Ross Mayfield: Politics

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Blog for Governor

Sat, 26 Jul 2003 18:39:37 GMT

In case you've not heard, the Democratic Governor in California sucks. Well, that's what a rich Republican spoiler and a million Californians think. Personally, I'm not sure he sucks more than a lot of other politicians in the country, but that's another story.

Anyway, the petition to have a recall vote for Governor has succeeded, and we're to have a recall election October 7th. The first question will be whether or not to fire the current Governor, and then there will be list of candidates to replace him if is fired.

The interesting thing is that it's pretty easy to qualify to be a candidate. You need to be a US citizen and have 100 voters from your party sign a nomination form. There's a $3,500.00 filing fee, but you can submit 10,000 signatures from voters in lieu of the filing fee. Those are the high points; for details, see the recall docs at the California Secretary of State site.

Should blogspace field a candidate or two?

Should blogspace field a thousand candidates, in a civil protest about the process?

There is only a vanishingly small chance such a blogspace candidate would be elected, but just fielding a candidate and getting a couple hundred thousand votes would say, "We are here." It's an interesting opportunity. Paperwork is due August 9th.

If we did field a candidate, part of the message should be how silly this is. Its an abomination that 5% of the population can force a recall. If only the requirements were so low to initiate a public referrendum to amend Article 2 of the California constitution.

Digital Polity

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 23:40:43 GMT

Attended a networking luncheon this week where Reed Hundt gave a speech quite different than two weeks prior at Supernova. Perhaps he drank the superjuice -- it was very emergent democratic and second superpowery.

The first speech centered on his proposal to provide Universal Broadband Access to over 90% of US homes by 2013. Americans take the Net for granted more than anyone, while other enlightened countries (Korea being the poster child) make it a mission. This year's Supernova had a greater focus on policy and Reed's was the one specific policy proposal I heared -- invest an amount less than the subsidy to analog TV for digital ($75b) to maintain economic competitiveness. Unless there is a plausible path for ILEC demise, this is the best proposal on the table. Reed also gets open spectrum, so sing a hallelujah and hope something happens.

One thing is for sure. When Dean showed he could raise money on the Net, politics changed forever.

Previously the Net had demonstrated its ability to influence decision makers through individualize pluralism, beginning when Kevin Werbach set up the first citizen feedback email address. Over 2 million emails were sent by citizens on the issue of media ownership, at last count according to Reed. Blogs have also demonstrated the ability of an influential deliberative network to force the media to play their role as the 4th estate, Lott being the poster child.

But now the Net has become a constituency. Decision makers like to say they are accountable even the poorest residents of their districts, but money is the source of their power and the group they serve is the group that elects them with it. Dean has shown the Net as means to money. And now every politician is finally paying attention.

Reed's talk last week was on the digital polity vs. the analog polity. He spoke eloquently about the rising constituency and how its "not just that things reoccur, its that they get better." There are core ideals, parties are means towards those ideals, but are largely ineffective. A new party of a digital polity is emerging that holds certain core beliefs:

We know more than our leaders
We pay nobody to say what we want to hear
Information is percipient and wants to be free
We are build on systems and networks, not organizations
We synthesize the whole instead of constructing barriers and silos
We believe in truth and civil debate

Now I may not have everything word for word (thumbed it into my Palm). He also stated digital polity principles of privacy, representation, honesty and equity. He implies that leaders still have utility and a role to play, but they need to engage the digital constituency and build trust. We don't depend upon the media because we are skeptics and experts, we are global and can engage in collective action without government. That said, digital needs to negotiate with analog. But these are powerful and re-occuring themes.

What is encouraging, if not remarkable, is that Reed is a civil servant, nay, politician, who undertands his new constituency and its reasonable demands.

At the end he did casually remark that we should abolish the US Senate, as they are a distortion of representation, serving only 15% of citizens. The point he is making, though, is that leaders fall behind their citizens (especially in times like these). Perhaps because they are not engaged with their constituents. Perhaps because their interests are conflicted. But the difference is our representatives need to recognize our new found powers to deliberate and represent ourselves at a pace they need to understand.

