Slashdot Mirror
Is The Net About to Transform Politics?
It's not going to happen. Washington is the last holdout against the wall-busting power of the Net. They'll go kicking and screaming, but not next year.
The pundits are already hyping the 2000 Presidential election as the year in which the Net transforms mainstream politics.
The Internet, USA Today reported last week, "is a new wave in politics, one that could rival or surpass the impact of TV's."
Gushes Newsweek in a cover report on how the Internet is changing America: "E-campaigning has been upgraded from novelty to necessity in the blink of an eye. Candidates must now compete in the wilds of the Web, a world with its own rules, politics and governing may never be the same."
It sounds breathtakingly significant.
But don't buy it.
The pundits are wrong, especially when it comes to the 2000 election.
They ought to be right. Everything - the people, the technology, the timing - is in place for that Net tidal wave, except for one seminal ingredient: politicians.
Savvy political figures from Kennedy to Reagan to Clinton have always understood that technologies like television, radio and the Net are a powerful new way to communicate their philosophies. Reagan's "Morning In America" campaign was perhaps the best recent use of TV to evoke a successful political ideology.
Reagan, a professional actor, didn't really need to understand the details of politics or government, and never did. What he did understand was TV, which enabled him to reach a vast audience with a powerful philosophy.
In order for the Net to do the same thing, a national politician would have to emerge who really understands the Net in the way Reagan grasped visual imagery. There is no such person running for President of the United States.
Here, George W. Bush's decision to put his list of campaign contributors online is considered a monumental hi-tech political step, sending the Washington pols and their co-dependent reporters into a frenzy. But the information, which was already available to the public, doesn't alter the political system.
Al Gore would like to be Father of the Net, but he's had as much trouble capturing the imagination of the wired world as the other one. Elizabeth Dole is too busy campaigning against pornography on the Internet to notice she's by-passing the biggest untapped political constituency of our time.
John McCain has a savvier grasp of telecommunications issues than most other national politicians, but he's hardly an interactive political figure. Steve Forbes campaign promised to conduct the "first Internet-based campaign" in American history. But vast databases aren't a transforming digital political idea, and Forbes himself has hardly set American imaginations aflame, online or off.
Gore, Steve Forbes, McCain, Dan Quayle and others have already held moderated chats on outside sites such as washingtonpost.com and CNN. Dole's campaign, says she plans on participating in online chats starting this fall. None of these "chats" have made any news, sparked any political discussions, or had any impact on politics or individual campaigns. In the fact, the very notion of a single politician "chatting" with the tens of millions of people online manages to trivialize both the Net and the political system at the same time.
There's probably never been a meaningful live political chat in the history of the Internet. The very form makes the idea ridiculous.
Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura used his pioneering website jesse.net to raise money and round up volunteers, making a successful end-run around well-funded opponents. But Ventura isn't likely to leap to higher office, with or without the Net.
Some people are experimenting with political uses of the Net. Last year, Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, husband-and-wife software developers in Silicon Valley, threw up a website - moveon.org -- to protest the Clinton impeachment. Within days generated a half-million electronic petititon signatures that threatened to clog the servers on Capitol Hill. But they didn't slow or stop the impeachment process.
The Democracy Online Project studied 161 Congressional and gubernatorial campaigns last year and found that 84 per cent of employed some form of online politicking. Seventy-six percent used websites to recruit volunteers, and 63 per cent were at least somewhat effective in persuading visitors to vote for the candidates.
Most of these campaigns raised some money online. Given the growth of computers, drooling political consultants believe the 2000 election will see the first significant contributions through computer links. John Phillips, president of the political fund-raising software company Aristotle, estimates that more than $25 million will be raised via the Internet by Election Day. But even if that occurs, it's a drop in the anticipated $600 million Election Year 2000 bucket.
As of September, Democratic contender Bill Bradley had raised only $330,000 of his $12 million presidential war chest online, and most of Bush's and Gore's campaign cash has come through the usual fund-raisers, committees and distinctly low-tech checks.
It makes sense that more and more money would be donated digitally, since more and more voters are going online. But transferring money on the Net isn't the same thing as transforming politics.
Some political and journalistic seers believe the first demonstration of Net power will erupt spontaneously: somebody will give a dazzling speech or perform brilliantly in a debate; voters, increasingly at ease rushing using their browsers for online financial transactions, will donate tens of millions of dollars through political websites overnight, and wake up snoozing Washington.
My own notion is that this may happen outside the context of a formal or traditional campaign, as with Ventura. The first Net candidate will almost certainly be young, someone who's grown up using computers and browsing the Web.
Most Washington politicians and the reporters who cover them are too mired in their incestuous talk show-dinner party, spin-the-news atmosphere to get what the Net is about or figure out how to use it politically.
Some of this is institutional constipation. All during the Monica Lewinsky drama, the U.S. Congress revealed itself as a remote, antideluvian institution unable to read the mood of the American public or respond rationally to it.
Part is journalism's continuing struggle to come to terms with the Digital Age. For many political writers, the Net is a nightmare, since it will inevitably erode their monopoly on communicating directly with politicians, and presenting politics to the rest of the country.
It's no accident that Ventura came from about as far outside Washington as you can get - Midwestern local government and pro wrestling.
Washington's political and journalistic elites are so disconnected from most Americans that any politician who goes online - even an ex-wrestler with a confusing political agenda - automatically becomes a charismatic populist.
But when some future Net-savvy politician does figure out how to use the World Wide Web, he or she will come nose-to-nose with the powerful ethos of interactivity -- and politics will finally be reborn. The most likely time for this to happen: the 2002 congressional elections, well away from Washington, national political reporters, or political conventions and primaries.
American-style democracy dates to an era when most voters never got to lay eyes on their elected officials, let alone participate in civic information-gathering and decision-making. Washington was constructed to do the talking and voting on behalf of constituents unable to join. Technology, especially computer technology, has completely transformed that reality as Wall Street, among others, is rapidly learning.
Voters can connect instantly with their government representatives, gather information, register opinions. Just as wired Americans are re-shaping financial markets, the music industry and retailing, they will inevitably get around to beating down the walls around Washington with their keyboards, and ASDL lines.
Washington may well be the last holdout. The music industry, banking, education, science, medicine and entertainment are all reeling - and changing -- as Internet-driven interactivity threatens their primacy and their profit margins.
How would a pol take advantage of the Internet?
Politicians need to understand the particular characteristics of the young, educated, technologically-centered people working, playing and communicating through networked computers.
In l997, Wired magazine and Merrill Lynch jointly conducted a Digital Citizen survey to discover distinct political values emerging from the online world.
The survey found that wired Americans - people who use computers to access the Net and the Web regularly -- were different from the non-Wired, often in ways that contradicted conventional wisdom.
They tend, for instance, to be enthusiastic and optimistic about democracy. Perhaps because they benefit from it, they love the free market system. They resist labels like "Republican" and "Democrat" or "liberal" and "conservative;" they regard issues one by one, rather than invoking ideological affiliation.
Smart and intensely communicative, they share pop culture as a common passion - they love movies, technology, TV and music in particular -- and are more likely to be talking about the weekend box office grosses at the water cooler on Monday than about anything they saw on "Meet The Press." But they're suspicious of conventional media, with little patience for the self-righteous moral policing or politics-as-wrestling presented on Washington talk shows.
A Net-savvy politician would trumpet the Net as a boon to research, a liberator of information, a spur to community building and new forms of communications.
He or she would bang the drums about preserving freedom online, jump into the ferocious battle over encryption, confront the growing power of the megacorporations flooding the Net, and advocate a competitive business environment where entrepeneurs can also flourish. He might embrace the techno-idealism of online political movements like open source and free software.
He might push for some national discussion of issues raised by supercomputing, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, technologically driven advances with enormous social and cultural implications, good and bad.
The Net pol might favor the equitable distribution of technology, so that America won't split (as it already has) into techno-haves and have nots.
A Net pol would leave moral posturing to preachers, parents and individual families. Enough of laws forbidding indecent language, unworkable and chaotic ratings systems, or copies of the Ten Commandments posted in schools as solutions to complex social programs. The Net is in its second generation, and it would be nice if politicians were as mature.
A Net campaigner needs some smart geeks high up in his campaign as well as slick pollsters. And this is important: he would have to be interactive, rather than pretending to be. Bush made a lot of noise in September by announcing that he'd list every campaign contribution received on his new website (www.georgebush.com), but he's about as interactive as a concrete piling.
Interactivity is a political, not a technological idea. It means sharing, not giving up, power. The Net candidate would not simply go on live "chats" but engage in some running online conversations, browsing the Web, e-mailing voters, downloading files, trawling through ICQ chat message boards where harried homemakers post messages while the kids nap, and teens go looking for MP3's.
Over time, this kind of interaction is transformative, to journalists as well as politicians. Different points-of-view seep into one's consciousness. Isolation and disconnection are tough to maintain. An interactive politician would have known from the first the public wasn't going to go for Bill Clinton's impeachment, no matter what Kenneth Starr found or did.
The candidate of the Net would re-engineer the political website -- from a static advertising and fund-raising vehicle peddling buttons and stickers to a genuinely democratic forum that uses digital technologies to amass continuously - updated information on what citizens want their leaders to address.
Entertainment and business currently top the list of sought-after content on the Net, according to Cyber Dialogue. Politicis isn't even on the list, a sharp commentary on the world's leading democracy.
