toward the advanced, and comprehensive when it came to resolving any major social issue or public policy. While this may be a very lofty perspective, or even sound arrogant, it’s also a curse. The experience I bring to the table is not nonexistent. Though that experience does not necessarily rise as high as my ideas range wide. The curse is associated with my ideas either being ahead of their time, most charitably, or being pure idealistic illusion, again charitably. Less charitably, I’m a futurist crank, or a lost-in-the-clouds kook.

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After returning to college in the mid 1990s, I wrote a college paper about improving mass transit in the Twin Cities, i.e. the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro area. Each student was asked to write about that same subject. If I remember correctly, the professor had experience in developing public policy. Anyway, my idea centered on a technology that would inform all riders exactly where their bus was on a map, how long before it arrived, and each transfer required on their route.

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Having used the Twin Cities Metro Transit bus system for a year in the early 1980s, often taking new routes, or waiting during blizzards in no, or very minimalistic shelters, I did not want to be looking at some sleet wilted, or wispy piece of paper, or a time-worn poster, to see when my bus would arrive. Maybe arrival-time data had been updated and redistributed everywhere, maybe not. I wanted the data to always be in my possession, with all the bells, and whistles, including (GPS) tracking of every bus in real-time. Then I could dash out of my apartment, school, or place of work, at the last minute, and always arrive on time at my destination. About a decade later we would call something like it a cellphone app.

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I had already practiced the many interviews I would be doing with local, and national, news media about my advanced and personalized bus tracking concept, when I received my grade on Monday. I figured the professor would pull me aside, when I got near the…