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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?"
Why isn't protection for open source software and limitation of intelectual property law a political issue? I never heard it discussed in the presidential election. What can we do to force politicians to bring these issues to the forefront? Don't we want to put all the FUD behind us?
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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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Funny.
I thought that was what the guys who wrote the US Constitution said when they were done?
Are we just saying we mean it for real this time, or are we just fooling ourselves?
Eternal vigilence is the only real way to keep the politics bottom-up.
It does help when the leaf nodes in the socio-political processes have as much access to the technology that controls information as the root nodes, of course.
I wonder how it is that we moderns have access to that technology when so much of history is full of examples of political and social systems where it was assumed that the masses must be strictly guarded to access to it.
Or are we fooling ourselves?
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
... the two major political parties work very differently. The Liberal Party (who are the more *right*-leaning) have a top-down model broadly similar to how both major US parties work - decisions are made by the man/men at the top, and filter down to the underlings whose job it is to make them happen.
The Labor Party have a bottom-up model, where various factions (e.g. trade unions) push ideas, solutions etc. upwards to the man at the top. Infighting within the Labor Party is very much out in the open as the various factions try to win out, whereas infighting in the Liberal Party is almost exclusively carried out behind closed doors.
One thing that has been a pattern is that, when the Labor Party has been running the country, their leaders have almost always been extremely charismatic people. Keating, Hawke, Whitlam (and now we're back 30 years) have had very strong public personas. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, has had "grey men" in charge whenever they've been in power - nobody ever accused Howard, Fraser, McMahon, Holt or Gorton of being particularly visionary in the way they went about doing things (OK, Gorton is a slight exception, but he was nowhere near as charismatic as any of the Labor guys).
Here's my point, at long last: if you equate the open-source (bottom up movement) with the Australian Labor Party (bottom up model), maybe the thing that's missing is a highly charismatic leader for the open-source movement. Maybe FOSS needs someone who can present the vision, paint the future as rosy, etc. etc., while managing to galvanise the hard-headed FOSS coders behind the scenes to buy into the same vision. Someone who can stand up and convince a room full of sceptical businessmen and politicians that he knows what their problems are and FOSS can address them, while being able to stand up in a room full of C++ and Java coders and convince them his coding and design skills are on a par with theirs.
From what I've read, Miguel de Icaza would possible be the foremost candidate for that type of role at this particular instant, but I've got no idea if that's a role he sees himself filling at any point in the future.
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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.
Now the news and editorials come from everywhere. We can discuss the same issue with hundreds of people in a day. Opinions can be formed with the help of a diverse and eclectic group of people. While this system scares traditional news outlets like daily papers, local tv and radio stations, it works very well. It is the bazaar.
Even though I don't think when Eric wrote his landmark article about the history of GNU/Linux it could or would be applied to politics, I think parts of it fit this issue quite well.
The Internet and FOSS have truly changed the way we live. Is it any surprise that it's also changing politics too? BTW, if you haven't read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" read it soon. It's great stuff.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
I've actually been experimenting with open politics a bit myself. See my Journal. It turns out, I've started defining a political platform. I'd love some wider comments on it.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
You want some rational arguments against Bush?
- He spends money with more abandon than any liberal in history
- He lies to the American public
- He lauches unprovoked attacks into third world countries
- He can't figure out how to win them once he's started them
- He shows no respect for the constitution
- He shows no respect for civil liberties
- He uses legal loopholes and questionable logic to rationalize going against pretty much every American Ideal, from "innocent until proven guilty" and "seperation of church and state" to "the right to a fair and speedy trial"
- He routinely places the good of corporations over the good of individuals
- etc., etc.
Before any Democrats reading this get to smug, ask yourself: was Kerry the best you could come up with? "I have a plan" and "Wrong, Wrong, Wrong"? Both parties have any number of sensible, credible people they could have run...and the real problem is they ran Bush and Kerry. The race was so close for so long mostly because neither one of them was worth voting for, except as a way to keep the other from winning.-- MarkusQ
Any point that movie was trying to make is completely lost because you know that if Moore had found evidence to the contrary of what he wants to believe, he wouldn't show it. How could any sane person trust someone like that as a source of information.
Has Bush been open with the American people about his failure to find the WMDs? Hell no. He just repeats that there was a certain threat. Based on what? He won't talk about it. Now why should people trust our president if he doesn't show us the other side of the argument?
I've read the rebuttals on F911 and the only points I can concede are based on tone. I think a lot of people didn't want to hear that the president did something wrong - after all, America only stands for good things. Now, if people write it off because its too far from what they want to believe, I'm not sure what the right thing to do it. Say the president only lied a little bit? Billion dollar no bid contracts to the VP's former company are okay?
Its absolutely silly to say that F911 "is the most blatant display of propaganda they have ever seen in their lives". How many americans have ever come across Rush Limbaugh? Ever read the New York Post?
Unlike your North Korea Korean war museum example, you CAN do research to find the truth about Micheal Moore's assertions. Perhaps too many Americans are too lazy to do it, but even the most anti-Moore people haven't be able to counter the claims I've made in my previous post.
If Americans are too lazy to find the truth, we're all fucked.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.