Which brings me back to Dean. If a candidate and causes can raise money on the Net, they can engage in institutional pluralism. Direct participation within the social network of decision makers. This scares most policy makers, as the game has changed.

Its a grass roots game ripe for changing minds and policy. Valdis forwarded a paper, Encouraging Political Defections: The Role of Personal Discussion Networks in Partisan Desertions to the Opposition Party and Perot Votes by Paul Beck, that I found absolutely stunning. We are bi-polar in our political views by nature, tend to filter out news we can identify is from the opposition and are comfortable in the absence of change. But when an issue is socialized we have a greater chance of changing our minds. When our social network provides new ideas and affirmations, we are more likely to take new positions.

Perhaps that's the power of Dean's use of Meetup. Meetup collapses time and space for deliberative groups to get together. Inevitably, some participants are strong ties for affirmation and weak ties for new ideas. What Dean is doing is opening up discussion at the social level to enact political change. How neofunctional of him. What Dean needs to do, however, is get more of us to debate -- instead of the candidates.

Internet Access as a Human Right

Sun, 06 Jul 2003 19:06:54 GMT

Estonia's 2000 law that declared Internet access a human right is referred to vaugely in the CS monitor and being slashdotted.

This, hot on the heels, or should I say shoulders -- of the Estonian dominance of the Wife Carrying World Championships.

"We take too many things seriously," concedes Indrek Keskyla, the mayor of Vaike-Maarja. He blames the communists who ran this Baltic nation. "In the old Soviet Union days, we had to be serious, gray people," he says. Under communist rule, the village pushed to be the best farm cooperative in Estonia. Now, it produces the best wife carriers.

Is the Web Democratic?

Tue, 01 Jul 2003 14:57:39 GMT

David Hornik at VentureBlog takes on a question from the Internet Law Program: Is The Web Inherently Democratic?

...In an interesting exchange this afternoon, professor Charles Nesson led a discussion on the Internet and emergent democracy. The discussion was principally focused on the question of whether the Internet aids democracy (or perhaps is a democracy in and of itself). In typical lawyer fashion, the discussion stalled almost immediately while everyone debated the definition of "democracy." But once Professor Terry Fisher had created a definition framework, the conversation was back on track -- Fisher made the distinction between political democracy (the ability of the people to have a say in political process), economic democracy (the ability of the people to have a say in their ways and means of making money) and semiotic democracy (the ability of the people to influence mass culture).

... And, as a tool, the Internet can be used to empower each of Professor Fisher's democratic forms: individual political voices (e.g. MoveOn and the MoveOn Primary), individual economic voices (e.g. GetActive as an organizing tool for the AFL-CIO), and individual cultural voices (e.g., HotOrNot and Are You Hot?, the awful TV show spawned from HotOrNot).

... My strong opinion is that blogging is indeed an excellent example of the democratization of information.

... The efficiency with which blogs are now spreading points to a discussion earlier in the day led by Professor Lawrence Lessig. Lessig argues that one of the primary forms of regulation in cyberspace is architecture. ... The difference between bulletin boards and blogs is simple: RSS. The architecture of RSS feeds and modern publishing platforms make the dissemination of information created on an individual level potentially massive. It makes it possible for someone like me to became a source of news that is cited in the mainstream media. Thus, to Lessig's point, by virtue of the architecture of modern blog tools, the limitations of bulletin boards are removed and the information can flow freely.

Despite the potentially democratizing nature of the Web, I think one of the important lessons learned from the Internet and this afternoon's discussion is that the Internet and blogging are indeed just tools. They can be tuned to better promote a point of view or better disseminate information, but they are only as good as the "content" they are spreading. VentureBlog is cited by other blogs when we have something interesting to say. And the more interesting the things we say, the more referrers and traffic we get. But it is not the inherent nature of blogs or of the inherent nature of the Internet that causes that dissemination of information. Similarly, while MoveOn may be able to give Howard Dean a better platform from which to disseminate information about his campaign for the presidency, MoveOn can not make Dean a better candidate. Howard Dean using MoveOn will never have the impact that Bill Clinton would have had using MoveOn. So I think that the democratizing nature of the internet is one of access -- the Internet empowers a vast array of participants to produce and share their own content, the most successful of which will rise to the top and become a mass phenomenon by virtue of the power of that content and the robustness of the tools that allow the virus to spread.

