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In a world where innovation drives success, the most valuable asset a company can secure is exceptional people. Great talent is the common denominator across all successful companies. This is particularly true in the investment industry, and always true for hedge funds. Each hedge fund is essentially a team of people betting that they have the smarts to understand the world better than any of their competitors. When aiming to consistently beat the markets, you need to be the best in the world at what you do. Success is developing an understanding and ultimately an edge that others havent cracked yet. Thats the gamezero-sum, and supercompetitive. As the deputy chief investment officer of a leading hedge fund, I am lucky to see firsthand what it takes to have any chance of being the best. We need everyone on our team to be exceptionally bright, to relentlessly challenge any consensus around them, and to be truly obsessed about what they doall while working in an intense culture of collaboration where everyone challenges each other and seeks to constantly improve. Finding talent like that is extremely tough. Bridgewater has prided itself for decades on attracting the best, but doing so requires evolution in our approach, and looking beyond traditional avenues. Outside the boxand sometimes the classroom Its common for elite companies to look to the most prestigious schools as their primary way of recruiting incoming investment classes. Bridgewater leverages this route, too, as such universities are often the home to many brilliant students. But the fact is, most of the worlds best talent is elsewhere. Many of the most brilliant and innovative thinkers come from diverse backgrounds and educational paths. My own experiences have fueled my commitment to expanding our recruiting horizons. I myself am a college dropout. And before making that choice, I remember how troubled I was by the clear disparities of opportunity I saw around me, when growing up in central Illinois. I would hear of students elsewhere having high school teachers with PhDs and receiving expensive elite standardized test tutoring. By the time I got to high school, I had become an avid participant in online communities developed to help other students, and even published an extensive SAT guide online, which helped freely spread best practices to hundreds of thousands of students across the world. Students like me. The democratization enabled by the internet not only allows for students to access otherwise unattainable resources, but it also opens up key opportunities for companies to identify the best talent. While the possibilities here are endless, Bridgewater has already begun to source candidates through Metaculus, a web-based forecasting platform. With Metaculus, we run prediction competitions, where participants leverage their abilities and grit to make logical, thoughtful predictions about what will happen in the future. This allows us to seamlessly leverage technology to tap into a vast pool of talent that extends far beyond conventional recruiting channels, allowing us to discover talent anywhere in the world. This is a deeply meritocratic approach. Last year, in our first contest, we had participation from students at over 140 schools as well as many noncampus candidates, many of whom Bridgewater had never reached with recruitment efforts before. Fifteen hundred people joined the contest,including 700undergraduate students from across the U.S. While Yale came in 134th place and Harvard finished 138th, Northwestern University topped the standings. But the overall winner was an undergraduate from Grinnell College, a private liberal arts college in Iowa. In addition to the Grinnell student, we interviewed dozens of candidates and ultimately made three internship offers from schools we have not historically recruited from. I personally interviewed those three candidates and can confidently say they were among the most exciting, promising candidates Ive ever met. This competition is only one example of the many ways that new recruitment methods through innovative technologies will level the playing field and highlight those who might otherwise be overlooked. To be best positioned moving forward, leading global companies must consider those who can raise the best ideas, regardless of the background that informs them.