At the heart of the Internet culture are the programmers, investment capitalists, designers, developers, entrepeneurs and users who comprise the core of the networked computing industry. The first politician who wins their allegiance will have enlisted the country's most powerfully-connected constituencies -and one of its most affluent and civic-minded.
Netizens believe in democracy. They believe in the future, perhaps because they are part of it. They see themselves as agents of change. They embrace the idea of using technology to identify problems and solutions.
They don't want a political system in which politicians and pundits lecture them on morality; they want a different one, marked by straight talk, an exchange of information an rationality in place of posturing, dogma, confrontation, hype and spin.
Does this sound like anyone you see popping up in primary states on the evening news?
Instead of clucking about how dangerous movies and pop culture are (Bob Dole), the Net candidate will go see them. Instead of viewing the Net warily from afar (George W.Bush), he'll be on it every day. Instead of claiming to be its founder (Al Gore), the ideal Net candidate will periodically trounce computer companies for their arrogance and greed.
Instead of spouting Millenial techno-blabber about the future (Bill Clinton), the Net candidate will be looking for concrete ways to get computers into the hands of every American kid, assuring not only equality of opportunity, but continued American dominance of the global economic boom.
This may be inevitable, but, strangely, it isn't imminent.
Reagan, a professional actor, didn't really need to understand the details of politics or government, and never did.
Puh-leeze, are we talking about Ronald Reagan here? The man who saved our country from a horrible economic slump, proposed and actually got passed the largest tax cut in history at the time, and helped end the cold war? Yeah, be must not have known much about politics or government...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
jon's description of a net-savvy politician is just a description of the idealised public servant; working for the good of the people. The net is irrelevant to whether a politician is good, and politicians can (as we've all seen) use the net for evil as well as good.
As for the ease with politicians dismiss electronic petitions: it takes three seconds of your life to cut'n'paste a protest email. They're also a hell of a lot easier to fake.
Will politicians promise a chicken in every pot
and a computer in every house to get votes?
I'll take a maxed out Athlon system Mr. Senator.
Thanks.
Surely the idea of a e-politition is somewhat absurd, given that the nature of the net is to transcend the nation state rather than promote it?
OK, a politition with enough commen sense to see thw net for what it is, and maybe even understand the problems it might hold is a nice idea, it seems unlikely to happen. After all, this is a 'semi-regulated anarchy' we're in here - or, as I've heard recently, the ultimate democracy. This seems to rule out the need for a 'Web Presedent'
Mark
I have published my lawsuiton the web, much to the dismay of Mattel. They tried to silence me with a baseless countersuit, but they have not.
The net allows people with adverse opinions to the people with large amounts of money to be heard!
Injured software engineer wins against Mattel!
If you think about it, Jon made a good point, but did not elaborate it...Regan's was the first campaign to effectively use the TV medium, primarily because he was an actor. This came many, many years after the invention and widespread acceptance of the TV. Let's face it by 1980 there was at least one TV in every home.
But can you say the same for PC's? Is there a PC in every home, or almost every home. The answer is no. And on top of that is the "web" generation old enough and influential enough to sway an election? Again, No. And until that changes, I think the medium of the web will be "un-tapped" in political races.
"When I look down I miss all the good stuff, When I look up I trip over things..."-Ani DiFranco
I think that the Internet will transform politics. In what way exactly is hard to say, but the 'net allows people to communicate and interact in a broad basis that has never before been available. This interaction leads to new ideas and less known ideas surfacing. This can only be a positive if you believe in control from below (real democracy).
BUT, 'net connectivity is not ubiquitous. There are people all over America, in big cities and in rural towns that have never been online. They have never participated in this Great Awakening that is the Internet. Unless we can bring this collaborative and communicative spirit to people that do not currently have it (so everyone has it), we will merely replace the current political elite with the technological elite.
And since there is probably a real correlation between wealth, income and race and connectivity to the Internet, it will basically be the same people in power.
More access to more people (all access to all people?)is the only way we can solve this . . . otherwise, it's just the same old political game.
I'm not going to argue for or against what Katz wrote, but I find it hard to believe that Reagan would be the sole person responsible for any of the good things that happened during his presidential reign. There are a couple of other branches of government, after all.
~ Kish
We're already making inroads in the more flexible world of non-profits and lobbying groups. Take a look at NetCapitol. They offer a product for webmasters of interest groups to make it easy for their users to email or otherwise contact their representatives about whatever issue the lobbying group is concerned with.
Eventually, I think the net will be a strong force in American politics. We can only hope it'll be a force "by the people, for the people."
----
We all take pink lemonade for granted.
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
...and not find it a struggle ? I'm genuinely curious. For what its worth, the net will never have anything like 1% of the impact of television until such time as the two have blended to become one -> at least 20 years away (set top boxes dont count)
First you tell us blacks && poor people have less internet access. Then you tell us that the internet will bring true democracy. There cannot be a true democracy without the poor voting. And they'll be still tied to standard systems of indoctrination.
This is a message to Mr Katz.
Please don't feel obliged to limit your paragraphs to one or two sentences.
It breaks up the flow and makes text harder to read.
The idea with paragraphs is they hold one idea each.
So you should group sentences together in the same paragraph, if they are part of the same idea.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Thanks to TV, politics have become more about image and personality and charisma (and some people's ideas of living a "moral" life) than about any issues of substance.
Given the free flow of information on the net, and the scandal-addicted culture, I'm not so sure that having politics transformed by the Internet would be a good thing.
Of course, I could be being unnecessarily pessimistic. The more intelligent folks online tend to value substance over style. But are there enough of them to make a difference in the way this country is run?
I'm not so sure.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I don't see political sites on the net changing the outcome of a presidential race, and there are a few reasons for this.
One is the amount of people on the net. While a lot, it's not the huge amount of people with TV.
Second are the amount of people who would actually go to the site. Unfortunatly, most voters are uniformed, and vote based on party or based on what they see and hear in normal every day activites. They're not ones to seek out information to make an informed decision.
For those of us that like to be educated about politicians and are tech savvy, there's a third problem. Political sites are just fluff. How many times do we argue on Slashdot about sites that make their product out to be the second coming? (ie "Those benchmarks don't mean anything, show us some REAL benchmarks!") Obviously, political sites are going to make the politician look like a saint and make their ideas out to be the universal problem solvers. Most of us are smart enough to see through that crap.
Thus, I think the age old notion of seeing a politician in person, and seeing them debate and answer hard questions is really the best way to get your information, and then possibly go to the website to fill out the online form for a donation. It won't change politics as we know it, it'll simply be a different (albiet biased) source of information.
The change in political net-thinking will only happen when someone not only understands the Internet, but is savy enough to use it. I think the American public is beginning to become very tired of hearing politicians debating on the morality of the internet. What politicians need to do is understand that the internet is not a company/product that can/needs to be regulated, but is a tool that can and should be utilized to effectively communicate with a very large group of people with very little effort. Instead of debating the philosophy of the Internet, someone in washington needs to USE the Internet. When that happens, as Kennedy did with television, the nature of mass political communication will change
Bush did put the contribution list on his site, but it's in a few big pages - about 1600K of text each. And it's in Acrobat, which makes it harder to import into a database.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I think this was a very insightful article, however I think Jon missed the REAL reason that the net won't begin to truly change politics for several more years. That reason is "Political Inertia". Despite the fact that 'cybergeeks' have grown as a force, we're still a very TINY fraction of the population. Mom and pop in Iowa, while happily taking their place in the digital revolution, will still not give up what they see as one of the fundamental facts of American life easily. That fact? Pulling the lever in a voting booth at a polling place. It's a semi-sacred tradition to middle America, and we would all do well to remember that the revolutionary ideas of today do not become matter-of-fact for about 20 years...
:)
The other real issue is the technological hurdle. Well, there are inherent problems in trying to keep anything associated with the Internet "secret". You won't be able to convince the populace that their campaign contributions will be kept confidential if they're transmitted over the Web. Granted, contributions are public record in the first place, but do you think your secretly gay Uncle Roy would be more willing to give to a gay frienly candidate, knowing that his contribution date, time and amount can be instantly displayed for the world to see?? What about the politician's reaction to having it publicly displayed that the Grand Dragon of the KKK just made a MAJOR contribution??
Again, This was a great article, a real thought provoker, but it missed the mark slightly... IMHO
== That terrible green-green grass, and violent blooms of flower dresses, and afternoons that make me sleepy.==
First of all, I think Main Street USA is simply not ready for politics to be on the internet. They see it as a place to look for information, the replacement for their public library's card catalog or the Sunday advertisement section in the newspaper. Although those in the technology industry are aware that the possibilities are endless, the average person still doesn't see this. Every time my mom gets online, she treads cautiously believing that its only a matter of time before she downloads a virus that will make her computer go up in flames. She just doesn't understand the new paradigms. The general public needs to feel more comfortable with using the internet and be more understanding of its capabilities. Until they do things, such as politics will never be able to break the "internet barrier."
Additionally, I used to work for the 12th largest insurance company in the nation, and we had just received desktop internet access during this fiscal year. The powers that be simply saw no need until then. The insurance industry is very slow moving technologywise because its leadership is old and very set in its ways. I think politicians are similar. They don't think they need to revolutionize their jobs. They don't care about the whole contingency of people they are leaving out, beleiving that we aren't necessary for their success in the first place.
It sounds kind of silly, but an important part of the net taking over established "old school" domains is for net activities to approximate activities from those domains.
For example, how does a politician "kiss babies" on the net? That is, how does a politician, in a "spontaneous" moment of kindness and warmth endear him or herself to the voters?
