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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."
A bit presumptuous to assume that, with Democrats fighting like cats and dogs among themselves now, the "Coming Digital Presidency" won't actually feature a 72-year-old man who probably thinks YouTube is a new type of waterpark ride.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I really like the idea of a presidential candidate who is interested in technology and bright enough to find ways to apply it to reaching a goal. 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. I guess my problem is that I find this an appealing characteristic in a candidate, but a scary characteristic in a President. How inconvenient.
The candidate I saw leveraging the power of the Internet the most, early in this election, was Ron Paul -- and it looked like most people just used it to smear the guy. EG. "Nobody but spammers and a few computer geeks with loud mouths care about him!"
Ron Paul is a cautionary counterexample; It's all very well building up grassroots support on the Internet, but if your grassroots comprises a mishmash of troofers, stoppers, lunatics, antisemites, conspiracy theorists, naive libertarians, politically vacuous "fuck the system" types, and a spattering of basement-bound non-voting teenagers and various other subcultures and social outcasts entirely ill at ease with Middle America, then it's (as we kept trying to tell them) not going to be enough.
A nice idea but to stop the inevitable trolling you're going to need some decent moderation. But then you'll probably get risk averse moderators taking down potentially inflammatory comments who will then be criticized for stifling free speech. And then when the people who might want to join in hear that free speech is being stifled over at opengov.com they'll come to /., and similar sites, in their hoards to moan about how repressive their government has become. Flame wars will be inevitable. /. will seize up, I'll have to go back to work. It's just another no-win situation.
I find the entire idea of creating a wired democracy to be revolting. The best government is seen in its effects and not heard. I don't want to think about government or politics in my day to day existence and would much rather just have the professionals that I elect get on with the business of governing competently. I don't want big crusades - I've had enough crusades with Bush. When I elect a President and a Congress, I don't want them asking me my opinion every 30 seconds. I want to know that they thought through the issues and made the best decisions they could, kept the army in powder, the navy afloat, the planes in the air, the satellites working, the bridges up and the roads in good repair. If it turns out that they do something that I politically don't agree with, I can -actually live with that-, so long as they bring a general air of competence to the table.
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That isnt that bad of an idea...
We have unfair representation when compared to prior representative-"voting citizen" ratio of our countrys past.
One way to fix that would be to have 5000 congressmen. But that would cost too much! That is, if we force them to be in House/Senate. Our technology could easily get each and every congresscritter a t-1 to their house and have net-voting. GPG is the PKI that's free to use, therefore congresscritters could post messages with GPG, and conduct publically accountable voting. Aww, no more voice votes.
Since voting could be done from any congresscritter T-1 (ip checks would not allow GPG signed messages from other IPs), it would also allow collaboration if they choose to meet.
And doing this method would eliminate a "central" point of government. I say that cause Washington DC would be easy to bomb, either by air or sea. It's pretty darn close to the shore. How would you disable a government that meets virtually across the whole USA? We in the tech community would agree that eliminating a SPOF would be a good idea.
Unfortunately, whenever politicians start talking about "the will of the people" (see 2000,2002,2004,2006 election results) thats a sign we're moving away from a Republic. When candidates want 51% of the country to rule over the 49% thats a sign we're moving from a Republic to a demagogy. That's what scares me the most about the Obama/Edwards populism is that they are trying to use the power of the mob to gain power. The one thing that makes me fear the end of American dominance is the rise of a demagogue, and the attitude that we can't move forward until everyone else catches up. The one example I can really think of for this is that Obama wants to "delay" the manned spaceflight plans by 5 years in order to increase funding to education. To me that's no better than Caesar buying bread for all the paupers in Rome.