Category:
E-Commerce
At President Donald Trumps inauguration on Monday, Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell took the stage to pray for the incoming administration, peppering his remarks with ham-fisted allusions to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s I Have a Dream speech from some six decades earlier. That same day, Sewella longtime Trump booster who spoke at the Republican National Convention and hosted the candidate at his church in Junetook the logical next step in his quest for conservative influencer superstardom: launch a meme coin and watch rubes throw their hard-earned money at it. I need you to do me a favor right now. I need you to go buy the official Lorenzo Sewell coin, he said in a video posted on X, promising to never sell on the community but rather just earn fees as our token continues to flourish. After reaching a peak market value of $4.5 million, $LORENZOprepare to be shockedlost 93% of its value in a matter of hours, leaving some traders with five- and six-figure losses. I am guessing Sewells congregants will not be hearing a sermon on the cleansing of the Temple anytime soon. Sewell, though, is only doing what everyone in Trumps orbit, including Trump himself, is doing right now: cashing in as quickly and as often as possible. Days before taking the oath of office, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency meme coin, inviting prospective buyers to join his very special Trump Community and urging them to Have Fun! His eponymous meme coin, $TRUMP, should not be confused with $MELANIA, a separate meme coin launched around the same time by his wife, shortly before she once again became first lady of the United States. The terms and conditions onI swear I am not making this upgettrumpmemes.com warn prospective $TRUMP buyers that they could incur substantial losses, and require anyone who buys to first agree to waive their rights to a jury trial or to participate in any hypothetical future class-action lawsuit, which are generally not signs that you are dealing with blue-chip investment opportunities. When asked by reporters, Trump did not do much to inspire additional confidence in the venture: I dont know much about it, other than I launched it, he said, but noted he did understand that it had been very successful. For now, he is right, and especially compared to $LORENZO: At the time of the inauguration, $TRUMP was the worlds third-largest meme coin, behind only Dogecoin and Shina Ibu. As of Thursday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal estimated the $TRUMP market cap at $7 billion and valued Trumps stake at $28 billion, which would be between three and four times his estimated pre-meme coin net worth all by itself. The ethical challenges of a chief executive with the power to shape cryptocurrency policy engaging in a little light eponymous cryptocurrency profiteering do not require a detailed explanation. But this episode is a mere preview of an administration that will function as a glorified cash cube, where everyone in the White House (and everyone who is sufficiently adjacent to it) will have a chance to grab as much as they can hold before the clock runs out. The political dynamics of Trumps second term are unlike anything that anyone alive has experienced: a term-limited president who is interested in ruling but not governing, who ran for office more or less to avoid the possibility of prison time, and whose position on any given issue depends largely on whichever well-dressed man with a firm handshake pitched him last. Unlike most presidents, Trump does not care about setting up his party for future success, because he has never cared about the GOP beyond its utility to his political ambitions. Nor does he care about using a second term to secure his legacy, because in his mind, exacting electoral revenge on Joe Biden was the only thing he needed to do to accomplish that task. For the next four years, then, all Trump really wants is to bask in the glow of winning an election that the haters insisted he would lose, and enjoy the spoils of victory that come with the office. In previous decades, these perks would have consisted largely of lengthier-than-usual stays at Camp David during the high season. In 2025, they include the right to slap your name (and your wifes name) across a digital token and sell it to anyone who will pay for it. The heads of some of the worlds largest and most powerful corporations, too, realize that the regulatory environment might never be as friendly as it is right now, when a president who is as unapologetically profit-driven as they are is calling the shots. Luminaries of the artificial intelligence industry, who understand that their companies will need staggering amounts of cash to have any hope of delivering on their lofty promises, are flocking to Trump, eager to exploit his disinterest in regulating an industry that needs it badly. Billionaires like Metas Mark Zuckerberg, Amazons Jeff Bezos, and Googles Sundar Pichai similarly understand that showing up in person to kiss the ring is both the cheapest and surest way to protect their bloated monopolies from federal oversight. The quarter-billion that Elon Musk spent to back Trumps reelection campaign is pennies on the dollar next to the value of the government contracts for which his companies now enjoy the inside track. A month ago, TikTok was facing a ban in the U.S.; now that Trump is in power, a few well-placed compliments were enough to keep the lights on and the bottom line intact, for the moment. No industry is going as hard in Washington as the crypto industry, which threw a star-studded celebratory ball the night before Trumps inauguration, complete with performances from Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, and Soulja Boy. David Sacks, a member of the Silicon Valley reactionary clique, who Trump recently named as his AI and crypto czar, told cheering attendees that Washingtons reign of terror against crypto had at last come to a close. Yes, some industry leaders have criticized Trump for his $TRUMP stunt, but on the whole they have little to complain about: At the very least, a president who is willing to launch his own meme coin right before moving into the White House is unlikely to be a thorn in te side of the crypto industry anytime soon. The cashing-in presidency slows down onlyand even then, only slightlywhen one persons big score threatens that of another. On Tuesday, Trump announced a new AI joint venture, Stargate, billed as a collaboration among OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle that would invest up to half a trillion dollars in OpenAIs work. (Like many things for which Trump takes credit, Stargate was in the works months before his press conference, and since the money is coming from the private sector, his administration does not have to fund it.) But just hours after Trump declared Stargate a resounding declaration of confidence in Americas potential, Musk, who has been feuding with Altman since breaking with OpenAI in 2018and whose xAI product is a rival to OpenAIs ChatGPTpublicly undercut Trumps grand pronouncements. They dont actually have the money, Musk wrote on X. I have that on good authority. As it turns out, Musks purportedly close relationship with the president started fraying the moment he perceived that as enthusiastically as he might be cashing in these days, one of his Silicon Valley rivals was cashing in even harder. The other tech oligarchs with front-row inauguration seats will probably have their loyalties tested soon, too. Zuckerberg, whose company lobbied aggressively for the TikTok ban and stands to gain billions in ad dollars from its enforcement, cannot be happy about Trumps decision to stay the apps execution; Google and Pichai, whose YouTube Shorts product aspires to compete with TikTok, also must have felt the sting of defeat. Earlier this week, Trump expressed interest in the idea of Musk or Oracles Larry Ellison saving TikTok by acquiring the platform from ByteDance. The more Trump picks winners and losers among those competing for his favor, the less valuable these alliances of convenience with the White House will be. Trump is often described as a grifter, or a con man, or some variation thereof, which is in my view a fair characterization of a man who is unable to cite his favorite Bible verses but nevertheless sells officially licensed Trump Bibles for $59.99 and autographed copies for $1,000, a price that somehow does not include shipping. The difference between his first administration and this one is that this time, many of the business leaders who previously distanced themselves from Trump have figured out that ingratiating themselves is the most lucrative path of least resistance in recent memory. When the president is chasing a payday this hard, no one has to be shy about following his lead.