The US economy is booming, first federal budget surplus in years (projected anyway, not going to happen this year). The country seems to be doing pretty well. You gonna give Clinton his props? I mean, he pulled us out of the Geo. Bush malaise and recession of the early 90s. He had to raise taxes when he came into office to pay for that big tax cut Reagan begat but it didn't kill the economy.
Now, doesn't sound silly to give a president that much credit for things that happen on his watch?
I think it's just like the eCommerce thing. Everyone goes to the online world thinking of how much money they can make, when really almost everyone loses money or makes very little.
You have to be really unique to survive the web. If you open another auction website you have virtually no chance of surpassing the already established ones. Politicians have to come in with unique ideas...
This article is slanted to display the hideous bias of the author, which can be interpreted as common sence, or sheer ignorance depending on your own personal politcal stance.
They only managed to get two issues out untainted. The first being that washington politco's are horridly disconnected. This is true, whatever side of the 2.0+-.1 party system fence you sit on, strattle, or stare at.
I think he's right that there won't be a huge impact anytime soon. Polititions and their machines will most likely avoid the interactive part of the Net, because it's uncontrollable, at least in the conventional sence.
Personally, other than immedeate and continuing information distribution, and maybe public forums, i really don't WANT the net to have that big an impact on politics.
what? hunh?
Ok, almost the entire world would readily agree that the american public on the whole is rather knee-jerky and ignorant. The passing of law, regardless of the feelings of the public, is a process that needs to be spread over a period of time, so that both the governed and the governors can examine it in it's detail, and it what it's consequences mean.
For example, one thing i never ever want to see, is on-line voting. Let's assume it won't be abusing such a system to vote multiple times. I'll use a rather exaggurated example here of why we don't want a stream-line some of these processes. Some guys walking down the street. A watermelon falls from a 10th story window and hits him. a thousand news sites pick it up, as the guy was on his way to save someone from cancer and suppored a family of 20 by working 4 jobs etc. Big tragidy. Some polition instantly puts up a speech about the horrors and evil of watermelons and they must be banned. Instantly, touched voters hit they're little submit buttons and viola! water melons are banned. Thousands of watermelon distribution channels close. Watermelon farmers are out of buisness, perhaps even jailed for continuing to grow their products. And noone has a juicy delicios fruit to eat in the summer time. A bout a month later, anouther man is killed when a pineapple falls from a 10th story window on his head. Only this time it's discoverd that it was thrown from that window by a serial fruit killer... who also killed the first guy by throwing the watermelon at him...
It's several orders of magnitude more difficult to repeal a law than to get one passed in the first place, and even with a stream-lined kneejerk voting process, that is very hard to change. Bingo, you've ruined 100's of peoples lives for lack of facts, facts that indead may not have been able to be discovered quickly enough to support good voting in an instant process. Lets not even talk about the metal processes of the voters (long known to be rather retarded)
Thats a rather extreme example, but apply it to something more mundane and think it through and the ugly consequences flow forth. If you think i'm pessimistic, think on this; One bad law, historically, ALWAYS causes more harm than the good done by 6 good laws.
For a more indepth fictional look at what can happen to us if we alter our law-making and polition electing processes to quickly, to irresponsibly, read Tracy Hickman's book _Immortals_.
-Tilde
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
Katz's description of the "net pol" reminds me a lot of all of the "look at what you could do if only you took advantage of our wonderful technology" that we've heard countless times from countless sources (Jaron Lanier with virtual reality, Bill Gates- time and again- with OLE, multimedia computers and a million other things, Scott McNealy with Java, to name a few). But that argument doesn't really compel anybody- to compel people to use your technology, you need to actually do something compelling. So far, I know of no political "killer app" of the internet, and if there isn't one, it would be dumb of politicians to waste their time campaigning here.
Think about it- yeah, it would be really cool if George W. Bush posted a follow-up to this article, but would you base your vote on that? And even if everybody who read it immediately decided to vote for him, how much does that really buy him? (Not to mention the fact that in popular culture, being a Slashdot denizen might hurt his popularity rather than helping it...)
And in the past, politicians have done that very thing, with little effect. When Bush Sr. was campaigning against Clinton, he answered questions on Prodigy (did do the same thing on AOL?). Did it help? I think the fact that nobody remembers it is answer enough. You might be able to show a tiny effect, but certainly nothing compelling enough to make everyone jump on the bandwagon.
Now, had Clinton and Bush gotten into a Prodigy flame war, that would've been awesome... =)
-jacob
You're making an assumption that this is a bad thing, or even a long-lived thing. You need to come down off that mountain, and get to know some blue-collar people. They use the net as much as anyone else. I know some quite poor people who use the net. The techno-have / have nots are not split along class lines as so many people think. Internet access is quite affordable these days, and becoming even more so.
No, the people who don't have computers are the people who don't see the need. Why bother giving them computers? When they feel the need, they will do what countless others have done -- go buy them and start using them.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Actually, Reagan may have pioneered the use of Television as an effective too of communication (or mis-communication), but the first example of of Television making a difference in politics happened a lot earlier. During the first Kennedy/Nixon debate (the first true televised political debate), Nixon went into the debate ahead in the polls and had a higher popularity rate than Kennedy, but at the time of the debate, Nixon was recovering from the flu, did not use any stage makeup, and was very uncomfortable infront of the camera. Kennedy, on the other hand, was healthy, used the makeup and came across very assured and comfortable infront of the camera. From my understanding, that was the beginning of the end for Nixon in that election. (too bad it didn't happen again several years later...)
and I'll show you a dood all of you can vote for man, he will be so cool you won't even care what he stands for. He uses Linux! He gets my vote! Probably has a Beowulf cluster in his house and his kids hack into the compititions web sites. Linux rules man! See what I mean.
The percentage of the public who's online is still pretty small. The media salivates over us because we're still mostly young and wealthy, i.e. a perfect advertiser demographic. In raw numbers, though, the folks who've never played with "that new-fangled internet-thingee" outnumber us substantially.
Rather than being a positive, leading force, I think that the internet has great potential for the sort of garbage that reporters like best: digging up skeletons in candidates' closets. I suspect that we'll see some "internet scandals" that make their way to the mainstream media. There just aren't enough people to lead a charge from the internet, though.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
The real question is: does Joe public give a crap about intellectual freedom, or is this just the concern of the cyber-elite? If the answer is the latter, then how can we make the public understand why this is relevant to all?
--
He is right though, politicians are notoriously old fasioned, and it'll be a long time before they jump on the net bandwagon. Besides, the internet voting hype thing would mean the death of the electoral congress, and we couldn't have that now could we??
-davek
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Ha ha... "Not only did Smith fight in Congress for more education funding and prison reform, he also worked with Alan Cox to patch USB support into Linux!"
-jacob
We've moved from a typographic society to an image based one in just 30 short years. Politics as entertainment. Religeon as entertainment. Life as amusement.
Television has reduced us to a nation of drooling idiots who can't do anything but sit in front of the dull blue screen getting our buttons pushed.
In the ruins of this anesthetized disaster there is a faint glimmer of hope and that is the net. Media corporations are fighting it tooth and nail: they want to turn the net into entertainment, a glorified TV. For them, the net is not the opposite of TV but it's crowning jewel - interactive entertainment.
I still have a little faith that the net can turn this trend around but people have to be aware of the danger of being entertained by information.
support gun control: take guns from cops
this is slightly skewed on Topic
CC Commisioner Kennard's Home Page
This guy has fought hard to try and level the
Visit Fcomm. playing field in the deregulated environment (an impossible task if you ask me). There is a form to e-mail him (which I did yesterday about the proposed Viacom/CBS merger-I felt pairing MTV/VH1 with the second largest radio network will severely limit music choice/variety), I don't know if it gets there and he reads it, but he is more 'Net savvy than other politicians.
I wish Katz had mentioned some of the 'Net legislation that politicos have tried to push through (hatch-feinstein anti-drug linking law) to illustrate their overall cluelessness. The 'Net will change politics, hopefully as much as it is changing business (guy runs for senate out of his garage), and I think it will, mainly 'cause the vast majority of us geeks want it that way.
Now is when we must fight the hardest as the old guard tries to use its power to help uphold the status quo, even as more and more people see how corrupt and inefficient that quo is. Knowledge to the people, Power to the people, that's what the 'Net brings. (now if we can just get everyone to use Linux as the default OS, they'll see what freedom is, and the price you have to pay... constant vigilance)
+&x
(sorry about the double post, things went funky)
this is slightly skewed on Topic
Visit FCC Commisioner Kennard's Home Page
This guy has fought hard to try and level the comm. playing field in the deregulated environment (an impossible task if you ask me). There is a form to e-mail him (which I did yesterday about the proposed Viacom/CBS merger-I felt pairing MTV/VH1 with the second largest radio network will severely limit music choice/variety), I don't know if it gets there and he reads it, but he is more 'Net savvy than other politicians.
I wish Katz had mentioned some of the 'Net legislation that politicos have tried to push through (hatch-feinstein anti-drug linking law) to illustrate their overall cluelessness. The 'Net will change politics, hopefully as much as it is changing business (guy runs for senate out of his garage), and I think it will, mainly 'cause the vast majority of us geeks want it that way.
Now is when we must fight the hardest as the old guard tries to use its power to help uphold the status quo, even as more and more people see how corrupt and inefficient that quo is. Knowledge to the people, Power to the people, that's what the 'Net brings. (now if we can just get everyone to use Linux as the default OS, they'll see what freedom is, and the price you have to pay... constant vigilance)
+&x
Kill 'em all, I say.