Miller Time

Sun, 15 Jun 2003 21:06:56 GMT

Last night I saw Dennis Miller do a new standup bit at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. I dont want to get off on a rant here, but the guy has taken such a sudden swing to the right it makes my dizzy. That the wry swagger that once made him hip with the ladies must not have gotten play any more, he's getting older, fired twice, got bills to pay and as the theory goes, more conservative.

Its become easier, if not fashionable, for comedians to play the right after 9/11. Jokes about Hitler and facisism and idiot presidents don't play anymore. People want a gone politico Learyesque, I'm pissed, I'm pissed, I'm pissed, but this time its not because everyone's an idiot, its that those people are Idiots. Hell bent flag waving border closing don't mess with Texas my gun is bigger than yours what are these people idiots we'll bomb them back to the stone age. Dennis still has that great Carlinesque if I want to stick my finger there its my business and let's make sure the PC police understand how stupid they are bent, only with a new populist don't tread on me stick. Oh, and the news he confirmed last night is he is taking that job with Fox. Maybe if we are lucky we will have a Miller-Franken cage match.

An isolationist liberal is like a compassionate conservative is like a Volvo with a gun rack.

What Bush Means

Mon, 09 Jun 2003 15:44:44 GMT

A week ago Thomas Friedman offered his Theory of Everything to explain why the rest of the world hates the US. The concurrent rise of American hegemony and globalization kept the imbalance of power between nation-states in check. Terrorists have no stake in the system and seek an overreaction to invoke a realist scenario. He asked for solutions for this very big problem we have created through abusive hegemony.

There is only one reasonable scenario which could resolve the tension the US has created. Not US-driven peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as further aggression seems inevitable. Simply put, the world hates the new and poential America and could tolerate our previous superior but benevolent role. Bush symbolizes imperialism. Symbols can be scape-goats. Regardless of if you think Bush is doing a good or bad job, his departure would diffuse tension more than any other change or action.

Lies, Damn Lies and Maps

Thu, 05 Jun 2003 21:05:54 GMT

There's a controversial social network map of a portion of blogspace that attempts to distiguish the left and the right political bloggers. A debunker points out that layout using touchgraph can be arbitrary, usually for clarity sake. But subjective (word of the day?) cartography has its place.

Reclaiming the Public Domain

Tue, 03 Jun 2003 15:25:52 GMT

Signing the petition is effortless:

reclaiming the public domain. We have launched a petition to build support for the Public Domain Enhancement Act. That act would require American copyright holders to pay $1 fifty years after a work was published. If they pay the $1, the copyright continues. If they don’t, the work passes into the public domain. Historical estimates would suggest 98% of works would pass into the pubilc domain after 50 years. The Act would do a great deal to reclaim a public domain. This proposal has received a great deal of support. It is now facing some important lobbyists’ opposition. We need a public way to begin to demonstrate who the lobbyists don’t speak for. This is the first step. If you are an ally in at least this cause, please sign the petition. Please blog it, please email it, please spam it, please buy billboards about it — please do whatever you can. And most importantly, please help us explain its importance. There is a chance to do something significant here. But it will take a clearer, simpler voice than mine. [Lessig Blog]

The Day the Music Died

Mon, 02 Jun 2003 23:14:40 GMT

The FCC voted to relax media ownership rules today. Dan Gillmor sums it up:

Michael Powell and his damn-the-torpedos colleagues have wounded democracy with their action today...

The fight isn't over -- now we need to bypass the oligarchs -- but diversity in media just got whacked.

And here's how we do it. OhMyNews.com provide a model that defended democracy in Korea. Perhaps its Correspondences.org in US.

Vonage, Hacks & Arbitrage

Wed, 28 May 2003 16:06:58 GMT

The way Joi and Gen are using Vonage is a new arbitrage method for international long distance. International telephony has always been about arbitrage (risk free profit). Technology driven cost reduction outpacing regulatory regimes that prop up prices. Here's a brief history of international long distance arbitrage and a suggestion for a next stage.

