O’Reilly Media’s Alex Howard interviewed musician and tech entrepreneur MC Hammer at the 2011 Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco where, towards the end, Hammer talks about the impact social media, mobile and crowdsourcing have on government.
Excerpt:
"Local governments, they're not good at engaging the public at large. They're still finding their feet with respect to using these platforms and dropping their guards and stop being afraid of social media, because remember, these tools create a level of transparency that sometimes can be uncomfortable. You no longer dictate the corporate message to the community, but the community speaks back, and they voice their opinions."
http://youtu.be/oHomLHv4vpA?t=6m7s