Category:
E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Among the 26 forecasts tracked by ResiClub in its final 2025 home price forecast roundup, the average prediction is a +2.7% increase in U.S. home prices this year. Keep in mind that the above figure is a forecast for nationally aggregated home prices. On a regional and local basis, home price swings can vary greatly from the national figure. For example, on a year-over-year basis, U.S. home prices as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index are up 2.6%, while home prices in the Rochester, New York metro area are up 8.2% and home prices in the Punta Gorda, Florida metro area are down 8.3% during that same timeframe. To better understand how regional home prices may vary in 2025, ResiClub reached out to economists at Zillowwhose forecast of U.S. home prices rising by +2.9% in calendar 2025 aligns with the average modeland economists at Moodyswhose forecast of U.S. home prices falling by -0.4% in 2025 is among the most bearishto gather their metro-level home price forecasts. Lets take a look at the metro-level forecasts. Click here to view an interactive of Zillows 2025 metro area home price forecast. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r
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E-Commerce
The city of Los Angeles has rightfully gripped the nations attention this month as wildfires rage on. While the devastation induced by our changing climate demands superhuman effort to squelch it, the transportation sector (stubbornly responsible for the greatest share of U.S. emissions) is ironically observing a significant milestone. January 24, 2025, marked the centennial of the implementation of the Traffic Ordinance for the City of Los Angeles. This 35-page bureaucratic document redefined the use of Americas streets, tailoring them to the benefit of the automotive industry. American streets were once dominated by people. A documentary travelogue of New York City captured by Scenska Biografteatern from 1911 is crowded with pedestrians crisscrossing streets in their daily routines. Trollies, carriages, and the occasional automobile jostle by, unhindered by traffic signals or centerlines. To us today, it can seem chaotic, but the pace of the street is slow, and people navigate each other with fluency. San Franciscos A Trip Down Market Street, shot just a year before the 1906 earthquake, shows the view from a streetcar, picturing the Ferry Building at the streets end obscured by intertwining streetcars, horses, bicyclists, cars, and people. Pedestrians stand undaunted in the center of the street, waiting to board the slow-moving streetcar. A boy playfully darts in front of the train, as if he is challenging it to a game of tag. Growing up in American cities meant playing in the streets, even in the countrys most dense neighborhoods. Back then, people shared the roadway with streetcars and bikes. In the early 1900s, Los Angeles had the most extensive electric streetcar system anywhere. From Minneapolis and Chicago to Washington D.C. and New York City, bicycles were used by women and men commuting to work in the 1890s. And they were not alone. As Evan Friss chronicles in The Cycling City, people rode bikes in U.S. cities as much as they now ride in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, the best cycling cities in the world. This was all before the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance was passed. The Ordinance was written by Miller McClintock, then a doctoral student of municipal government at Harvard University, who was recruited by a champion of the automobile industry, Paul Hoffman. Hoffman had dropped out of the University of Chicago to sell Studebakers at 18-years-old. At 33, he was close to making his first million dollars in the industry and had been appointed chairman of the Los Angeles Traffic Commissiona body responsible for regulating streets. For the first time, the Ordinance prioritized cars on the citys increasingly congested roadways. It quickly became the template for the country. With a contemporary eye, the provisions created by the Ordinance may seem more logical than they were to city dwellers at the time. Historian and author Peter Norton has spent his career researching the automobile era and has well documented it in his books Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City and Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving. Norton has scoured letters to the editors of local newspapers, written by everyday people who passionately argue for their place on American streets, just as it was being usurped. With the anniversary of the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance approaching, I interviewed him to understand its significance. Norton says that sharing streets always required negotiation, but before the Ordinance, the pedestrian had the absolute right to the street, to stroll into it at any point, and to cross it anywhere she chose . . . even a child had the right to the street. This was a social norm, but as Nortons research suggests, it was also defended by judges in U.S. courtrooms throughout the country. For example, in Fighting Traffic, he