International telephony was originally governed by the ITUs Global Accounting Rate system. A body of national PTTs that would convene and negotiate bilateral settlement rates. For example, the US and German would tally up the traffic imbalance as measured in minutes and agree on a settlement rate. Problem was, country code #1 had significantly greater amount of outbound call volume. With the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), to this day, calls are paid by the originating carrier to transit and teminating carriers. The US negotiated volume discounts that were significant for its outbound calls.

When the PC came around some smart entreprenuers realized an arbitrage condition existed and the technology to take advantage of it was affordable. They invented Call-Back. An individual customer living abroad calls to a PC in the US, enters the country code of the final destination number (the hub country or another) and then hangs up. The individual is called back by the PC while the PC calls the destination country and recieves a dial tone for the destination country. The settlement fee is paid from the hub country (the lower outbound US rate).

Next came Refile, which turned this arbitrage method from a consumer service to a wholesale operation. Competitive carriers in foreign countries (many were cropping up because deregulation was taking place at the same time, first in the US, then the EU and culminating with the Uraguay round WTO accord that liberalized 90 countries) sent calls in aggregate over International Private Lines to the US. A re-file carrier re-originated calls from the US to foreign countries, initially saving in most cases over 500%.

Calling cards allowed re-file carriers to provide consumers a way circumvent originating carriers and get to their re-file hub.

Next came Internet Telephony. Initially it was used for transit on private lines to take advantage of compression. Then some carriers used the public Internet for transit with some sacrifice for quality. Some new businesses like ITXC leveraged redundancy in transit to increase quality.

Consumer Internet Telephony didn't prosper until now because of the variable quality of transit as well as the interface at the ends. Vonage has changed that with some success (just reached the 25,000 subscriber mark). But its primary focus is domestic long distance. It probably doesnt provide the service internationally both because of the quality of transit, complexity of serving diverse markets and potential regulatory backlash in foreign countries.

What's interesting about Joi & Gen's use, and they aren't the only ones, is they are setting up their own arbitrage method -- originating calls abroad, transiting over the Internet and terminating through Vonage's network (mostly over the Internet) and re-file agreements. Vonage's greatest value is a persistent circumvention of local monopoly carriers (where most of the cost of a call resides because of the above driving efficiency in international markets), but its value for international transit is worth consideration.

It will be interesting to see what Vonage hacks arise. There are a few options created by its bridge feature -- If you're on the phone with party A, you can flash, dial #90, dial party B's number, # and hang up. It then calls party B and the call continues between A and B. A hack that allows you to call to your Vonage box from your wireless phone and have it bridge you to an international destination seems tantilizing.

A hardware hack to make the box more portable would be invaluable (I would rather pay for a dedicated DSL connection from a hotel room and then use Vonage to bypass their telephony toll trolling). Particularly with WiFi support.

When arbitrage conditions exist, as with wireless carrier rates compared to terrestrial or hotel customer capture, the market ultimately converges upon it. Vonage has the potential to be a platform. But if regulators try to stem its diffusion another call delivery method will just take its place.

Homogenization and Balkanization

Tue, 27 May 2003 15:21:52 GMT

There is a tremendous market failure that is homogenizing public policy while balkanizing civil society.

Stanford Professor Diane Ravitch’s new book The Language Police reveals self-censorship in education. For example, even high-school history and English texts cannot mention: divorce, drugs, homosexuality, or dinosaurs (evolution) on one hand; religion, women as homemakers, slavery, inequality, and so on, on the other. In other words, anything real or interesting or historically accurate. Oligopoly Watch chalks this up to oligopsony (a market controlled by a few buyers), in this case three state textbook evaluation committees. Because there is some measure of accountability and a great deal of lobbying influence, the committees are balancing political correctness from the extreme left-wing and right wing.

Meanwhile, our kids get extreme exposure to these issues through the mass media, itself an oligopoly. When a media oligopoly can diversify its properties through digital cable, the law of the niche drives appeal to extremes. Given the choice, kids will naturally gravitate towards learning about contentious issues in media that is largely absent of context. Further fostering extremism.

Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts ban atheists and gays. With the supreme court granting the right to private civil society organizaitons to be exclusive, extreme interests are balkanizing. Again, this is a market with few sellers.