Now excuse me while I go diddle maw.
Jon: If you're looking for a political party active online, why didn't you check out the Libertarian Party? Besides having one of the most extensive web of grassroots sites, libertarian minded groups such as the Advocates for Self-Government and Reason Online do a great job or promoting freedom-minded politicians. The nation's third largest party has the largest internet presence out there. Check it out, man. esacevets (didn't feel like logging in) JL Culp Chairman, Libertarian Party of Sumner County http://sumnerlp.org
Let's see, your country would have pulled itself out of its horrible economic slump no matter what he did. Economic behaviour is cyclic.
He did succede in getting tax cuts through. The rich were very pleased with this. The poor just got poorer: he created a huge transfer of capital from the poor to the rich.
While he maybe helped end the cold war, much of the credit must of course lie with Mikhael Gorbatchev.
Ask what the Nicaraguans think of Reagan.
See also http://www.dumblists.com/list-reag anairport.html and also "American conservatives love to take credit for the 'fall of Communism". (Scroll down to the bottom).
The net will eliminate the need for TV advertising and PAC softmoney as congresspeople start get their marching orders via online referendums from their constituents. They will have a list of each person in their district along with the person's vote on each referendum. I hear rumors that this infrastructure is about to debut, has anybody seen any announcements ?
Jon Katz is right that the Net won't transform politics in 2000. However, most of the reasons he gives will stay true essentially forever, so I doubt we'll see a "net candidate" in 2002 or 2004, or even by 2020.
Big changes in politics occur when a large part of the population sees things getting drastically worse. That just isn't happening in the United States right now. The last big transformation was the big rightward shift beginning in 1980, as a reaction to the 70% income tax, 18% inflation, and 12% unemployment of the Carter years, the changes in public mores of the 60s and 70s, and the perceived impotence of the US abroad.
After 18 years of Reaganite economic policy, the economy is doing quite well, and the winners significantly outvote the losers. Reagan's foreign policy lead directly to the downfall of the Soviet Union, and our foreign policy is now mostly about cleaning up the mess of 70 years of ideological empire-building. Once we figure out what to do, we do it.
The big transformation of public mores in the 60s and 70s has been partially reversed, to the point where there is a rough political equilibrium between those who would roll back more and those who would return to the 70s. Both sides are incredibly politically savvy, and use every tool they have, including the internet, to counter each other at every turn.
Money, security, and "sex & drugs & rock 'n' roll" are the three big issues in America today. No major transformation will occur until that list changes. It is possible that some issue or another which is mostly a local issue (schools, police, property rights) may force its way to the national arena, and that a significant realignment will take place because of it, but there will be netters on both sides of the issue, and both sides' consultants will use the internet for their own purposes.
Meanwhile, what the heck does Katz mean by a more interactive politician? Does he mean one who changes his policies in response to the public mood? Bill Clinton's been doing an excellent job of that without being the internet presence Katz would expect - he trims his sails to the slightest puff of an opinion poll, and would have no trouble doing so in the pre-internet age. Or does he mean one who changes his views based on rational discussion with other people with different views? That's NEVER going to happen - people in politics are either unprincipled power-seekers like Bush senior or Clinton, or have some rock-firm core beliefs which they'll never give up, like Reagan or Gephardt. Neither type will be an "interactive" politician in some new way.
Politics will change. The internet will have something to do with that. But the changes in style won't be revolutionary unless the changes in substance are, and the internet isn't likely to cause significant changes in the issues - just a gradual improvement in the economy, and a gradual erosion of the ability of government to be idiotic.
The Internet will change campaigns, but not in the way that Jon described. I think it will be awhile before we see a major candidate use the Internet effectively for reaching voters.
Why would a candidate devote energy towards reaching voters through the Internet? As someone noted, the percentage of net-savvy voters is too small and too diverse to justify the expense. What technology would the candidate use? Spam? Web Pages? And if a web page, why would people visit it?
I think the first real significant political fallout from the Internet will come within campaigns, political action committees, political parties and public interest groups. Within these organizations there is a real need to share resources and information.
These organizations will utilize the net to mobilize people interested in their cause, to share information and databases with similar organizations, and to refine their skills at influencing public opinion. The political parties will miss the boat if they do not develop a network sharing information akin to the network that Great Harvest Baking uses to share information among its store owners. In the same way that Extranets allow businesses to share information throughout their sales channels, political groups can use the Internet to organize their mainly disparate members and contributors.
I expect that the first time we read about the Internet seriously disrupting politics as usual it will be from a normally marginilized group that uses the Internet to gain a political victory (lobbying, election, etc.) that they could not have done without the Community and Communication tools of the Internet.
Mr. Katz,
Some of your articles require too much work to decode. You make lots of points that seem to come together to make a larger point, but it is layed out in some stream of consciousness way. In articles like this, I struggle to understand your message (in fact in this one, I just stopped reading after awhile).
I suggest you start creating an outline before you write your feature. Also, structure your features with actual paragraphs (as opposed to one or two sentences thoughts)....I should probably not be giving specifics so much, considering I am not an author and not a very good writer.
I do think the general topics you talk about are very interesting, but I think your current literary style is a turn-off.
-Mo
Okay, I ususaly enjoy (and mostly agree with) Katz, but I have to say that this article was silly.
If Katz had left his analysis as that, analysis, this article would have rocked, but instead he got carried away, and started stroking our egos with his glowing rendition of what we wonderful "Netizens" are like.
I'll tell you what we are like: we are lazy, greedy, and stuborn; just like everyone else, but because of the nature of the net, the SNR keeps growing (because our filters improve, and our links get recast), which is why we sometimes appear to be so wonderful.
If katz would stick to reporting and writing, instead of posturing, he be a really good journalist, because he picks the right issues at the right times. Posturing is used by those who want to force an issue, and it just isn't necessary for most of the stuff he writes about.
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
Net candidate will be looking for concrete ways to get computers into the hands of every American kid, assuring not only equality of opportunity, but continued American dominance of the global economic boom.
Translation: Net candidate will be looking for concrete way to steal more money from hard-working Americans to give computers to kids who can't even read or do simple math.
Socialism is dead, have the good grace to let it rot in peace.
Reagan did cut taxes (or rather the congress did at his urging) but he also increased spending (almost all on the Military) this where we got the infamous $90 hammers from, he just pissed money away on a huge military build up, not caring how efficiently it was spent.
The argument about his spending the Soviets under to win the cold war is nonsense, and if there were any truth to it, it was completely inadvertant on Reagan's part. He justified all this spending by scaring the public about the Soviet "Evil Empire" that was poised to take over the world if we didn't get ready to fight back.
If the Soviets were so strong & agressive a military build up wouldn't have put them under. Of course the military, who should have known better, went along with this as they got lots of shiny new toys and $500 toilet seats out of it.
It can be argued that the Soviets made us needlesly spend more, after the cold war ended it was revealed that some of the big scary rockets paraded past Lenin's tomb on May Day were fakes. In at least one case a fake long range nuclear rocket caused the US to spend billions on countering it!
Of course Reagan's fiscal policies tripled the national debt, so that even now the biggest item on the budget is interest payments on the debt. Thanks Ronnie!
At the same time Reagan was borrowing and spending he had the Education Department re-define ketchup as a vegetable so that a few $ would be saved on school lunches for poor kids.
What an American Hero!
CMDRTACO for president!
Who else could katz be talking about - unless he's trying to volunteer himself..... Let me guess, malda for prez, katz for spin-doctor?
Exhibit A:
The candidate of the Net would re-engineer the political website [snip] to a genuinely democratic forum that uses digital technologies to amass continuously - updated information on what citizens want their leaders to address.
Exhibit B:
He or she would bang the drums about preserving freedom online, [blah, blah] encryption, [blah] megacorporations [blah, blah, blah]. [blah, blah, blah, blah] open source and free software.
Exhibit C:
He might push for some national discussion [blah] supercomputing, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, [blah, blah, blah......]
Sorry. Please moderate this post "redundant".
+++++
+++++
The harder you look the less you see. That's what we're up against.
Voting for any political figure for such is reason is a foolish thing. It's the same as the person who sees a politician in a public place and shakes his/her hand. (plenty of people do this) You need to vote for someone because you agree with what he says and what he supports. (even if he is actually lying and goes back on it once he's in office) If a politician can write USB drivers for linux in his spare time, that may make him a good coder, but does not mean he'd be a good president/senator/grand PooBah.
On the other hand, if he fought against net censorship, and stopped some of the boneheaded net related laws from being passed, i might support him, but i can compile my own kernel, and need my president to do other things for me.
-Dan
The Net's 1960? by Jacob Weisberg
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Katz and most of the respondents to his meanderings are full of themselves. First of all, politicians don't have all day to cruise chat rooms and read Slashdot like college students. Second, even if they did spend all day online, MOST of the VOTING public isn't online. Have you ever gone to vote? Take a day off work to stand in a long line. Your vote counts? Yeah, but as much as a days pay. VOTING has become the province of RETIRED citizens. Why do you think social security is a sacred cow?
As for 'net politicians' not having view on moral legislation -- all laws are about morality. When you finally wake up, you'll realize that. Laws are nothing more that the formalized coding of a societies mores. You may not like the mores some politicians are fighting for, but guess what, a large portion of the VOTING public does. That's why those politicians have a voice.
