Declan McCullagh On Geek Activism

die_jack_die writes "Declan McCullagh, formerly of Wired News, lately at News.com, has written an insightful piece about the realities of geek activism. Short version: spend your time coding, not lobbying. (You might also want to check out Politech , his mailing list for this sort of stuff.)" This in contrast to Lessigs call for more lobbying.

Comments

This was posted several times before

[rnd()]

This story was posted here and here already.

Assassination Politics

[aminorex]

The only geek who ever came up with a viable means
of effecting positive change in the current U.S.
political system was promptly sent to prison.
His name is Jim Bell, and he's a loon, but his
Assassination Politics may well save the U.S. from
totalitarianism and genocide, and I can hardly wait
to see it implemented.

Re:Assassination Politics

[aminorex]

It's pretty pathetic to call that a Troll.

(offtopic): Al Gore vs the Internet

[Jeremi]

The trust people have in their politicians on technical stuff kinda makes you wonder why Gore didn't get away with his "I took the initiative in creating the Internet".

Especially since he was telling the truth. Gore was one of the people who helped create the Internet as we know it today, albeit from the legislative side, rather then the technical side. Here's a quote from Vint Cerf, the person who invented the IP protocol:

Vinton Cerf: Good evening, or whatever time zone you are in, hi!! While we're waiting for questions, I'd like to clear up one little item - about the Vice President ... He really does deserve some credit for his early recognition of the importance of the Internet and the technology that makes it work. He was certainly among the first if not the first in
Congress to realize how powerful the information revolution would be and both as Senator and Vice President he has been enormously helpful in supporting legislation and programs to help further develop the Internet - for example the Next Generation Internet program. I get to see a lot of this stuff because I am a member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee and we regularly review the R&D programs of the US Government and many have relevance to the evolving Internet.

More information can be found here. Just because "Al Gore deluded himself into thinking he invented the Internet" makes for a good one-liner, doesn't mean it's so.

Re:Pretty weak.

[Ian Bicking]

It sounds like you don't like dishonest ads. That's something different than not liking negative ads. You can be dishonest in a positive ad -- for instance, taking credit for something you didn't really support. Bush did this several times with healthcare issues -- claiming credit for Texas laws that he merely didn't veto (he didn't even sign them) -- taking credit for those were dishonest.

Blaming someone for voting in a certain way is difficult, there's always extra circumstances. It's also easy to manipulate -- if you know a vote is going a certain way (no matter your personal vote), you can vote as your constituents want even if you would vote differently if your vote did matter.

But you can be honest in ads -- and more than just truthful, but truly honest -- and still have very negative things to say. It would be easier to do this if all procedings of congress were public, so you can see what people say and do, not just what they vote. You could see who got those riders put in, for instance. But even without that, there's a lot more to say than you read in the papers or hear in the debates.