The Coming Digital Presidency

Ranjit Mathoda writes "Marc Andreeson, the cofounder of Netscape, met Senator Barack Obama in early 2007. Mr. Andreeson recalls, "In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, Youtube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us on what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics — with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more." As a social organizer and a lover of new technologies, Mr. Obama could be expected to make good use of such tools in getting elected, and he has done so. What may not be as obvious is that Mr. Obama appears to have a keen interest in using such technologies in the act of governing. And whether Mr. Obama becomes president, or Mrs. Clinton or Mr. McCain do, these new tools have the potential to transform how government operates."

Comments

Re:Digital Presidency? more like FARKING SPAMMER

[$RANDOMLUSER]

You have GOT to be kidding. You're actually using a Google search of news.admin.net-abuse.email for "barack obama" as some kind of "evidence" of something? news.admin.net-abuse.email is the preferred home newsfroup of every k00k, forger, impostor, sock-puppet and whack-job on Usenet. It's the home of countless flame-wars, ridiculous accusations and general raving stupidity. My god, I wear a tinfoil hat AND a condom when I read that group. If that's the best you've got, then you should just go back under your bridge, troll.

Re:That's cool, and yet not

[SanityInAnarchy]

On the other hand, I really don't like the idea of whitehouse.gov becoming a government-run myspace which encourages people to give the government even more personal information about themselves.

How about one which encourages government officials to give people information about themselves?

He's talking about doing basically the opposite of what you (and others) seem to be assuming. And it is one of the cooler ideas I have seen in awhile -- one which none of the other candidates seem to have caught on to.

Re:A bit presumptuous, no?

[flitty]

Very interesting defense of Rev. Wright from Mike Huckabee

"[Y]ou can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do," Huckabee says. "It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what ... Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable, years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Rev. Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say 'Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that.'" Later, he defended Wright's anger, too: "As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say 'That's a terrible statement!' ... I grew up in a very segregated South. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names..."