I’ve written a review of Beth Simone Noveck’s Smart Citizens, Smarter State for Boston Review. It’s a vision of smarter government through crowd-sourcing and soliciting outside expertise and, just as importantly, an argument that providing expertise and solving problems is a form of civic engagement. That description might sound a little techno-utopian, but the best thing about the book is that it’s realistic about the obstacles for its agenda and what that agenda could possibly achieve.

The book does have some weaknesses that I couldn’t get into in the review. For example, it could stand to be a little less credulous about some of the crowd-sourcing examples it cites, or discuss the ways in which communities of experts can be systematically biased. But it would definitely be unfair to lump Noveck with futurists who don’t examine power dynamics when proposing to apply technology to public policy. Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve read a book that made me genuinely excited about a reform agenda.