J. P. Barlow — Internet Has Broken the Political System

MexiCali59 recommends an account up at Hillicon Valley on a speech by John Perry Barlow to the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. "The deluge of information available on the Web has made the country ungovernable, according to EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow. 'The political system is broken partly because of Internet,' Barlow said. 'It's made it impossible to govern anything the size of the nation-state. We're going back to the city-state. The nation-state is ungovernably information-rich.' ... Barlow said there is too much going on at every level in Washington, DC, for the government to effectively handle everything on its plate. Instead, he advocated citizens organizing around the issues most important to them. 'There is a circle of fat around the Beltway that is incredibly thick. We can no longer try to run this country from the center. We've got to run it, just like the Internet, from the edges.' Barlow also said that President Barack Obama's election, driven largely by small donations, has fundamentally changed American politics. He said a similar bottom-up structure is needed for governing as well. 'It's not the second coming, everything won't get better overnight, but that made it possible to see a future where it wasn't simply a matter of money to define who won these things. The government could finally start belonging to people eventually.'"

Comments

Re:I blame Al Gore for inventing the Internet!

[WED Fan]

You aren't the first woman to report that Al Gore makes her vag go dry.

Re:Broken? More like fixed.

[hondo77]

Returning to states rights is not going to bring back slavery or the like...

-1 Naive

Re:Ring of fat around the beltway

[osu-neko]

Romney or Pawlenty will be the GOP candidate in '12, if they decide Obama's weak enough.

No. No no no. Pawlenty is a terrible governor. His only talent is for spewing soundbites. Actually governing is beyond him, if he's required to work with others and within the rules. He can only be successful if he can get the courts to allow him to simply dictate the budget and do an end-run around the legislature, and is involved in a legal battle over the legality of being allowed to simply dictate the entire state budget as long as he refuses to compromise with the legislature (his argument being that certain emergency powers allow him to single-handedly dictate the state budget if the legislature doesn't agree to rubber-stamping his budget -- in other words, as governor, he should be allowed to simply get whatever he wants regardless of what the legislature wants). He's been roundly criticized by every living ex-governor of the state, including all the Republicans, who all consider him a disgrace to a once-great party. I've voted for Republicans more often than Democrats for state office, but it really saddens me to see how far the Republican party in Minnesota has fallen in the last few years. Today's Minnesota Republican Party is a far cry from the IR (Independent Republicans) of my younger days. We'll see no Arne Carlson or the great Al Quie from them anymore, neither would be electable in the present day party. It's been sad decline to watch...