You say you still don't like the fact that a large portion of the population didn't want an adulterous liar for a president. Well, you can go out and shoot all the STUPID people so that they can't vote or have a say in how the country is run, but that would be against the law because it is immoral isn't it.
Everyone believes that the world would be perfect if only I could be king for a day. The net will not change that. Most people will still be lazy and vote for:
1) who the preacher likes
2) who Larry King likes
3) who the wacko environmentalist leader likes
4) whoever promises more social-security
5) whoever is black
6) whoever is not black
...
My Mom voted straight Democrat one year, because she had voted straight Republican previously. I begged her not to vote anymore, but would campaigning on the net have any effect?
Putting more information online only helps if people actually look for it there.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
"Reagan, a professional actor, didn't really need to understand the details of politics or government, and never did. What he did understand was TV, which enabled him to reach a vast audience with a powerful philosophy."
Reagan was no genius, but comments like these rheak with cluelessness.
Its hard for me to believe that the economic boom of the 1980's, the end of the Cold War, and the designs for numerous arms reduction treaties (among other things) came from a guy who "didnt understand the details of politics or government". Its equally moronic for you to assert that Reagan (or any president, for that matter) can supplant media-savvy song and dance routines for honest leadership. See, Clinton tried that....it nearly got him thrown out of office, in case you weren't paying attention.
Why Rob gave you the ability to stand on a soapbox and flap your gums above everyone else is still a mystery to many of us. So long as you're going to do it, tho, it might be a good idea for you to back up your point with hard facts.. Otherwise, it's a complete waste of everyone's time if you ultimately have nothing to offer which supports your claims.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Use Slashdot's standard question and answer format. The level of questions posted here will probably cause most political candidates to broaden their horizons.
Perseverence is a strong will; Obstinacy is a strong won't.
I think the future of politics isn't letting us tell the representative what we want, or in letting us choose between representatives more easily, but in getting rid of the representatives.
For most issues we don't really need a representative. Most of their time is spent meeting with special interest groups, campaigning, etc. It wouldn't be hard to keep as up to date on the issues as the average representative.
Electronic voting, either via telephone or the internet would let people directly vote on the issues.
Being able to proxy votes to other people (anonymously, and without a direct count available to the proxy-holer, to prevent forced proxying) would get past the issue of having too many issues to vote on. With a little setup you could proxy everything, everything except certain issues, or everything related to certain issues. For instance, you could vote internet, encryption, and constitutional issues yourself, proxy IP law issues to the FSF or ESR, proxy drug issues to the ACLU, etc.
A test, similar to that talked about in the recent electronic polling thread, where you had to read a text about current issues and answer a certain number of fact-based questions correctly (or take another test, until you finally learned enough about the issues to score high enough) before being able to vote would stop people from simply endlessly proxying their votes to someone without actually participating in the process at all.
To be eligible to receive proxies, a person would have to make their votes public, as well as details as to who they proxy certain issues to. This would let you choose someone to represent you without having to trust them to not change their mind, and without having to wonder about secret deals.
Perhaps people voting proxies could even vote a day early to give news agencies a chance to review their votes and warn people who might be unhappy with their decision to revoke proxies before the final counting.
The drawback of this system is that voting blocks would be fairly powerful. The religious right wouldn't have to count on members going to polls to vote correctly when they could easily get them to proxy votes on the desired issue. But this also works in favour of the moderates. It's easier to bus 100k fanatics to the polls, but how about the pro-choicers who aren't so fanatical? Now they can vote their choice on the issues without compromising on an otherwise lousy representative, or missing work, etc.
Some public figures would be very powerful. Oprah wields a Slashdot effect when it comes to directing people to books. She'd probably have a similarly huge block of proxies. This is countered by the fact that 1) politicians are already votes in based on their hair as much as their ideas, and 2) proxies could be withdrawn if abused.
To prevent voting in of nightmare laws, constitutional ammendments could require a higher percentage of votes. To raise or lower a tax could requrie 51%. To modify the constitution could require 85% and a similar ratification after a 1y cooling-off period before being implemented. This system of higher requirements and cooling off periods could be used to stabalize policy where flip-flopping would be harmful, such as in building a new highway (start it, spend a lot, stop it, rip it up, start it again, etc) or foreign policy.
To similarly provide consistency, the positions now filled with elected politicians, such as the senate, and various senate commitees, which are deemed to be useful (public debate on CSPAN would be more useful if people had a stake in watching it and controlling the political futures of the people arguing) could be filled by selecting the people with the most proxies over the last however many months. Similarly a commitee would be filled with the people with highest number of proxies on specific issues.
This has a snowball's chance in hell of ever happening, but why should we be happy simply letting our 'representatives' rules us more conveniently by letting us elect them on the net when we could go all the way and get rid of the representatives.
I think the future of politics isn't letting us tell the representative what we want, or in letting us choose between representatives more easily, but in getting rid of the representatives.
For most issues we don't really need a representative. Most of their time is spent meeting with special interest groups, campaigning, etc. It wouldn't be hard to keep as up to date on the issues as the average representative.
Electronic voting, either via telephone or the internet would let people directly vote on the issues.
Being able to proxy votes to other people (anonymously, and without a direct count available to the proxy-holer, to prevent forced proxying) would get past the issue of having too many issues to vote on. With a little setup you could proxy everything, everything except certain issues, or everything related to certain issues. For instance, you could vote internet, encryption, and constitutional issues yourself, proxy IP law issues to the FSF or ESR, proxy drug issues to the ACLU, etc.
A test, similar to that talked about in the recent electronic polling thread, where you had to read a text about current issues and answer a certain number of fact-based questions correctly (or take another test, until you finally learned enough about the issues to score high enough) before being able to vote would stop people from simply endlessly proxying their votes to someone without actually participating in the process at all.
To be eligible to receive proxies, a person would have to make their votes public, as well as details as to who they proxy certain issues to. This would let you choose someone to represent you without having to trust them to not change their mind, and without having to wonder about secret deals.
Perhaps people voting proxies could even vote a day early to give news agencies a chance to review their votes and warn people who might be unhappy with their decision to revoke proxies before the final counting.
The drawback of this system is that voting blocks would be fairly powerful. The religious right wouldn't have to count on members going to polls to vote correctly when they could easily get them to proxy votes on the desired issue. But this also works in favour of the moderates. It's easier to bus 100k fanatics to the polls, but how about the pro-choicers who aren't so fanatical? Now they can vote their choice on the issues without compromising on an otherwise lousy representative, or missing work, etc.
Some public figures would be very powerful. Oprah wields a Slashdot effect when it comes to directing people to books. She'd probably have a similarly huge block of proxies. This is countered by the fact that 1) politicians are already votes in based on their hair as much as their ideas, and 2) proxies could be withdrawn if abused.
To prevent voting in of nightmare laws, constitutional ammendments could require a higher percentage of votes. To raise or lower a tax could requrie 51%. To modify the constitution could require 85% and a similar ratification after a 1y cooling-off period before being implemented. This system of higher requirements and cooling off periods could be used to stabalize policy where flip-flopping would be harmful, such as in building a new highway (start it, spend a lot, stop it, rip it up, start it again, etc) or foreign policy.
To similarly provide consistency, the positions now filled with elected politicians, such as the senate, and various senate commitees, which are deemed to be useful (public debate on CSPAN would be more useful if people had a stake in watching it and controlling the political futures of the people arguing) could be filled by selecting the people with the most proxies over the last however many months. Similarly a commitee would be filled with the people with highest number of proxies on specific issues.
This has a snowball's chance in hell of ever happening, but why should we be happy simply letting our 'representatives' rule us more conveniently by letting us elect them on the net when we could go all the way and get rid of the representatives.
Jon Katz's list of criteria for a cybersavvy politician sounds like a laundry list to describe Representative Tom Campbell, who represents the 15th Congressional district here in the Silicon Valley.
The man and the politician both use the internet to interact with constituents and keep abreast of the latest technology news which is the top dog in his district.
These people DO exist. They just usually don't make headlines.
That having been said, I think there are a number of reasons why we won't see someone like this anytime soon, and really, probably not ever at all:
I think a large part of the problem falls on us. As a wired society, we have spent too long amongst ourselves arguing over the finer (and not so fine) points of Internet regulations and laws, and less time making sure that the politicans who made these laws know loud and clear how we feel about their work, not only in the voting booths, but also on a day to day basis. For example, many politicans won't touch Social Security benifits. Why? Because they know that if they do, they'll be attacked (and as Sen, John Glenn can tell you, I'm not only speaking metaphorically here!) by seniors. And how do they know? Because the AARP is telling them they will. Every day. Right after they hand over a nice big check for the politican's next campaign.
So, if we want politicans to acknoledge us, and the things we see as benifical to the future, we should probably recognise that the Internet doesn't exist in a vacuum. WE should be out there, making our voices heard in ways that the politicians can hear, and we should make sure that when we're speaking about the future of the internet, we're all speaking in unison.
Because if we're only talking here on the Internet, no one outside the Internet can hear us. And if we all start talking outside on our own, it shounds like white noise. But if we're all saying the same thing, at the same time, it sounds more like a large part of America, and that voice is what the politicans are going to hear, and more importantly, listen to.
But, given the naturally chaotic nature of the Internet, I don't think that would really be feasable.
$.02 dropped in.