Parents are left with little choice.

Emergentism

Mon, 19 May 2003 23:27:56 GMT

Mitch Ratcliffe is working on a book to flush out the political ideology of Emergent Democracy, hence, an -ism:

Emergentism's principles can be described briefly:

Because the lower cost of communications and the logistical infrastructures available around the world allows groups to address their own needs or the needs of others in more efficient and targeted ways, it is no longer necessary for majority rule to dominate all social, economic and political decisions. Instead, we are at the beginning of a collaboration of many minorities.
Power can be used for good or evil, regardless of the system that wields it, so emergentism strives to bring all perspectives and parties to every issue to the table in a world where the cost and complexity of making connections has fallen by orders of magnitude since the founding of the United Nations and, even, World Trade Organization. Every decision must be representative of the concerns of people impacted by the results.
Every individual has the right to participate in any decision that will have an impact on their lives and, since the global environment is a single complex system, each person has the right to express their opinion and vote on every issue. Every individual has an absolute right to free speech and freedom and the responsibility to own the consequences of their words and acts of expression.
Debate and compromise, not violence, are the preferred means of resolving differences of opinion. Violence carried out by any individual or force against a significantly weaker opponent is a crime against humanity; violence in general, while a human habit, should be reduced and ultimately eliminated from society.
Every individual, in the interest of expediency and the greater good, may assign their individual vote on any or all issues to a proxy who, in turn, may federate with other proxies to represent the interests and opinions of self-organizing communities. Each person is accountable for their votes and may not sell them, even if they are disinterested in a particular issue; they may only abstain in a case of disinterest.
Each individual may have multiple proxies representing their interests on different issues, but no individual may, by their own action or through a proxy, cast two votes on the same issue.
Every individual has the right to reclaim their vote from a proxy if they wish to participate directly or believe the proxy has misrepresented them, on any issue at any time.
Emergentism recognizes that modern institutions will continue to exist and shall not be violently overthrown but eroded by obsolescence as more efficient and fair alternatives emerge; Emergentism seeks to create social decision-making environment where ad hoc and trans-national organizations can interact and coexist with existing institutions, with which it may share many values while simultaneously being in sharp conflict with those institutions.
Emergentism is politics for the people by the people that transcends national boundaries, cultural and ethnic differences, religious dogma and personal prejudice by identifying shared interests and facilitating collaboration using modern communications and transportation. It is virtual community embedded in a physical world with its eyes wide open to the realities of emerging global and local identities that have less to do with people[base ']s locations and more to do with what they care about than the past.

Consumer Technology Bill of Rights

Sat, 17 May 2003 16:48:38 GMT

Within minutes, I also signed up with DigitalConsumer.org and faxed a letter of support for the Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. The bill is a simple, positive assertion of the rights that consumers have had until recently. These include:

The right to "time-shift" media (recording a TV show and watching it later).
The right to "space-shift" media (copying a CD to a portable MP3 player).
The right to make backup copies of your media.

Activism is effortless with organizations like this.

Copyright Term Deregulation Act

Sat, 17 May 2003 16:40:06 GMT

It's bizzare to think that current law works against recycling throwaways. And even more amazing to think of all the latent economic growth that's possible from enabling the public domain. I am writing my congresswomen about the potential economic impact of fair rights.

...The idea is a simple one: Fifty years after a work has been published, the copyright owner must pay a $1 maintanence fee. If the copyright owner pays the fee, then the copyright continues. If the owner fails to pay the fee, the work passes into the public domain. Based on historical precedent, we expect 98% of copyrighted works would pass into the public domain after just 50 years. They could keep Mickey for as long as Congress lets them. But we would get a public domain...

We need to your help to resist this now. At this stage, all that we need is one congressperson to introduce the proposal. Whether you call it the Copyright Term Deregulation Act, or the Public Domain Enhancement Act, doesn’t matter. What matters is finding a sponsor, so we can begin to show the world just how extreme this debate has become: They have already gotten a 20 year extension of all copyrights just so 2% can benefit; and now they object to paying just $1 for that benefit, so that no one else might compete with them.

