Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

More extraordinary news just arrived in an email this morning from Howard Dean:  “On Friday we raised $500,000 online in one day, $200,000 on Saturday, and another $300,000 yesterday.”

This puts the campaign at $6.3 million for the quarter so far, which ends at midnight tonight.

This total is truly remarkable for grassroots campaign fundraising, and when widely reported I predict this result will change perceptions of the Dean campaign, which in turn will result in more acceleration.

This is the power of grassroots campaigning plus the web.

Of course, all Democrats have much more to do.  The New York Times reported yesterday that George Bush is planning to raise and spend $170 million BEFORE he is officially nominated next year.  No, you didn’t read that wrong–”one hundred seventy million.” 

From the story titled “Bush Plays if Fast, with Hard Money”

“By early next March, Democrats will probably have settled on a nominee for president.

“At that point, with no opposition in the primaries, President Bush’s reelection campaign is expected to begin spending teh massive amount of money it is raising to paint an unfavorable picture of the Democratic candidate in the voter’s minds and to establish the terms of the fall contest in a way that benefits the president.

“It is almost certain that the Democrats will not have the money to respond.  ‘They will be flat on their backs,” said Scott Reed, an experienced Republican consultant…”tired from an exhausting primary campaign, still at each other’s throats, and completely broke.’

“..Mr. Bush is foregoing matching money, so there will be no limit to what he can spend. His campaign says it plans to raise $170 million, almost twice what Mr. Bush had in 2000 when he also refused matching money and faced stiff primary opposition, and many times more than any other candidate has every spent.”

The point here is that in the Bush campaign, the Democrats face a true first superpower of fundraising and media air stikes and smart bombs.  Only a second superpower strategy can possibly work.  Grassroots, combined with the web, will be where our creativity goes. To win, we will find a way to seed and nurture a self-organizing, self-expanding on-the-ground network of informed, empowered people who will change the game in electoral politics. 

The best (and most fun!) book yet to critique the idea of a single superpower.  Heavily aimed at George W. Bush’s version of the rogue meme, but also goes after the same strain of ideas in the Clinton administration and in organizations like the International Monetary Fund.

Prestowitz is a conservative with deep credentials. This book is based on interviews with leaders around the world, as well as Prestowitz’ own analysis.  He is a superb explainer and demystifier of power and world affairs, in the traditional paradigm. He provides facts and insider accounts that are very valuable if you want to know how the top-down, militarist, arrogant power system operates–and fails.

Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions, by Clyde Prestowitz.  (Basic Books, 2003)

Thanks, Chutney!  In a previous blog I suggested that there is a fourth level in cyberspace, above the infrastructure, service (”constitutional”), and application levels. Chutney suggests calling the top level the “civic” rather than my more prosaic “institutional”.  I think he is right–”civic” has all the right connotations of community, civility, public service, and so on. So the four levels are the infrastructure (e.g. telcos), the service (ISPs, services, operating systems), the application (browsers, blogs, RSS and other standards) and the civic level (online communities, networks of bloggers, wired enterprises, etc.).

Here is my own previous post, amended:  I think cyberspace has four big levels, not just three, where the fight to keep cyberspace open and free is being joined.  At the infrastructure level we fight monopoly telcos and software companies and we strive for open networks and spectrum.  At the “constitutional” level friends like Larry Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain hammer away at maintaining basic freedoms.  And at the application level you and others create blogging sotware and the whole meta-domain of community formation tools, as well as the standards to allow this rich ecosystem of technology to continue to co-evolve.  These tools and standards provide a dramatically effective environment for individual and community empowerment.  And finally, the action is really heating up at the – what shall we call it? – the level of establishing new social inventions and societies that challenge the old order institutions of the meat world.  Perhaps we could call this the “civic level” as suggested by Chutney. 

In an earlier post I pointed out that if Howard Dean could use cyber campaigning to raise significant money from smaller donors, it would change the dynamic of the Democratic presidential race because it would neutralize the presumed fundraising advantage of other candidates.