That is not at question however - these technologies are a low-level protocol which will require some higher-level (as of yet undeveloped?) protocol to become meaningful and coherent.
are we perhaps seeing an organized campaign(s) manipulating Web 2.0 sites for their own purposes? With anonymity of site users, who can tell? It's a good argument against trusting anonymous sources, but even Wikipedia with Wikiscanner allows a certain amount of accountability. The problem appears to be tracing back rumour/FUD/misinformation to its source and a relatively (more objective than subjective) trustworthy mechanism to evaluate sources over time. Social Media sites dramatically lower the costs of individual citizens involvement in the political process. That's a Good Thing. Yet if we don't anticipate and accept the manipulation of those sites by external agencies and those with far too much time on their hands, we're bloody damn fools. Agreed - social networking is still pretty darn young as a technology concept though, I predict that by the end of this year we'll start seeing more ways in which we can detect and thwart the devious plot of Company X, Campaign Y or Astroturf Org Z. FWIW, I'm working on one now, and I don't expect that I'm alone.- After the President signs a bill, it is sent to the polls once a year to be voted on by the people. Any bill not recieving 50% of the popular vote will not become law.
- All laws expire ten years after enactment, but can be reenacted if resubmitted and voted on by Congress, signed by the President, and voted up by the people.
We have way too many laws.The idea of using Facebook, MySpace, and Digg as instruments of government is, in some ways, breathtakingly foolish
In some ways?
The anonymity of the Internet, combined with the speed of activity on the Web, seems to lead in many cases to an amplification of our baser instincts
What do you mean "our?" There always have been idiots, always will be. What about the anonymity of the ballot?
Do we want our political leaders receiving input from commercial Web sites, with no means of identifying who or what is promoting certain causes?
Do we want our political leaders receiving input from foreign and domestically owned commercial corporations, with no meaningful input from the citizenry? That's what we have now.
Debates on sites such as Daily Kos revert on a daily base to name calling, ad hominen attacks, and sheer bloody-mindedness
Sounds like Congress.
And you mention diaries? How about journals? Am I the guy you're warning me about?
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Except the facts are that Republicans actually embrace rightwing bigot preachers, while all we have here on "the Left" is a preacher who occasionally gets angry at the facts of America's killing innocent people and institutionalized racism. Hell, Pat Robertson ran for president as a Republican, and got millions of Republican votes. That's a pretty definite association. And every Republican president or candidate for it has sought and received Robertson's and Falwell's enthusiastic endorsement - not just sat in their church once in a while.
Spare the supposed outrage about killing innocent people when your we-hate-america preachers lack the guts and the conviction to say these are human beings.
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I know a guy that old.
He was the first to set up a punch-card system for what was new to them: computing.
Oh yeah. They're old so they cant figure out a User Interface. meh.
don't claim "moral" superiority. I claim intellectual superiority, and whatever kind of superiority honesty gives me. You can claim only the lies and hypocrisy that Republicans earn with your projections of all your own worst fears about your own major malfunctions onto the people who care to tell the truth about you, who try to stop the damage you've unloaded that everyone can see is destroying everything you touch.
You don't have either. You are not intellectually better, and you are not honest with yourself.
But par for the course to hear some kind of contrived argument that it's "divisive" for judging people like you whose unregulated guns and trucks are actually killing people every day, and even threatening our entire civilization.
Guns don't kill people. People do. And you are divisive.
And no one but the 25% who still think Bush is god believes you. Zero tolerance for you faithy, crooked Republicans.
See, now that's divisive, because, about 35% of the people still approve of Bush. So, you can't claim zero tolerance for 35% of society, and not call yourself divisive. You just divided society! And then, there are a lot of people who believe in owning firearms as a fundamental human right. There are a lot of people that drive trucks responsibly. Now, you go and divide them too. See, you just keep dividing away, ever blissfully ignorant that your own totalitarian impulses are what is really dividing the country. Me, I just want low taxes and to keep my guns and my truck, but you, you attack me. And yet, I'm divisive for not wanting to change my life for your damaged view of the world. Why, didn't you already say you were a poor, abused victim of the evil corporations? Joining you would be the same as trying to team up with a kicked dog. You need, help, my poor victimized, disenfranchised friend, not political power. Best to leave the country to us, since you can't even pay your mortgage.
This is my sig.
Well as far as attending the church goes, it is reported that Bill Clinton has seen Pastor Wright. Also Oprah Winfrey has attended the church over the years on and off. Does this mean that Bill Clinton and Oprah hate white people too? If everyone believed everything their pastors said then we would all be in a very different world.
