Letter to Michael Moore

This content was originally posted in a forum from The Corporation's website a couple weeks ago.

I just sent this email to Michael Moore. Since my aim is simply to get the ideas I discussed in my blog out in the general public, I thought I would post the email in here as well:

Dear Michael Moore,

I watched "The Corporation" over the weekend, and was, to put it shortly, quite moved. I have been blogging about many of the subjects touched in this movie, and was amazed to see how closely this movie mirrored some of my topics. I believe the key issues our country currently faces include:

• Developing a sustainable economy- reducing our dependence on non-renewable resources, eliminating waste, pollution
• Providing a basic level of care for all members of society, including basic health care, food, and shelter
  

At the end of "The Corporation", you challenged your viewers to respond to the facts presented during the movie. In a recent blog, Improving Democracy, I put together some ideas on how we can begin to improve on the basic premises of democracy through the use of technology.

With the advent of the Open Source Movement, I believe we know have the technology in our hands to provide an online voting, blogging, and metamoderation system capable of providing a stronger voice to the average citizen. I'll spare you the details here, but if you have chance, I recommend you take the time to read this blog. I have taken the time to try and address the major hurdles that the system would need to overcome. I sincerely believe that such an open source project would provide a great benefit to our society.

If you are interested in what you see, I also recommend that you take a look at Slashdot, which is an online forum for discussing technical issues (Tagline: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters) Slashdot has a highly active, very opinionated user base with a wide spectrum of views on all manner of subjects. The users of Slashdot have amazingly varied political views and beliefs, and it is great to read the discussions to see arguments from different perspectives.

A brief list of political subjects recently discussed on Slashdot:

• Moore Approves Fahrenheit 9/11 Downloads
  
• Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
  
• US Gov't Representatives - Who's Who?
  
• Online Voting - Will it Work?
  
• Do Geeks Have a Political voice?
  

To get back to the main point of this email - If you read my blog and happen to be interested in the subject, I recommend that you contact the users of Slashdot to get further input on the subject. If you contact the editors of Slashdot directly, I'm sure they wouldn't mind having you post a few questions in a post to their "Ask Slashdot" section.

The fact is, Michael, that you have a unique voice here in America, and I believe that you ask a lot of the questions that need to be heard.

Thanks very much your time,

Mark Heimonen