Well, all things in the web happen faster than we expect.  I just got the following update and appeal from the campaign.  The Dean campaign has raised $2.8 million in the last eight days–and by the way, all this will be transparent and verified because it will be reported to the Federal Election Commission tomorrow.

Here is the direct info, fyi.  I pass this on not to campaign for Dean, but to give you a direct sense of the cyber campaign. I really believe that history is being made in this campaign, as the web takes hold.  E.g. more people voted in the Moveon primary than are expected in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries combined.

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: I want you to be the first to know
From: Howard Dean info@deanforamerica.com>
Date: Sun, June 29, 2003 5:00 am
To: jmoore@cyber.law.harvard.edu


Howard Dean for America


Dear Friend,

We have passed an incredible milestone in our campaign.

Our fundraising total for the second quarter has surged from 3.2 million
dollars to 6 million dollars in just eight days.

How did this happen? Over 21,000 people believed that their individual
contributions, when added to the individual contributions of thousands
of others, could make a difference in our campaign. And their
contributions have made a massive difference.

From Meet the Press, through my announcement speech, to our MoveOn
victory–and now with over $2.8 million raised through thousands of
donations–the last eight days have been amazing.

Now, with 40 hours left in the second quarter, I need you to help us
reach a goal that nobody would have thought possible for our campaign
even a week ago–raising $6.5 million by the end of the quarter
tomorrow. I need you to believe, as 21,000 others have, that your
contribution, when added to the contributions of thousands of others who
are responding to this email, can have a tremendous effect on the future
of our country. You have to believe, as thousands of others have, that
anything is achievable when we all act together. I need you to act now.
Join us in helping our campaign reach $6.5 million by midnight tomorrow
by making a contribution today:

http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute
http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute>

If we raise $6.5 million in the second quarter, we will have placed our
candidacy irrefutably in the top tier, and we will transform the dynamic
of this race.

Can we raise $500,000 in 40 hours? I know we can, because this past
Friday we raised half a million dollars in online contributions alone.
We achieved this on Friday because over 7,700 people believed that we
are strongest when we act in common purpose. I need you to act in common purpose with thousands of others today. No matter how much you can afford to give, thousands of others will be giving with you in the next 36 hours:

http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute
http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute>

We have shown the power of our numbers, and what we can achieve when
each of us takes an individual action that is matched by the actions of
thousands of others. Over 21,000 people have given whatever they could
afford–over the telephone, through the mail, on the Internet, and in
fundraising events and house parties across the country.

We have already raced past all expectations. We now have the opportunity to truly shock the press and the pundits with our show of grassroots strength. We have 36 hours to raise an additional half million  dollars. Please give what you can, and forward this email to your entire email circle. I need you to act today.

Howard Dean


Paid for and maintained by DEAN FOR AMERICA
Contributions to Dean For America are not tax-deductible for federal
income tax purposes

In the Maine mountains with the boys, near a two-store town about 30 miles from where the Canadian border dips half way down the back of Maine, and meets the northern edge of New Hampshire. We are nestled among soft worn mountains, with open granite tops, in a valley that holds a bowl of clear water a mile across and five miles long.  There are hourly changes in the weather—we missed by just half-a-day a full gale ripping through the mountain passes and throwing rain and hail across our fellow lake dwellers.  Last night was clear and cool and we slept under down comforters—today we walked around barefoot and bare-chested in the sun.

Tonight I opened up Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass at random, loved what I found and knew you would too!

From Songs of the Open Road, in Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman

5
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me,
can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me
I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not
astonish me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all
authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes
it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the
spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied–he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love–if they are vacant of you, you
are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?

My friend Steve Smith just called.  Steve was a managing director at GE Capital, where he successfully oversaw a large portfolio of venture investments.  Steve and I both have an interest in investing in sustainable development projects in the third world—as well as in technology-based conversions of traditional industries in the first world.  Our overall take is that there are 6.3 billion people in the world—probably going to 9 billion over the next decade—and that our current world economy only works for about 500 million of us.  Big problem.  Big security problem. Big moral problem.  Big happiness and lifestyle problem.  Big ecological problem.