If you believe this is wrong, here are two things you can do: (1) Write your Representative and Senator, and ask them to be the first to introduce this statute; point them to the website http://eldred.cc, and ask them to respond. And even more importantly, (2) blog this request, so that others who think about these issues can get involved in the conversation.

I have given this movement as much as I can over the past four years, and I will not stop until we have reclaimed the public domain. Stay tuned for more litigation, and more ideas from Creative Commons. But please take these two steps now.

posted on [ May 16 03 at 12:09 PM ] to [ eldred.cc ] [ 4 comments ] [via Smart Mobs]

The Value of Informality

Thu, 15 May 2003 21:49:13 GMT

If there is one factor that keeps great voices from emerging in blogspace and holds back the development of new journalism, its the blurred distinction between informal and formal speech. And I think there is something we can do about it.

For example, Pierre Omidyar was beginning to emerge as a great voice in our conversations. But then he stopped. It could be that he was too busy. But his last post was on institutional versus personal speech. He explained the difficulty of being to blog informally as a person while being a visible member of an organization. The mainstream media would jump on his words without distinguishing them from something said in a speech or press release. Could spill over into financial or legal repercussions. The Pyra guys have had a sudden transition that almost made them go radio silent. Esther finds it difficult to relate her great experiences. Joi took flack from being an investor and blogger at the same time. With the large companies I have worked with, initially on internal blogging, they raise the prospect of real human executive communication. Only to be hindered by the need for editoral and legal workflow.

The same problem of formality is at the core of the transition to new journalism. The old means of editorial process, meant to distill journalism as fact, poorly serves the ends of analysis. Relegating it to the opinion section whose diversity suffers from bipolar disorder.

By contrast, weblogs offer sheer diverse opinion and analysis. Reader beware, enlightened and participatory. Fact is derived over time through conversations. Blogs don't need to be journalism. What makes this work is informality. The editorial filter is a post-production process. First cuts are made open, raw and exposed. Its faster, social and more honest.

Over the next year or so blogging will experience the quickening associated with large media portals bringing in later adopters. If the boundaries of formality and speech don't take hold, it will be accompanies with horror stories that would hold back the development of the medium. An executive who was slammed for something she said as an individual. More journalists loosing their jobs and further tension between old and new.

The conflict inherent in formal and informal modes of speech or press is a transition of norms. Blogging at first glance is silly, which is what makes it work. We shouldn't strive for better blogging, but strive to let the world know its imperfecture. Hammer this point. Let the world know these words are your own and they are just words. Establish the cultural norm of low expectations and indvidual expression aside from institutional affiliation.

But we live in a real world of jurisdictions and consequences. Recognizing this, what's needed is disclaimers. What I suggest is that there is an opportunity to standardize such a legal agreement. If this doesnt occur, every time an executive or journalist who wants to raise their voice as an individual will result in custom legal work done by internal and external counsel working outside their domain. A standard agreement would accellerate the process of approval for voices to be heared. It wouldn't capture all facets, just the basics, allowing the remaining conversation between individual and institution to be constructive. It would reduce the risks for both the individual and institution. Its core purpose would be would be a legal seperation between individual and institution as an established normative option. One that could be marketed to bring new and free voices into expression.

This may be a job for the EFF, Creative Commons or ACLU. But there are many legal bloggers who could flush out the prospects for such an initiative first. What do you think (if you are free to say it)?

Collaborative Emergent Democracy

Fri, 09 May 2003 23:12:19 GMT

Joi has wikified his Emergent Democracy paper. Now anyone can contribute and edit in the actual document. Now it will be interesting to see if all those bright commentators turn into contributors.

eParty

Mon, 28 Apr 2003 15:44:12 GMT

One of the better discussions I had at Etech was with Mark Pincus on his idea for an eParty. An eParty would be a lobbying organization funded by a constituency of civic participants who leverage an emergent democracy system to deliberate and choose issues to support and advance. What appeals to me about this idea:

Its interests will emerge -- a potential governance mechanism that is truely emergent
Its driven by easy group forming -- fills a gap in today's politics of infuence to advance otherwise unfundable or short-term issues.
The process is the platform -- which fosters substantive debate, civic participation and social capital

The blogosphere has proven effective in influencing the mass media which in turn influences decision makers. It also encourages direct appeal for email write-in campaigns. But to truely have an impact on existing political institutions it must represent itself as a constituency and engage in institutional pluralism -- through lobbying on behalf of its constituents.