cites a Philadelphia judge who, in 1924, lectured drivers in his courtroom, saying, It wont be long before children wont have any rights at all to the street. He determined that motorists deserved restraint if they could not assume the responsibility of ensuring childrens safety and resolved, Something drastic must be done to end this menace to pedestrians and to children in particular. It may be hard to imagine today, in a country where the vast majority of people commute by car, but in Los Angeles and many U.S. cities in the early 20th century, most people didnt use cars to get around. The majority of American women didnt get drivers licenses until the 1960s, and if a family owned a car, men usually monopolized the use of it. People generally walked, rode streetcars, or biked. Norton argues that while the transition to auto-dominated streets is often seen as the arc of progress stimulated by consumer demand, it was actually a well-crafted campaign produced by those with an interest in selling automobiles. The Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance changed who was prioritized on city streets. Between 1914 and 1922, the number of cars on the streets of Los Angeles quadrupled. To continue to boost sales, the automobile industry required an edge over its competition with the streetcar and one of its advantages was speed. At the time, a streetcar traveled at approximately 10-15 miles per hour, and without dedicated lanes, at even slower speeds when they were blocked by cars. In the Ordinance, McClintock imposed a 35-mile-per-hour threshold almost everywhere except for a few limited cases. But 35 miles per hour was unprecedented in the early 20th century. According to Norton, most cities held motor vehicles to 810 mile per hour speeds. In his words, the automotive industry realized that, If drivers cannot go faster than a streetcar, then theyre not going to buy a car, especially if they have a streetcar service available to them . . . So, we cannot afford to let speed be the culprit in traffic safety. Instead of focusing on speed, the Ordinance decried recklessness. Most importantly, it pinned reckless behavior on pedestrians rather than speeding cars. he Ordinance calls out jaywalkers, criminalizing pedestrians who do not obey signals or who walk outside crossings. Jaywalking, once used as derogatory slang, was employed formally to fix attitudes against wayward pedestrians. McClintock writes that, High-speed motor traffic makes the practice known as jay-walking almost suicidal instead of questioning the imposition of hurtling motor vehicles on streets occupied by people. As Norton suggests, You could use exactly the same facts that hes using to say that driving at speed is homicidal. The Los Angeles Record decribes the new Ordinance as less brutal way of abolishing jaywalkers than previous methods. In the 1920s, traffic injuries and fatalities were climbing. In his book Fighting Traffic, Norton observes that between 1920-1929 motor vehicles killed more than 200,000 people in the United States (approximately four times the death toll of the previous decade), long before most adults drove. Horrifically, many of those killed were the most vulnerable, including the elderly and children, especially in dense cities where the casualties were the highest. The public was naturally concerned about safety and the Ordinance addressed their concerns about the dangers of mixing cars and pedestrians, saying, These conflicts account for the great majority of the accidents and fatalities in Los Angeles and in every other city. However, the Ordinance co-opts safety as a tactic to make more room for cars. For the control and protection of pedestrian traffic, McClintock suggests restricting pedestrians to striped crosswalks, raised platforms on wide roads called safety zones, and even tunnels created to protect schoolchildren from motor vehicles. He overlooks the social life of the street and even requires that pedestrians not stop or stand on the sidewalk except as near as physically possible to the building line to remedy what he calls the too frequent congestion of pedestrian traffic by casual groups gathering on the sidewalk. The Ordinance didnt change city streets by itself. It was accompanied by a clever public relations campaign targeted at cultural norms and advanced by E.B. Lefferts, president of the Automobile Club of Southern California. Lefferts designed the campaign to succeed where other cities had failed. As Norton documents, Lefferts told an audience at the Chicago convention of the National Safety Council that the Ordinance worked because We have recognized that in controlling traffic, we must take into consideration the study of human psychology, rather than approach it solely as an engineering problem. As Norton summarizes, Lefferts tactics aimed to make people feel embarrassed, perhaps ashamed . . . to feel the sting of ridicule. Radio broadcasts aired a public education campaign about behavior on the street, the Boy Scouts were deployed to issue cards to offenders, letting them know they were jay-walking. Ultimately, the police were emboldened to blow whistles at anyone attempting to cross the street against