But also, big opportunity.  If you (we) are an optimist about the creativity of our species, and of the cosmos, we are going to change our world order.  The good things that have been learned in venture capital and startups are going to be a part of the change. For example, we know the enormous value of small amounts of risk capital combined with the energy of entrepreneurs and the collective wisdom of well-managed small teams—and all of this thriving in a business and social environment where all is permitted if not specifically prohibited, and where new entrants—new “species” of individuals and ideas are welcomed and celebrated.

But this will be joined by a new attention to wisdom—to solutions that have long-term viability in a world struggling together to minimize the use of zero-sum resources—such as petroleum and threats to global climate resiliency such as global warming or the buildup of toxic chemicals-while maximizing non-zero-sum resources such as happiness, ideas, health, joy, sex, love, fun…

Anyway, our current interest is how to prudently start to redirect more and more capital and human creativity toward the broader set of opportunities in the 6.3 billion-person world.  This involves developing synergies among a number of players who now live mostly in local silos, and includes investors, technologists and entrepreneurs who are also local and regional community members around the world—and institutions ranging from business to NGOs and civil society, development banks, and national and multilateral agencies. 

OK, Dave Winer, I had a few thoughts overnight about our conversation at dinner last night at the Faith Cafe:  I think your question “what’s the next thing we can do in blogging at Berkman?” is also the right question to ask of the cyber world more broadly.  What I like about this question is that it asks us to become conscious of what we are doing together, as a community.  And how we are doing it.  And what our individual roles are or could be.  By asking these questions we are promoting a new level of emergent order, moving from the level of the conscious individual to that of the conscious community.  We are, in fact, starting to create alternative institutions in cyberspace.  A Second Superpower, a blogger-based collective competitor to the New York Times, and an alternative means of nominating and electing an American president.  All these institution-building opportunities and more are in play.

A start certainly is the work you and Chris Lydon are exploring and experimenting with.  Chris has an amazing and wondrous way with words—spoken words—and an ability to dialogue in real time, unrehearsed, and compellingly with people.  So we intuit that there could be—there almost must be—a special role for Chris in the blogging community at large.  And Chris has been evolving toward his own unique role—as do all other bloggers across the community.   But the difference here—small but profound—is the other members of the community—led by you—are helping him evolve his role—and are helping him to conceive his role with an awareness of the evolution and implicit purpose of the whole community.

Ok, so there is that word “purpose.”  I kind of snuck it in.  But this is important.  When we become conscious we start playing around with scenarios of what we might grow up to be.  For example, I think what made Second Superpower interesting to lots of people was that it explored a vision of what we might grow up to become—not a band of little old men and ladies in tennis shoes—but a true world power.  Similarly, consider the ongoing discussion/argument/online battling about whether bloggers are a threat to the New York Times, about whether the New York Times should open its archives, about whether professional journalists are deep or shallow, about whether bloggers are deep or shallow.  What animates this discussion is a vision emerging in the blogger community:  We are like the New York Times.  We can, over time, really become better than the New York Times.  We can become the second superpower of news.  In fact, we might collectively become the first superpower of news.

Why, I also ask, are people so alarmed and excited about the Moveon.org online primary?  Because it has the audacity to consider itself a valid “primary.”  And a primary before the “real” primaries.  And a primary that may greatly affect the underlying reality of politics in this season, which is money raising.  Consider the stakes.  If Howard Dean “wins” the primary with enough votes to get the Moveon endorsement—51%–the resulting money flows to his campaign will start to equalize the main advantage John Kerry has—which is money raising.  And why is this important?  In part because political pros know that the “meat world primaries” – the official primaries – have been organized this year to kill off emergent grass roots candidates. But if a grass roots candidate also had money and a national–if emergent–organization, things might go differently… 

Traditionally New Hampshire and Iowa primaries allowed for people’s candidates like Carter, Clinton and McCain to establish themselves.  And sometimes these campaigns took off—much to the moneyed political establishment’s disappointment.  This year there is a “firewall” system of primaries that follows  the first two and is intended to favor a non-grass-roots candidate.  The firewall is a  multi-state, national-scale primary that is thought to be simply too large to be addressed by a traditional people’s organization—and too geographically dispersed for the candidate to appear in person at enough events to make an impact.  Thus the money pros are convinced that this national primary cannot be won in any manner other than with expensive broadcast media.  And so having money for media—and for expensive top-down field organizations—is thought to be essential.  This, by the way, is how George Bush won the Republican nomination in the 2000 election – by raising $60m or more early, and then focusing on intimidating other candidates (e.g. Elizabeth Dole) and finally stopping McCain at the firewall.