Unbinding Time from Space

Fri, 25 Apr 2003 16:36:16 GMT

Tom Coates gave a great presentation yesterday on UpMyUpstreet Conversations (powerpoint available). The project geocodes discussion boards to foster social capital. The ethos is civic participation begins locally.

For example, a user might come to UpMyStreet.com to find out house prices, discovers local tax levels are high, discovers money spent on local services is low and then finds out how to get in touch with elected representatives. All politics is local, so long as people realize issues are local to them.

The design choice of emphasizing locality also meant doing away with time. When returning relevant conversations to a query, its ordered by proximity. Without time as an organizational principle, which everyone can relate to, major tweaks were required so not to loose what's new, what's evaporating and what's of sustainable interest. The tweaks (email alerts, flagging, thread-tracking) draw attention to areas otherwise subsumed by the short-sight of locality, and Tom notes their danger.

What will be interesting as the project evolves is if there will be litteral community straddlers and straddling functions. Just as social filtering, with people as editors and distributors, works so well in blogspace where there are no boundries to fix attention. Would be fascinating to see if a model for effective civic participating originates in one locality and how that model spreads. But that's not the point. It begins at home.

In-person Emergent Democracy Happening

Wed, 23 Apr 2003 18:57:44 GMT

Last night we had another Emergent Democracy Happening. This time it was in-person, a BoF session at Etech. Joi (for good reason) and others who were not their physically were busy and the hotel couldn't seem to give us a phone line, almost all the participants were in the room. As a result, there was less use of software, with the exception of chat although it was less active than in times past. The conversation flowed naturally with many differing points of view.

Only 3 of the 30 or so participants had attended one before, so we had a good chance to expose people to the topic and engage anew. The best outcome of the session was a desire to identify technologies that could further political participation and accountability. Hopefully this will emerge over the next three days and geeks will take initiative to make them happen.

Third Happening

Sun, 13 Apr 2003 05:12:36 GMT

Friday we held the third Happening on Emergent Democracy. Like the previous two, we used voice, chat and wiki for a high bandwidth event. This time we split the moderation duties by each mode, which worked well but as the moderator of the voice channel I found myself participating in the other modes just as well. The use of chat for signalling and voting was really effective this time.

What emerged was an effort for a more concise definition of emergent democracy, further development of a Journal of Emergent Democracy and standards support. Previous Happenings served as a loci for energy generated in blogspace, whereas this one generated new energy to carry us forth. See the Socialtext workspace for further details.

Tipping Point of an Icon

Thu, 10 Apr 2003 00:36:54 GMT

The fall of an icon says a great deal about the people that brought it down, cultures and context.

My favorite explanation of the differences of the Baltic countries is the story of how Lenin statues fell when their freedom was realized.

In Lithuania, the people gathered en-mass to beat it to a pulp.

In Latvia, a committee was formed and after much deliberation it was carted away.

In Estonia, some called a Finnish crane company via cell phone and it was removed promptly.

In Iraq, it began with a few people climbing up the statue, then a stoning, a rope was tied around its neck but to no avail, the Marines were called in, they put an American flag on its face which was quickly replaced with an Iraqi flag in due response to the crowd, the Armored personnel carrier pulled and pulled until snap -- and the crowd jubilated.

Perhaps the destruction of this icon tells a story of two cultures that have a long way to go together.

Social Capital of Blogspace

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 07:34:04 GMT

Perhaps we are in the Network Age [Ming], following modernism and post-modernism. After obsessing about construction, then deconstruction, we now value the links between deconstructed bits. When those links are between people, they can be valued as social capital.

Robert Putnam, in Bowling Alone, popularlized the role of social capital. Francis Fukayama, in Trust, principally discusses the correlation between social capital and the prosperity of nations. He defines social capital as the ease in which people in a culture can form new associations.