the signal or outside marked areasshaming them into submission. Norton discovered multiple cases where people were humiliated by police officers who picked up pedestrians . . . (mostly women) and put them on the curb. Those who protested this new treatment were arrested. The Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance established that streets would not be shared but dominated by cars. It was essentially a land grab. Once the roadway was secured for the benefit of motor vehicles, they were the heavyweight champion on streets that had once been for everyone. The Ordinance required that pedestrians were subject to the same directions and signals as govern the movement of vehicles without acknowledging that they were exceptionally vulnerable. Facing the mass of a speeding car, no other users of the roadway could compete in the physical battle to claim the streets. By upping speeds on American streets and designing them for accelerating cars, motordom prevailed. Even today, Norton says, we still hold the view that you try to make fast driving safe instead of signaling to drivers that they need to be paying attention and slowing down. The logic of the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance soon made its way into the Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance, which passed in 1928 under the direction of Herbert Hoover, then the Secretary of Commerce, in close consultation with the automobile industry. It became the template for similar ordinances throughout the country. As Norton maintains, Just about everywhere you go when youre dealing with the local rules . . . theyre descended from this ancestor, the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance. McClintock went on to author a proposal for foolproof highways, in the mid-1930s, promising safety through gradual turns, grade separations, and streets for the exclusive use of the automobileagain with the promise of increasing speeds. Those highways would ultimately bring more cars into the hearts of urban areas, with a growing human toll. Outpaced by cars, and bullied to the margins, bicyclists also lost their place on the road. Eventually, streetcar tracks were pulled up, some replaced by buses. However, mass transit was increasingly restricted as tax dollars secured by the Highway Trust Fund were unevenly divided by an 80-20 split favoring spending on highways. Unfortunately, dedicating streets to cars did not guarantee safety. In 2021, more than 43,000 people died on U.S. roads. Cars have become larger, faster, and heavier, making them even more deadly, especially to children. In America, from the time a child can walk until she reaches adulthood, being hit by a car has been the number one cause of death for many decades (surpassed only recently by firearms). Norton objects to our collective history told as if auto dominance was the inevitable direction of progress. He has uncovered the mass of people who urged the country in a different direction. It was ordinary Americans from all walks of life, rich and poor, Black, Brown and White, male and female who were objecting to their loss of the use of the street. Among them was Philadelphian Barnett Bartel who, as the Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance was being deliberated, urged Hoover to protect people on roads. Bartel describes the appalling loss of his sons to what he identifies as murdeers. Bartels 9-year-old was killed on his walk home from school by a truck that jumped the curb on his walk home from school, and his 18-year-old was run over by a car on his bike in a hit-and-run and left to bleed to death. Bartel was one of many bereaved parents whose letters crowded the local papers. Their protests continued in the 1950s when women-led baby carriage blockades obstructed streets so children could play safely outside. Norton acknowledges that it is incredibly helpful to recover these lost perspectives because then we can step out of the perspectives that we grew up in, and that we were socialized into, and look at them afresh with new eyes and possibly see opportunities. As jaywalking laws are repealed in cities and states across the country, as congestion pricing removes automobiles from the heart of the largest U.S. city to pay for transit, as pandemic-era open streets evolve into new permanent urban parkways, and as a new administration hangs its hat on advancing freedom, Norton encourages us to reconsider the 100-year history ushered in by the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance. He suggests a new version of our history that avoids the false advertising that Americans have always had a love affair with the automobile. Perhaps with the new space allotted on our streets, and the laws that govern them, we will reclaim the cultural history we gave up and the freedom of choice we once exercised so that at any age, we can walk, bike, and ride where we want to. If we recover that history, says Norton, we empower ourselves in choosing alternative futures. This story was originally published by Next City, a nonprofit news outlet covering solutions for equitable cities. Sign up for Next Citys newsletter for their latest articles and events.