This year cyber citizens are tasting new opportunities—opportunities in influencing international relations, in challenging “all the news that is fit to print,” or in electing an American president.  A new level of purpose, of consciousness, of differentiation and integration of roles, is emerging in the web world—in cyberspace.  And this new order, while not without its own problems as well as triumphs, is markedlty more open, experimental, creative, transparent and honest than those in meat space. 

I think cyberspace has four big levels, not just three, where the fight to keep cyberspace open and free is being joined.  At the infrastructure level we fight monopoly telcos and software companies and we strive for open networks and spectrum.  At the “constitutional” level friends like Larry Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain hammer away at maintaining basic freedoms.  And at the application level you and others create blogging sotware and the whole meta-domain of community formation tools, as well as the standards to allow this rich ecosystem of technology to continue to co-evolve.  These tools and standards provide a dramatically effective environment for individual and community empowerment.  And finally, the action is really heating up at the – what shall we call it? – the level of establishing new institutions that challenge the old order institutions of the meat world.  Perhaps we could call this the “institution level.”

At the institution level,  cyberspace is markedly more ecological and bottom-up than it’s counterpart in meat space. Institutions in cyberspace are the result of a combination of individual initiative plus individuals “referring” to each other—creates connective tissue.  This is very much how biological cells became communities and then became organisms. On top of this emergent order we start to have consciousness–as we also did in biological evolution. First there is the development of pattern recognition—enabled by meta-tools in cyberspace—such that we can see the order that is emerging, and are freed to consider alternative ways things might evolve.  And finally we start to experiment with coordinating and co-evolving together, playing with the possibilities of becoming  new organisms and ecosystems–new, consciously emergent institutions.  And, wildly, giddily, we find ourselves capable of challenging and even supplanting current establishments.

Yes, I can feel the hubris in all this, and the personal constraint. I don’t completely like it. A big part of me loves the freedom in blogging to wake up each morning and reinvent myself in my next post.  I don’t want to give this up in order to be cog in some big institutional machine.  On the other hand, I (and we) may not have to.  I think I can be me and also play an effective role in the whole. And wouldn’t this be a nice alternative to today’s conception of jobs!

Way back in 1968, Stewart Brand wrote in the Whole Earth Catalogue, “We are as gods and we might as well get good at it.”  This sums up our challenge about as well as anything I’ve read since.

Let me know what you think.  Let us be both/and, not either/or.  Best wishes, fellow institution creators and free individuals!

Dave came to dinner in the “Faith Cafe”–my little breakfast nook off the kitchen in my abode in the woods west of Boston. I decided it was a “red meat night”–rare for me–and so I grilled Buffalo Burgers (I kid you not–you can buy the meat at Bread & Circus. As Dave said, “I guess they found some more of them, and it’s ok to eat them.”) 

We talked of — you guessed it — blogs and revolution!  At one point Dave asked “what can we do next at Berkman with the blogs?”  One thing we can perhaps concentrate on is the “art of the essay” and take edgy, controversial positions that we are passionate about, and argue them in well-edited pieces that we hope will have some legs. Chris Lydon is heading in that direction certainly. His inspiration, Ralph Waldo Emerson, lived just a few miles from my house–and Emerson consciously drew together and was the caretaker for a community of essayists, radicals and mystics–including Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott.  So maybe blogdom is home to our worldwide Walden, and perhaps we can find some new and fun ways to encourage each other as free thinkers. 