Network Layer	Unit Size	Distribution of Links	Social Capital	Weblog Mode
Political Network	1000s	Power Law/Scale-free	Sarnoff's Law (N)	Publishing
Social Network	150	Random/Bell Curve	Metcalfe's Law (N2)	Communication
Creative Network	12	Even/Flat	Reed's Law (2n)	Collaboration

As previously described in the Ecosystem of Networks, people use weblogs in different modes: Publishing, Communication and Collaboration. By dramatically lowering the cost for these modes on the public internet -- they are rapidly increasing the value of social capital. Each mode provides different valuation methods:

Publishing: Sarnoff's law says the value of a network is proportionate to the number of subscribers.
Communication: Metcalfe's law says the value of a network is proportionate to the number of links.
Collaboration: Reed's Law says the value of a network is proportionate to the number of groups.

Now Sarnoff + Metcalfe + Reed does not equal a valuation methodology, but centering on the value of different kinds of relationships reveals where investment would provide greater return. Enhancing communication and ties between collaborative groups enables exponential growth of social capital.

The above image also recasts the Ecosystem of Networks with the individual as the center, as preferred by many...

From Zack Lynch's forthcoming book:

...Unlike many of his contemporaries, the insightful UC Berkeley sociologist Manuel Castells in his ambitious two thousand page trilogy, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture [retitled the Rise of the Network Society] provided a comprehensive assessment of the impact of information technologies have on culture and global society at large. Castells’ extensive analysis of how "our societies are increasingly structured around the bipolar opposition of the Net and the Self” will remain an important perspective for some time to come. Here, the “Net” stands for the new organizational formations, social and cultural, based on the pervasive use of networked communication media...

Perhaps we are living in a Network Age, building a Network Society. Perhaps Emergent Democracy is as significant as a Second Superpower. But at the least, we are building new relationships-- a connectedness that we should value.

Assembly Rules

Tue, 08 Apr 2003 22:56:28 GMT

Jim Moore follows up the Second Superpower, by begging one heck of a question:

In ecology there is a sub-field called "assembly rules" that seeks to understand the combinations of species that are required for a functioning ecosystem. The field goes farther and looks for the sequences by which a few species can establish a foundation on which others can grow. Aspen trees stabilize nitrogen in the soil, making a place for hardwoods to follow. Lichens break down volcanic rocks into a primitive soil, mosses and ferns follow.

I wonder, what are the assembly rules for emergent democracy?

One visible set of assembly rules in such an ecosystem could be open standards as a category of competition-rules. When a standard is adopted by the ecosystem of vendors and users, it provides a space where absence of competition fosters certain kinds of community development. RSS, for example, opened the floodgates for different communities to talk to each other. A potential standard that would further emergent democracy would be vote links. It also enabled vendors to innovate on top of RSS and then engage in competition. What standards do really well is form a basis of trust for a community to flourish.

Blogs and the Iraq War

Thu, 03 Apr 2003 13:59:08 GMT

David Brake digs through the The Internet & the Iraq War report released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project is releasing today a new report:

Despite the media coverage of weblogs, Pew finds they are barely on the radar of most Americans:

"Some 4% of online Americans report going to blogs for information and opinions. The overall number of blog users is so small that it is not possible to draw statistically meaningful conclusions about who uses blogs. The early data suggest that the most active Internet users, especially those with broadband connections are the most likely to have found blogs they like. "
Pew's research suggests between one and four percent of Americans publish online depending on what you ask - 1% "Create a web log or "blog" that others can read online" while 4% "Create content for the Internet, such as helping build a web site, creating an online diary, or posting your thoughts online". That could even just include posting your thoughts to someone else's messageboard.

To my mind this emphasises the importance of making the weblog and other content publishing tools we have easier and promoting the possibilities they offer over making the tools more sophisticated (though we should be doing both).

Of course making them work multilingually is also going to be key to international adoption, and making them work well offline (so you don't have to compose while connected).

The report also found that "blogs seem to be catching on with younger Internet users – those under age 30 – at a greater pace than with older Internet users."

This latest survey is consistent with my estimates of over 3 million bloggers and adoption in significant growth areas such as youth. What the report doesn't highlight is the influential role weblogs have on the media.

David is right that there is much work to be done with the tools, but we shouldn't discount the relative influence of weblogs in shaping (this war) and sustaining (Trent Lott) memes.