Seeing a man one or twice is not the same as having them as your spiritual mentor for 20 years. The Clinton's will almost certainly have had contact with him, as he's a bigwig in the black community (a big portion of their constituency prior to Barak), that doesn't make them privy to his racist outbursts the way someone who has known him and been mentored by him for 20+ years almost certainly is. Equating the two is as disingenuous as dismissing Wright's overt racism with a "Your not black, you wouldn't understand" in one breath, followed by an apologist "Black preachers have been saying appallingly racist things for decades, so you really can't consider it racist" (anyone beside me see the illogic of that?), as Obama's supporters have done.
As for Oprah, she chucked more than a decade of support for Hilary Clinton out the window to support a freshman senator who is on tape himself saying he wouldn't run in 2008 because he wasn't qualified for the job. Obama is nowhere near as strong on women's issues as Hilary, he's no stronger on core Democratic issues than Hilary (with the possible exception of the Iraq war, at a time when Hilary, along with the rest of us, was deceived into believing Saddam was on the brink of having nuclear weapons), and certainly as a one term senator has less of a track record on all these issues. Since gender issues can be ruled out as a reason for Oprah to dump Hilary for Barak, and core Democratic issues can be ruled out, as well as his track record versus hers, it suggests her change of heart has more to do with ethnicity than anything else...which bears a disturbing parallel to Pastor Wright's rhetoric.
I voted for Obama for senate, but I'm very disturbed at how he's run his campaign, and the willingness of the Democrats to shunt aside a woman with decades of experience and qualifications in favour of a first-term senator who speaks well but will be even more of a newbie in office than Baby Bush was.
The whole situation is ugly. We have 3 choices: a competent, experienced woman, an inexperienced man who says the right things but whose competence is open to question, and a conservative who is likely to continue many of Bush's worst policies even if his rhetoric is softer and slightly more intelligent. And all three have run campaigns that have strayed well outside of the bounds of acceptability IMHO.
That said, the one candidate who might have gotten America out of the morass is unlikely to win the nomination, which leaves us with the question: will Obama through inexperience do less or more damage than McCain's right wing politics? Throw in Obama's apparent long-term acceptance of racist rhetoric and it really makes you wonder what the country is in for under an Obama presidency. I don't know the answer, but I suspect, like others, I will be voting Green or Libertarian this next election as I find both likely winners to be more or less equally lousy. Unless by some miracle Hilary does take the nomination, and I really don't see that happening, irrespective of how desperately the country needs her quality of leadership.
All in all, it's times like these that make me damn glad I emigrated.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What a fool you (and the 25% of people who agree with you) are. OK, Bush's approval might be a few points above 25%, like 29% now and 27% in February, bouncing around that range for nearly a year. But what's the difference? What kind of contrived nonsense that I'm "dividing the country" by refusing to make a distinction without a difference?
The kind of nonsense that someone who ignores that people kill people with guns (and their environment with trucks) will happily ignore in your faithy paradise. You will change your life, whether the government, the economy or nature makes you. BUt since I care about my life more than yours that you're wasting dragging the rest of us down, I'm happy to see you divided from the weapons you're fatuously insisting on playing with.
See, now you are changing the story. The fact of the matter is, you claimed that we were being divisive, and now, all of sudden, come the rationalizations for why you want to take away might rights. I have a right to keep and bear arms. I have a right to my truck. You are not taking that away. If you try, then there will be civil war. It's really that simple. You do not have a right to steal my possessions because of your pathological need to feel safe.
So while I'm happy to benefit from the catastrophe you Republicans have wrought on our country,... try and stop it
Why are all the subprime states Democratic states? Just checking....the fact of the matter is, the national economy is being dragged down by cities and states that Democrats have driven into the ground. Look at Michigan. Look at Cleveland. In fact, let's all have a look at Illinois. Democrats have looted those places for years, and now that all the businesses have left, to avoid getting further raped, you go and cry fowl. I mean, seriously. You claim to want to create jobs, and claim to value opportunity, but, at the same time, any time a corporation tries to set up shop in a Democratic state, they get taxed to the hilt, all the construction is blocked by environmental lawsuits, and then the crooks come in looking for a few favors to get the commissioner a new deck, and then, finally, when that's all done, the union marches in, demands a cut of the paycheck of every worker, and in the end, delivers nothing but a bunch of swimming pools for the heads of unions compliments of the so-called union pensions for workers.