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E-Commerce
On a typical day, you cant turn on the news without hearing someone say that Congress is broken. The implication is that this dereliction explains why the institution is inert and unresponsive to the American people. Theres one element often missing from that discussion: Congress is confounding in large part because its members cant hear the American people, or even each other. I mean that literally. Congressional staff serve in thousands of district offices across the nation, and their communications technology doesnt match that of most businesses and even many homes. Members district offices only got connected to secure Wi-Fi internet service in 2023. Discussions among members and congressional staff were at times cut short at 40 minutes because some government workers were relying on the free version of Zoom, according to congressional testimony in March 2024. The information systems Congress uses have existed largely unchanged for decades, while the world has experienced an information revolution, integrating smartphones and the internet into peoples daily personal and professional lives. The technologies that have transformed modern life and political campaigning are not yet available to improve the ability of members of Congress to govern once they win office. Slow to adapt Like many institutions, Congress resists change; only the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it to allow online hearings and bill introductions. Before 2020, whiteboards, sticky notes, and interns with clipboards dominated the halls of Congress. Electronic signatures arrived on Capitol Hill in 2021more than two decades after Congress passed the ESIGN Act to allow electronic signatures and records in commerce. The nation spends about US$10 million a year on technology innovation in the House of Representativesthe institution that declares war and pays all the federal governments bills. Thats just 1% of the amount theater fans have spent to see Hamilton on Broadway since 2015. It seems the story of American democracy is attractive to the public, but investing in making it work is less so for Congress itself. The chief administrative office in Congress, a nonlegislative staff that helps run the operations of Congress, decides what types of technology can be used by members. These internal rules exist to protect Congress and national security, but that caution can also inhibit new ways to use technology to better serve the public. Finding a happy medium between innovation and caution can result in a livelier public discourse. A modernization effort Congress has been working to modernize itself, including experimenting with new ways to hear local voices in their districts, including gathering constituent feedback in a standardized way that can be easily processed by computers. The House Natural Resources Committee was also an early adopter of technology for collaborative lawmaking. In 2020, members and committee staff used a platform called Madison to collaboratively write and edit proposed environmental justice legislation with communities across the country that had been affected by pollution. House leaders are also looking at what is called deliberative technology, which uses specially designed websites to facilitate digital participation by pairing collective human intelligence with artificial intelligence. People post their ideas online and respond to others posts. Then the systems can screen and summarize posts so users better understand each others perspectives. These systems can even handle massive group discussions involving large numbers of people who hold a wide range of positions on a vast set of issues and interests. In general, these technologies make it easier for people to find consensus and have their voices heard by policymakers in ways the policymakers can understand and respond to. Governments in Finland, the U.K., Canada, and Brazil are already piloting deliberative technologies. In Finland, roughly one-third of young people between 12 and 17 participate in setting budget priorities for the city of Helsinki. In May 2024, 45 U.S.-based nonprofit organizations signed a letter to Congress asking that deliberative technology platforms be included in the approved tools for civic engagement. In the meantime, Congress is looking at ways to use artificial intelligence as part of a more integrated digital strategy based on lessons from other democratic legislatures. Finding benefits Modernization efforts have opened connections within Congress and with the public. For example, hearings held by videoconference during the pandemic enabled witnesses to share expertise with Congress from a distance and open up a process that is notoriously unrepresentative. I was home in rural New Mexico during the pandemic and know three people who remotely testified on tribal education, methane pollution, and environmental harms from abandoned oil wells. New House Rules passed on January 3, 2025, encourage the use of artificial intelligence in day-to-day operations and allow for remote witness testimony. Other efforts that are new to Congress but long established in business and personal settings include the ability to track changes in legislation and a scheduling feature that reduces overlaps in meetings. Members are regularly scheduled to be two places at once. Another effort in development is an internal digital staff directory that replaces expensive directories compiled by private companies assembling contact information for congressional staff. The road ahead In 2022, what is now called member-directed spending returned to Congress with some digital improvements. Formerly known as “earmarks, this is the practice of allowing members of Congress to handpick specific projects in their home districts to receive federal money. Earmarks were abolished in 2011 amid concerns of abuse and opposition by fiscal hardliners. Their 2022 return and rebranding introduced publicly available project lists, ethics rules, and a search engine to track the spending as efforts to provide public transparency about earmarks. Additional reforms could make the federal government even more responsive to the American people. Some recent improvements are already familiar. Just as customers can follow their pizza delivery from the oven to the doorstep, Congress in late 2024 created a flag-tracking app that has dramatically improved a program that allows constituents to receive a flag that has flown over the U.S. Capitol. Before, different procedures in the House and Senate caused time-consuming snags in this delivery system. At last, the worlds most powerful legislature caught up with Pizza Hut, which rolled out this technology in 2017 to track customers pizzas from the store to the delivery driver to their front door. Lorelei Kelly is a research lead at Modernizing Congress at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce