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The Rise of Open-Source Politics
Incognitius writes "There's a great article in this week's The Nation about the rise of open-source politics. Never before has the top-down world of presidential campaigning been opened to a bottom-up, networked community of ordinary voters. Applied to political organizing, open source means opening up participation in planning and implementation to the community, letting competing actors evaluate the value of your plans and actions, being able to shift resources away from bad plans and bad planners and toward better ones, and expecting more of participants in return. What do you guys think, is open source a good model for politics?"
A large voter bloc that always comes out to elections is seniors. To candidates, it's more efficent to cater to the issues of seniors than to many of the other issues out there (not to mention the AARP's enormous influence in politics). And contrary to what you might think, seniors care more about whether they'll have Medicare tomorrow than whether the DMCA is repealed. Maybe if more young people voted this might change.
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For instance, open-source style politics was the reason Howard Dean was leading before the primaries. It allowed him to reach out to more people than he otherwise would have. In general the Internet is causing the voice of the people to be heard, and we should expect more Howard Dean-style campaigns in the future.
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The simple answer is that Republicans take in a lot of money from the Media corporations and Democrats take in a lot of money from Media personalities (actors and executives). The computer industry is nearly universially pro-Patent and spreads money to both parties. Even big Linux-backers like IBM and HP are known for their patents.
Futhermore, you are fighting the Great Myth of the American Inventor, and the idea that the patent/copyright system are the foundations of American Industry and its cultural influence.
Most engineers, songwriters, and filmmakers support the IP system as it stands. This is only an issue on GNU/Lunatic Fringe places like slashdot.
Open source software does not generate millions of dollars that can be funneled into a politicians pockets. As such it will never be an political issue, unless it threatens some proprietary software vendors enough. Then the politicians will pass laws to regulate open source software which will in effect make it illegal to write and dissiminate free software.
Unless you are a special interest with lots of money to buy a politician your pet issue will not have a voice in government circles. That is the way the system works.
If you want to force politicians to bring these issues to the forefront you will need to pass the hat and collect a sizeable wad of cash which may eventually attract a politician that you can sway to push your issue.
So pass the hat and start looking for a congress critter of your very own.
Ok, I saw no mention in the article of the echo chamber that Democrats lived in for the last 4 years. If we're going to take back the country, we need to instill some discipline: STOP ACTING LIKE THE GUY ACROSS THE DIVIDE IS AN IDIOT. Until we get every single Democrat repeating that in their sleep, nothing's gonna change.
Open-Source Politics means: "I think Republicans are idiots. What's this? Lord Omlette says I shouldn't treat Republicans as idiots? FUCK THAT NOISE! I'ma ignore him and surf a different website. Oooh look, this blog agrees w/ me that Republicans are idiots. Hurray for the Internet!"
All the nifty tools and new communications paradigms are not going to change a goddamned thing until we get back to recognizing that the opposing force are Americans, same as us.
[o]_O
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They've even convinced us that it even goes down to the very fabric of our being... Who are you? A Liberal, or A Conservative? So it's vitally important to *them* that *they* be the ones to draw the line... make the definition. But of course it's not true. You can believe whatever you want about any different issue. Son of Reagan shows up at the DNC to promote stem cells... and people are SHOCKED.
But no politician has to worry about the lines being blurred when it's a battle of Us or Them. Not until you destroy that paradigm can you begin to have influence.
They need to remember that the next election so they don't do a repeat of this election. The anti-Bush crowd did an excellent job alienating the Republicans and motivating them to vote for Bush. In the process they failed to build up the support they needed for their own candidate. Any rational argument against Bush was quickly lost by screaming loonies calling Bush, Hitler and insulting the intelligence of anyone who didn't have the same negative opinion.
They put the Republicans on the defensive which resulted in Bush being re-elected, the Republicans getting a larger margin in the house and senate and the minority leader losing his job. The first time that's happened in 50 years.
I think the problem was that the Democrats thought they were in the majority judging by all the various polls and world opinion and they didn't need "idiots" voting for their guy. Turns out they really were the minority.
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Most people I know involved in the generation of IP are also chafed by its limitations. Videogame makers looking to get popular songs into their games need to try to license hundreds, as one in ten will actually get through the tedious and difficult rights process. Filmmakers wishing to make documentaries from existing sources frequently bump into arbitrary, demeaning decisions, like Fox's refusal to allow a documentary filmmaker to use footage of President Bush in an upcoming film. And IBM weilds its patent war chest like a shield against others who would attempt to intimidate the big blue with their patents. Basically everyone in the software industry has bumped into some ridiculous patent or another, even if they are busy generating ridiculous patents of their own.
IP law is like lawyers: for every one on the right side, there is another one on the wrong side.
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This is nothing more than a rephrasing of the Jeffersonian ideas of strong local governments and weak federal government.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
While you may have a point that the people that designed Kerry's site were better informed about the technology they were using(as evidenced by the html comments in the site...), do you really think that Bush asked his webmasters/designers to go make sure his site was hosted on a Microsoft machine? It was probably more along the lines of a friends recommendation "yes mr. president, sir. I've used this company before and whenever the site goes down they're always right there fixing it..."
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
I'd have to disagree with that. What about:
1) device drivers
2) proprietary video/audio codecs
3) ArcGIS
4) AutoCAD
5) Statistica
6) many games
Numbers 1-2 stopped me from migrating my Dad to linux, while numbers 3-5 keep me locked into a Windows world.
I've found that some people believe that specialized software will remain proprietary. Others choose to live in a self-imposed "island of freedom", limiting what they can do on a computer. In any case, I don't think its accurate to say all types of software are headed to be open-source. Its a nice myth, but unfortunately not the case currently.