It's a sad joke.
You know, Obama might well win the election. Your side always has been good at scaring people into believing that they are not capable of charting their own destiny, that, they need bullies and thugs like you to protect them (so that you can steal from these people you claim to protect). It's ironic, I suppose, in that, as much as you protest Republican fear mongering on the war on terror, you do it for nearly every other aspect of a person's live. You want to steal power so that you can stop guns, cars, private schools, private clubs, tvs, imports, trade, communications, radio talk shows, corporations, companies, along with every productive enterprise in the United States. We've seen the track record of your economic policies - the protectionist fear mongering that prolonged the Great Depression, the 1960s liberalism that ruined a generation, and now, in the shadow of all that wreckage, there's a handful of people getting ahead and getting out, and your answer is to destroy them too because you can't stand to see someone succeed.
So, the moral of the story is, you can talk about being patriotic and helping out america as much as you want, but, you aren't seeking to build anything. You are seeking to drag other people down so you and your buddies can cash in on the patronage jobs and make-work industries. Patriots add value to the country, and you don't.
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My initial thought (however cynical it may come across?) is: Is this really just another plea of "Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!" ?
If you're wondering whether Obama's enthusiasm for the Internet and technology goes beyond "hip and in touch", you might consult Lawrence Lessig's endorsement of him. And after reading Obama's tech paper, I can't say I think any other candidate's compares even in showing awareness of issues.
That said, the fact that I see the net strongly leveraged elsewhere -- including Paul's rather impressive campaign -- makes me *less* jaded about the increasing use of social networking. Nor do I think it's really surprising or affected: to some extent, all politics is (among other things) organizing. Real-world social networks were a huge part of politics before social networks came to the web, it's a completely natural fit now that's here. So to one degree or another, *everybody* is using it. I think part of the reason Paul stands out in his use is his unfortunate and somewhat unfair uphill battle in traditional media -- he really didn't have anywhere else to go.
Now, I'd agree it sometimes seems Obama is using this tool more heavily and talking more about his use of tools than anyone else in the field other than Paul. But I think to the extent that's true, it's largely because up until the last 4 years of his political career, organizing has been a big part of what he does -- his start, for goodness sake, was as a community organizer. It really does appear he has a philosophy that includes bottom-up organization as a component of well-balanced politics. And what the social networking tools do that's new to politics is increase the reach and efficiency of that kind of organizing. They only marginally bolster the traditional political networks, but they're a huge boost at the grassroots level, especially the more you know about grassroots organizing.
I also would agree that not all candidates are created equal on the tech-friendly front, however. In particular, McCain has some issues with not fighting the internet, and while Clinton might have some good progressive impulses regarding it, I don't trust her not to throw it under a bus if some other "expediency" arises.
So while I'm sometimes a bit disappointed we didn't get a race like Obama vs Paul -- one that I think would have essentially signaled a real end to business as usual and a significant shift to digital politics -- I still think Obama stands out as an evolutionary step in the right direction, if not the Paul revolution.
One other thing about a part of the premise of the post ("Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!"). This isn't necessarily directed at the poster I'm responding to, but I'm noticing a high degree of frequency in attacks on Obama that are essentially "Sure he SEEMS great, but SEEMING isn't the same things as BEING great and we just don't know what's REALLY behind HIM!" To some extent, I don't blame people for thinking this way. We've been let down pretty severely by quite a bit of our political leadership recently. And it's hard to really know whether what you know about a candidate is image or fact.
But I also think the time for this kind of talk about Obama is past. He's been in the spotlight for a while, there's plenty of material available about him and written by him to get genuinely familiar with the substance of his history and positions. I don't have a problem with people arguing about what they don't like about Obama's stated policies, or a vote he made in the past. But at this point, anybody bringing up this kind of "we don't KNOW" or "he's all STYLE and TALK" rehtoric isn't bringing up an insightful point, they're showing their own need to do homework. Or, in some cases, acting with ulterior motives.
Tweet, tweet.