The net could be a powerful agent in the upcoming election, but only if we make it. We need a forum on the net, much like slashdot (indeed it could use a lot of the same code) It would enable canidates to present their ideas side by side, and enable voters to comment on them and maybe ask questions of the canditates. The site could also have polls etc. I don't think it would be that hard to modify the slashdot code to achieve this. It would be hard for me because I don't know Perl, but I am certain there are plenty of skilled people here. (Im afraid that I am a geek of another breed - a math guy.) If you have the site you just have to convince NY times etc to link to it. I don't think that would be terribly difficult. PS: When is the new slashdot code coming?
That's the way it works in theory, but in fact the Internet will not transform politics, but rather become a mere extension of the political arena for both citizens and politicians.
On the citizen side, the Internet would be chiefly a tool for discussion and debate. This will not bring about a revolution in politics if existing examples of net-based discussion count for anything. People tend to use the Internet more to broadcast their own opinions and experience rather than for any serious exchange of ideas.
The fact is that most people who are old enough to vote and actually do so have already decided what their basic political philosophy is and their minds will not be changed by discussion or debate. Have you ever known a person to, in the midst of a storm of rhetoric, suddenly see what you're saying and agree with you? Very few (none that I know of) have switched parties (political or otherwise) as a result of open-ended discussion.
On the politician's side, the Internet becomes merely another media for advertising, like television and radio. Granted, the Internet does allow them to communicate more actual information than a thirty second commercial, but again, nobody's mind is going to be changed even by hard, undecorated facts they see on the site of a politician they dislike. Also, any information published on a politician's site is likely to be presented with such a partisan slant that everyone will be taking it with a grain of salt.
That leaves independent analysis and the media, which will not cause any more ripples in the pond through the Internet than they do already. There is nothing magic about pixels that makes a news report or a study appear any more objective and credible than it does on your local newspaper.
Remember, the underlying principle here is that people will interpret information in a way that fits a political model they have already accepted. This is true on the Internet as much as it is anywhere else.
From the point of view of the soviet union things only got worse since the end of the cold war
You probably mean 'since the collapse of the socialist system'. But, in any case, that statement is quite doubtful.
10 years ago all soviet citizens had jobs
Well, not having a job used to be illegal and punished by imprisonment in the USSR. There always were jobs in the labor camps...
You also forgot to mention KGB, party line, mandatory work in agriculture, etc., etc.
Then capitalism was introduced and the whole country collapsed
You've got both the temporal and the causal sequence wrong. Actually, first (the cause) the socialist system collapsed, and then (the consequence) on its ruins a very strange mixture of robber-baron capitalism and a corrupt third-world statism developed.
Corruption has entered all layers of power
Yep, but what does this have to do with capitalism? Corruption is basically a consequence of Russia being a third-world country without any checks and balances on huge and powerful government bureacracy.
Many people in the former soviet union haven't got enough money each month to buy even the most basic stuff to stay alive
That means that they all die each month, right? Your statement makes no sense.
Alcoholism is a major problem and the average life expectance is about 20 years lower than in the western world.
That was the case under socialism, too. Life expectancy did decrease after the collapse, but again, the cause for that was not introduction of capitalism, but rather the collapse of the socialist system.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You must be a ditto head if you think Reagan helped this country.
He put the country into huge debt to spend money on planes, ships, and other weapons that we never used.
Fix the economy? No way, we'll be paying off his mistakes for 20 more years.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
A counterexample to the Monica Lewinsky scandal is Salon's coverage of far-right politicians "conspiring" against President Clinton. In this case, the President publically acknowledged the e-zine for news that may never have been seen outside of your local free alternative newspaper.
The media has long been considered to be the fourth branch of the the US government. They cover the bully pulpits of President and the Legistature and keep the public abreast of political happenings. With the arrival of the Net and CNN, the media has become reporting on a 24 hour cycle which meant more invasion of politician's lives and their motives. The consant need for new news forces the media and the media pundits to continue talking, trying to find new scandals, trying to finds new angles on old scandals, trying to tittlate, and letting finding solutions fall onto others.
Katz tries to convince us that the new political "Max Headroom" will change American politics via the Net. But there is no Max Headroom, no entity that exists only on the Net who can show as much charisma as a live/taped politician with party support. It's hard to convey that sense of charisma over the Net and no reason to do so. I can think of few people who get their primary political information off of the Net. Increasing interactability doesn't necessarily mean a net chat when doing a radio talk show will reach so many more people (something politicans are loath to do). I don't expect to vote for someone because of their website anymore than I would vote for them because I got their junk mail. However I can be influenced by a variety of news websites.
The Net has already changed politics, but not in the way that Katz thinks it has or will. It has become another media filter, but one that is improved by not just being another corporate newsmill. It allows disperate views to have their say on a more level playing ground than any other form of media. It's more alternative than your local alternative rag and has more POVs than a cocktail party. As it expands, there will be even more opinions and ideas. The question is if people will listen to them.
-S. Louie
"I may be Love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
Roughly the same topic - a discussion on the impact of the Internet on politics, primarily the 2000 Presidential Race, was on this morning's Diane Rheme show (WAMU in Wash DC and other PBS outlets).
I was paying at-best half-attention to the discussion, it sounded to me like the politcal reporters and the host (not Ms. Rheme) need to get more clued-in to the potential of the Internet themselves. They were trying hard, but I sensed a disconnect.
I also recal a science fictional treatment of Internet-based politics about 10-15 years ago in a book called "David's Sling". There are vauge references to an "information age solution" to various geopolitical problems (e.g. the cold war gets VERY hot) and a major political figure backed by big tobbacco loses an election when the on-line community mobilizes at the last-minute to defeat him.
Good point. The original way was that every state got one Representative per 30,000 (including the infamous "three fifths" rule, whereby slaves counted as 0.6 person for the purposes of calculating seats in Congress). Minimum 1 per state, of course.
This was superceded by Amendment XIV, Article 2, which states that "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers". That number is currently set at 435, although since it's not hard-coded into the Constitution, in theory Congress could pass a law raising the number of Representatives to, say, 650. As this would dilute the power of each current Representative, I'm not holding my breath.
Note that Senators were originally seen as representatives of the individual States, not as "popular" representatives. A common practice was for the Governor to appoint each Senator. Popular election of Senators was not mandated until Amendment XVII was ratified in 1913.
Both the characteristic modern parties believed in a government by the few; the only difference is whether it is the Conservative few or Progressive few. It might be put, somewhat coarsely perhaps, by saying that one believes in any minority that is rich and the other in any minority that is mad.
-- G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World
When he first got into office, Clinton was amazingly ineffectual. Sure he had political agendas, and ideas, but he had little real power. He isssued an order to the military to allows homosexuals. It was rejected, and then congress passed legislation on the topic, completely removing it from his power. He tried to implement a health care reform, and once again was met with disasterous results. Why? Because a president has little real power.
But there was something to be learned from a popular actor like Reagan. If a president is popular he can find some power. His power is in his image! Then he isn't just a president with very limited constitutional powers. Then he's the speaker of the people, the head of the state, the leader of the free world, and all that other B.S. To a large degree for a politician, perception is reality. Later after learning how better to go about his political job, Clinton was able to be a much, much more influential president.
I think that this is what Katz was getting at with Reagan. He didn't necessarily have much political savvy, but he did know quite a bit about image.
I'm a gnu world man.
The CIA came to Reagan with an analysis showing that the weak Soviet ecomony could not support a military expansion. Knowing this Reagan set forth the calculated ruse named SDI, aka Star Wars. The plan was never to Star Wars to work, but rather to dump heaps of money into it then watch the Soviet economy collapse as they tried to keep up. The plan worked brilliantly and the threat of nuclear war was erased.
The debt in part came from Reagan agreeing to social spending increases so that his military spending would be approved. All in all, the debt was worth it. You may not be old enough to remember, but the threat of nuclear war in the 70s and 80s was very real.
Yes it actually was. SDI was a ruse deliberately planned by the CIA to bankrupt the Soviets, not shoot down missiles. In the 80s the threat of nuclear war was +very+ real and the true state of Soviet economy was not known. Reagan is a hero.
Plenty. In the 80s nuclear war seemed almost inevitable. Television shows (The day after) portrayed nuclear attacks; the media was filled with reports on weapons being developed by the Soviets; schools discussed the how and when of a war. There was a very tangible fear.
In an otherwise decent essay, Jon Katz manages to get this point nearly backwards:
The small kernel of truth in this statement is that the U. S. Constitution deliberately sets up a republic rather than a direct democracy. This is for reasons both practical (the country has always been too big to run via direct vote) and ideological (the founders were concerned with the problem of mob rule, or "tyranny of the majority").
But otherwise, this is sheer hogwash.
At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, town-hall democracy was well-established in New England, giving citizens more experience in "civic information-gathering and decision-making" than most citizens get today.
Given the smallness of most communities in those days, the idea that voters "never got to lay eyes on their elected officials" is nonsense. Perhaps for the President, or their state's Senators. But, the Constitution originally established that there would be one Representative per 30,000 citizens. Now tell me, do you really think that a polititican, who needs to run for office every two years, can stay out of sight for the majority of voters in that small of a district? This doesn't even count the variety of State and local offices, which in the days before telecommunications, interstate highway systems, and immense growth in Federal bureaucracy and power, had much more effect than they do today.
In the famous Lincoln-Douglass debates, it has been estimated that more than half of the voters of Illinois attended at least one debate. These debates were over six hours long. When was the last time that more than half the voters of a state heard their senatorial candidates in person engaging in substantive debate for more than a few minutes of media sound-bites?
Technology, for the most part, has not helped. Oh, sure, it's tough to avoid seeing candidates mugs on TV during the election season. Great, so know I know what they look like at their most photogenic and hair-styled. What is their political philosophy? How is Tweedledum different from Tweedledee this year? TV campaigning takes us further away from those answers, not closer.
And the internet? I have to admit that the ability to check pending bills, voting records, etc. without having to be physically present at the site of the legislature can be nice. But that is subject to how timely that legislature's web site is. And, if the "real" politicing is done the old-fashioned way, via face time, dollars, and grass-roots vote-gathering, then the "wired"-ness of legislative or executive bodies is not particularly transforming. At best, it's a nice bonus. At worst, it provides the illusion of public access and accountability without the reality.
It is vain to rule if your subjects can and do disobey you. It is vain to vote if your delegates can and do disobey you.
-- G. K. Chesterton, "The Great Shipwreck as Analogy"
Today, there is no real difference between a "liberal" and a "conservative". It all depends on the polls and what will elevate their ratings. Once the old generation of politicians die off, those terms will be obsolete.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Moderation sucks.
;-)
In response to this post...
Yes, I agree with you completely, Katz does write about some interesting things, but I usually cannot stand reading a whole article written by him. He continuously repeats himself, and rambles on so long I just get sick of reading them... If Katz would shorten his articles by about 3/4, he could say all he has to say without boring people, and we'd have discussions about the topic he wrote about instead of how we can't stand Katz...
I'm not saying I can write well though, I really can't. I think it affects my Karma too... Uhhgg, -3.
Oh well, go ahead and moderate this down too. See how low my Karma can go
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The net is just a tool - politicians will learn to use it more effectively to achieve the same tired goals they always have. Frankly, the candidate Jon describes is the same old politician with the exception that s/he will be serving OUR special interests. There wasn't a single transforming idea in the entire essay. It seems to me the only transforming idea being discussed is the idea of moving our system from a representative democracy to a "true" democracy. What a silly idea, if you want to find out why, go read the political ideas of the founding fathers. Better yet, listen to how stupid most people are. On a more practical level, a true democracy doesn't do anything for geeks until geeks become the majority . . .
The Internet as a media venue for candidates is not that interesting, and using the net as a way to hold two-way conversations between voters and candidates is only more interesting if the conversations are of any depth, and if they take place with those voters other than the ones who already get to have discussions with the candidates (large donors, heads of local party organizations, etc.) in forums moderated by other than the standard media organs. Essentially the Internet is only interesting as a news medium for political issues if it remains outside the control of corporate news monopolies - and people actually pay attention to other news and political sites than those run by the entrenched establishment players.
What is the really interesting possibility of the Internet in politics, one which will cause Washington to kick and scream a whole lot more before they'd give in to it, is the idea of using the Internet (and strong authentication and encryption technology) to allow for direct voting for major political offices. This idea of Direct Democracy isn't generally new, but doing it on the scale of a US national election would require the communications and computing power that the Internet now provides. However, the Electoral College system is well entrenched, and a lot of power brokering goes on in this realm, so this change would not be easily made... it is, however, the major promise of the Internet in terms of actually returning politics to the hands of the people...
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
So now Jons on to the poltical aspects of the net. Funny that he should do this in near syncopation with other Journalists.Not funny ha ha but more funny like "so katz is skimming other bad works for use on slash dot now?"
Now lets strip away the layer of Netsaviour Jon coats everything with. The net is just another tools to politicians. It will not turn the corkked straight or the devious rightious. Much to Jons stunned realization the Net will not be the baptizmal bath to wash away all the sins of the system.
In point of fact the body politcs HAS already come to grips with its veiws on the net, and it surprises me Jon is over looking this. Thier view is "we need to control it NOW".
The proof is int he pudding, and the just desserts of the net being entered in by politicians has been more about LAws, Regulations, Censorships, Denial of Service, Reduction of Creativity, and CONTROL then it is about canidates web pages or cute cmapiagn reform sites.
Lets face teh bare facts here, no decetn power structure will sit back for long in the face of something as potentialy unstablizing as the NET and NOT seek to control it. It is the envitable expression of the worlds leaders to smother that which they public cliam to embrace.
So we are, now, in the beginings of the great bear hug of the body politcs embracement of the net.
Dont You Feel The Love???
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Based on the way things seem to be going, I'd say its more likely that politics change the net than the net changes politics. Hopefully things will not have to go this route though.
No longer. The media has lost its independence and most of its power.
It would be more accurate to call the Federal Reserve the fourth branch of government. This is a worldwide trend: central banks have new powers to set economic policy free from political interference.
Peculiar to the US and some other countries, though, is the creation of a 5th, security branch of government, whereby the FBI and NSA have broad de facto regulatory powers over the software and telecommunications industries...
Is it just me, or are the assumptions here a little conservative? I mean small 'c' conservative. First of all, radical change in governance does not come from the two major political parties learning to manipulate a new form of media. It comes from people with new, interesting ideas getting a voice in the political system. People (not just Libertarians) who have been kept out of the political oligarchy until now. I don't think that as long as the current country club of two cozy political parties (who's main goals are keeping their jobs and increasing their political power) is running things, thing are going to change for anything but the worse.
I don't resist labels. I've officially labeled myself a Libertarian, both on my voter registration card and through my Libertarian party membership card. Why does he assume the two major parties will continue to dominate the political system? Are "unlabelled" voters people who swing pendulum like between the two parties? Or are they people who don't believe either of the two parties represent their interests? I think it must be the latter, I think many people are embarrassed to be called Republican or Democrat, or have rejected both parties. I think these people continue to vote for the two parties because they feel they are stuck with no credible alternative. Like many people, I believe that he has the superstitious belief that the two party system we currently have is the only way this country will ever work, and that the two major parties will continue to absorb people who don't really hold Republican party or Democratic party beliefs, but want to "go with a winner." It's the "don't blame me, I voted for Kodoss," school of American politics. (From the Simpsons episodes in which the two major presidential candidates are both evil aliens, but everyone decides to vote Republican or Democratic anyway, ensuring the takeover of the Earth by the aliens, either way. Homer says to Marge, when she complains about the Earth's enslavement to the aliens, "don't blame me, I voted for Kodoss!")
Even more important than this, though, is his interest in who the president is going to be, above every other political position in the country. The president is important, but not compared to all the congressmen, Senators, judges, school boards and other political positions in this country en masse. The President's primary ability, in the domestic sphere, is to act as an obstacle to the congress when it opposes him, and to suggest legislation and an agenda when they are "his people." The President is important symbolically, but there is a lot more to government than who is president. I'm more worried about the next Senate and House, frankly, than I am who the next president is.
Oh, and I also should note that the transforming effects of the Internet on politics are perhaps a bit more noticeable in places like East Timor and China. Places where the political oppression is significantly nastier than it is in the United States will be the first places that the Internet can be used to bring down corrupt and evil governments. (Though I must admit, I am disappointed that all the pro-independence stuff the East Timor Independence Movement had on the Web, it hasn't stopped massacres or oppression in that unfortunate part of the world.)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Reagan was a talented spokesman and figurehead, and he knew that that was his role in things. It's his cabinet that made all the big decisions and knew about politics and government. That was how come his occasional senility didn't cause major trouble - he wasn't really running the day-to-day stuff anyway. I'll leave off the question as to whether his term had a posative or negative effect. I don't care to comment on that, only on the fact that he was a figurehead.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
...There are people all over America...
Allow me to point out that this discussion can't confine itself just to "people all over America" and "transforming [American] politics". Thinking that political discussions over the Internet will magically confine themselves to a geographical area - even one as relatively large and (in the short term) important as the US - is shortsighted.
Certainly, once globally important issues like trade, pollution, drugs, etc. are freely discussed in American politics over the Internet you can't expect the rest of the world to politely stand by and wait for the official US Government press release... we'll want to present other arguments, too. The US is agressively exporting its often parochial views about encryption, the "war on drugs", gun control and so forth - next thing they'll probably be pressuring foreign governments to stop teaching evolution!
All these issues need to be discussed and determined on a global basis, and not by chaining together decisions no-one has any say in.
For instance, an internal FDA memo may decide to withhold approval of a generic inexpensive drug - even if it is tested and proved useful in many countries - in response to in-camera lobbying of some large drug company. This gets published and treated as gospel by other government agencies, hospitals, MDs... later, standing agreements between the US and other countries - especially smaller countries that depend on US trade - routinely make the local health autorities rubberstamp these memos and implement those decisions, without any public review at all!
In the end, somebody in Italy, say, will be unable to buy a medicine his life depends on just because some US bureaucrat got wined and dined by a salesman... or worse, be arrested if he tries to get this from elsewhere. The Internet is a priceless opportunity to bring these questions out into the open, if we can manage to see beyond geographical boundaries which will become largely irrelevant in the future.
The Author ( and I usually like Jon ) is not focusing on the real power of the net. He focuses on *centralized* power, but that is not now, and never has been, what the net is about. The net is about *information*. Think about it - the net gives us the ability to learn the facts ( and a lot of lies ) without any other intervention. The real power of the net in transforming politics is that people actually *know* what their prostitute - oops, representatives - are actually doing and saying, even when they try and employ their spin doctors. I have successfully used the net to help turn back assaults on freedom ( it was called the RFA - and it's back ) only because it let me *get the word out* - we have to let people decide on their own, rather than the author's bias, which seems to be " Let's decide for them" ... that is just old hat, and used for centuries. The net makes it possible to *break* that control. It does not make it possible to provide a forum in the traditional sense, where the politician is in control.
Just my 2 cents
" Unix is user friendly. It's just very particular about who it's friends are"
> Reagan, a professional actor, didn't really need to understand the details of politics or government, and never did.
One of the nice things about being a "professional journalist" (which I presume Katz purports to be) is the free license to distribute flamebait. Sort of a GPL for unsubstantiated cheap shots, really. What other pearls of wisdom does he have for us this time?
> The pundits are wrong, especially when it comes to the 2000 election.
Aren't you a "pundit", Mr. Katz? Why is it always everyone else who's the clueless insider?
> All during the Monica Lewinsky drama, the U.S. Congress revealed itself as a remote, antideluvian institution unable to read the mood of the American public or respond rationally to it.
The word is "antediluvian", not "antideluvian". This (and I shall give you the benefit of the doubt) typo is quite impressive. As for the antiquity of Congress, that cannot be disputed; I would, however, take issue with the fact that because something dates to 1788 it must be useless. As for being "remote", how could it be otherwise? Congressmen hardly have the ability to give each constituent a little ring in mid-afternoon to check on J. Q. Public's thoughts on today's tariff reform bill. That's sort of the point of representative democracy. It is hard to know what to say, again, to his cheap shot about the impeachment process, except to note that if someone was to perjure himself with impunity in order to harm Mr. Katz, we would likely be hearing about it for years. Oh, no, wait, that's the complex, difficult-to-dismiss issue. It's all "just about sex"... I keep forgetting.
>Washington was constructed to do the talking and voting on behalf of constituents unable to join.
More to the point, Washington was constructed (metaphorically speaking) to do the thinking on behalf of constituents who didn't have the time or experience to contemplate alterations to the Glass-Steigel Act, the Sherman and Wheeler Acts, the Dawes Plan, or any other complicated sets of business which the aforementioned J. Q. Public, educated though he might be, does not have the time (or, one might note, the patience) to resolve for himself. In representative democracy, you vote for someone whom you can trust and whose opinions more or less match yours; you have then authorized them to speak for you. They then are supposed to keep an eye on things for you, help uphold the laws (except those against perjury and obstructing justice, I keep forgetting; they don't count), and hold the fort. If they screw up, you ask someone else to do it (i.e. vote for someone else next time). This is why representative democracy is a good idea.
> he survey found that wired Americans - people who use computers to access the Net and the Web regularly -- were different from the non-Wired
Mr. Katz here inserts a list of several characteristics shared by the "wired" set, a group of sainted elites only exceeded by the "geeks" he presumes to speak for. The most interesting thing about this list is that it consists of qualities like "is interested in pop culture" and "loves the free market system" which, upon further reflection, those possessing an account at an ISP don't really seem to have a deadlock on. It's hard to fathom quite what his point is.
> The Net pol might favor the equitable distribution of technology
Ah, yes... Mr. Katz' latent liberalism rears its hoary carapace once more. Folks, let's do a little polling ourselves here. Since "equitable distribution" here (and everywhere) means "taking things away from people who have them to give to people who don't", would you be satisfied to give away 90% of your computing power (let's set you up with, say, a 386 and Telnet) to make things "fair" for all the people who haven't gotten around to buying a computer yet? Or would you, say, prefer that people went and bought themselves one?
How on earth would you manage "distribution of technology", anyway? "Technology" isn't really a bulk good like, say, grain. It's a concept. Should we set up a nationwide program to distribute a UART and twelve transistors to each citizen over the age of 12?
> A Net campaigner needs... to be interactive, rather than pretending to be.
How does a person manage to not be "interactive" I cannot fathom, unless someone decides to run a rutabaga for County Commissioner somewhere. Or did Mr. Katz mean "readily available for an opinion anytime, day or night"? Ah, that must be it. I therefore support a law forcing every presidential candidate's home phone number to be posted on the Web. And we need some of those bathroom video-screens like in "Spaceballs". No sense in giving 'em a place to hide.
> An interactive politician would have known from the first the public wasn't going to go for Bill Clinton's impeachment, no matter what Kenneth Starr found or did.
Conversely, if said politician DID listen to the public when it, in some frenzied fit, demanded, say, a CDA, Mr. Katz would be the first person flaming the "immature" politicians for pandering to the public. You just can't win, I guess.
> Politicis isn't even on the list [of popular Internet content], a sharp commentary on the world's leading democracy.
I thought that we, the wired elite, were only supposed to be interested in pop culture and downloading MP3s! What do you want from us?
> Instead of clucking about how dangerous movies and pop culture are (Bob Dole), the Net candidate will go see them.
And, if he's a really decent guy, try to sneak a couple 12-year-olds in too. That's the only true expression of freedom; Jon Katz told us that a couple weeks ago.
Whew... well, I think that once again we should thank our illustrious columnist for Explaining How It Is to us. The only thing which mystifies and astonishes me is how he managed to get through a piece of writing longer than a grocery list without once mentioning Columbine High School.
Sartorius the Irascible
hopefully people realize that reagan is almost as bad as bush. reagan spent more money than the administrations of Nixon and Carter combined, in stupid projects like SDI.. hahahahaha not to mention the fact that his foreign policy was not what caused the downfall of the USSR, but rather the a fragile political structure of the USSR in the 1980s. maybe there are too many people who need a political idol, but reagan is certainly not someone I would like to be affiliated.
the money in politics is changing the net...
If you are concerned about democracy:
Just my
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Katz wrote Politicians need to understand the particular characteristics of the young, educated, technologically-centered people...
Politicians understand one characteristic of such people all too well. They understand that they typically DON'T VOTE. The reason computers and the internet have attracted the interest of politicans as much as they have is that rich people (most of them old, white, and not particulary tech-savvy) use them. These people not only vote, but sometimes give generous campaign contributions. They're same people that politicians paid attention to before. That's why the net won't truly change politics any time soon.
It is logical to compare the internet to TV when attempting to assess its potential impact. However, this ignores what may be a much more important relationship: the internet and the telephone. Here are some important facts to cogitate on: 1. Politicians have become absolutely dependent on polls. 2. Polls in prior elections have almost wholly depended on telephone sampling (random digit dialing - RDD), etc. 3. Efforts to block free access to the electorate by blocking unsolicited telephone calls have virtually failed, with regard to polling and research. The research industry has a powerful ally in the politicians who depend on them. 4. Internet survey research is exploding in popularity while telephone research is in a malaise. 5. The speed and low cost of internet polling has the politicians on a collision course with many who read this page. Money talks! This will be fascinating. Y2K election or not. I wouldn't hazard a prediction, but a head in the sand tends to expose other tender parts of the anatomy. :>)
Herby
Don't be so biased. If you have actually ever talked to many poor people or if you started off poor the way I did then you'd know you really have no grounds to say people who are poor aren't online. I know many families that specificly save to buy a used computer so their kids can get online. Many of these people are more computer literate than many of their wealthier neighbors who have money to hang out at the movies and such largely because the computer is so economical as compared to other entertainment and educational resources. I'm not saying ALL poor people have computers but economics isn't nearly the dividing line in this matter that many people make it out to be. Sure rich people probably have better computers but you can surf the web as well with a good P100 as a PII 400.
I don't see that race has anything to do with it, a black man, asian woman, white teenager, whatever can all walk into the store and come back with a computer. Also there are many free access points to the net. I work at a college and there are people of all races in the labs constantly. Just walk in and browse the lab now and then. In at least this schools case even gender can't be used because the labs usually are populated by women.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
As many people have pointed out, the on-line
public would like to have more interaction through
their devices with politicians. At the very
least it should be used as a means to hear from
your constituents. Communication is very important.
Where you really lost me was in your desire to have the US be on top of the economic boom. You really should be careful for what you wish for. The economic "boom" is exploding all over countries that would probably be happier without it.
Food for thought...
This article is pretty accurate I think although as is common he does seem to miss the forest for the trees. Some of the comments I've seen have been biased to one party or another in the usual flame war style. Others have taken issue with given points about why online politics will not work or isn't to be desired. The amussing thing to me is that all of this is exactly the kind of discussion a net-savvy politican should participate in. I think a successful net politician would have a very Slashdot-like site that inspires interactive community messaging. Possibly they could make a site that works in the same way but with an interest in politics and world issues rather than technology. The net-savvy politican shouldn't obey mindlessly what people tell him to do but rather take their ideas and build from them in a standard open source style his own view of what people want and add them to his own views. The Net changes the rules of communicating with the public. A savvy pol would figure out that they don't need to raise as much campaign money because the Net lowers their cost of communicating with the people. This can free them from the need to spend so much time kissing ass to actually doing what they are elected to do. A savvy pol would create a site not based only on themself but open to all pol's and prove their unbiased honesty by not moderating out posts from other pol's. Look no further than Slashdot for the future of democracy.
:) Anyone that votes for Bill Gates I'll be forced to kill in a very bloody and violate manner with old Windows CD's notched into saw blades.
Anyone else going to vote for Eric Raymond or RMS? To bad we can't vote for Linus but then we wouldn't want to distract him from the kernal to much would we.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I'm just finishing chapter 1 and it's already so provoked me that my entire "hallucination" of the future has been radically altered.
Note to closed minded folks: don't bother to get this book, you won't believe it anyway (and, like the media's response to the authors' two previous books, you'll likely only have to 'fess up that you were wrong about their conclusions -- just like the media was wrong about their previous 2 books' conclusions 8-).
|_
|_ QuadZero
|_ Eat the elephant! One byte at a time...
|_________________________________________
Richard (aka Merwyck, aka QuaDZeRo) I blog at http://richardharlos.com