Over the past few days I’ve had acute experiences of community—both positive and negative.  To me community starts with individual relationships.  Community is when love flows, and we are able to share our differences with humor and acceptance.  We see—no, we feel, the essential goodness and lovableness of the other person.  There is a virtuous cycle in this sort of community.  Acceptance and humor allows each of us to manifest our inner artist, our creative, humorous, high selves.  This in turn feeds the sense of play and adventure and satisfaction in community—in being together.  And unleashes even more love and acceptance and delight.  My dad and my boys and I got to this place the past few days in Iowa—and probably spared ourselves years of therapy!  The turn to this kind of community—the inner turn that starts this virtuous cycle, is, in my experience, often based on a conscious choice to love, and not to act from fear.  That is, not to fear my dad, not to fear his criticisms, and not to fear that I’m becoming like aspects of him I don’t like. All these are valid fears, but living in fear, and acting on the basis of these fears, just generates more of the same.  But recognizing the choice, I can move on.  I can decide to be the person I am, the artist I am, the individual creator I am, perhaps the rebel or badass I am—and also choose to love and embrace my dad.  To be honest about who I am, and to have the courage to live that with him, and the faith that by doing this I will—paradoxically—allow him to let go of his judgments and embrace me.  See why I said this will save years of therapy..

My faith is that if I have the courage to act this way—to embrace my own happiness and gifts, my actions help establish a community based on love and acceptance, and supportive of individual gifts and needs.  Rather than a (false) community based on cliques and conformity, the love-centered community celebrates individual creativity and even—or especially—the individual transgressions necessary for the artist to manifest and challenge our complacency.   E.L. Doctorow speaking of writing, “The writer must have a sense of transgression as he or she works, of writing what is not quite ok to say.”

Just as the virtuous cycle of love may be entered in a moment, so the vicious cycle of fear can also be entered in a moment.  Something triggers my fears and I react to defend myself—saying something perfectly justifiable when seen from my “worldview of fears”—that is, an understanding of the world based on worst-case assumptions about myself and the other.  Unfortunately, these (to me) perfectly justifiable statements are also unkind and devaluing when experienced by the other person, and tend to drive this person—a person that I love—into her or his own fears and defenses.  I often don’t realizing until later how devaluing my comments were, because I think my comments are based on a plausible view of reality. What is hurtful to the other is that my “plausible view” assumes the worst of the other’s and my motives and actions.  Thus it negates the other’s goodwill, negates my own good will, and negates our shared experiences of positive community and communion—experiences that we sometimes enjoyed only moments prior to the eruption of fears.  The experience of fear-in-relationship is the anomie that is the opposite of communion.

So community is something that exists in moments. Community can be born in a moment of loving choice, and collapsed in a few moments of fear and defense.  Community is subtle, delicate, and wondrous.  Community supports creativity and individualism, celebrating the expressions of each member’s gifts and arts.  This sort of creative community identifies and provides the conditions each person requires in order to realize her or his gifts and live as an artist.  The most creative community manages to do this even if these conditions seem somewhat idiosyncratic, or challenge certain assumptions of the community itself.  This is the hallmark, for example, of the truly bohemian artists’ community.

So what does this have to do with politics and the sorts of things I’ve been writing about on this blog?  Much.  And here is where my own sense of writer’s transgression is evoked, just a bit.  We can’t really change politics without speaking about and practicing the development of communion and community in this sense.  And this is “soft stuff” for politicos.  But here is my reasoning.  In our society worldwide many people are seeking exactly this sort of creative community—in their love lives, in their families, in their villages and towns and city neighborhoods, and in their business lives and jobs.  This desire is expressed in books, magazine articles, therapy and spiritual groups, and so on. 

Yet this sort of life—call it the creative life—is not consistent with the metaphors that underlie either Republican or Democratic party politics.  I think that Lakoff is correct—as I discussed at length in an earlier post—about the metaphors of family life being fundamental to political organizations. And I think that Lakoff is broadly right in his characterization of the metaphors underlying each party.  Republicans have government as the “strict father” who needs to be obeyed (and can discpline you up to and including capital punishment) but who also needs to be limited and kept from meddling.  The ideal Republican individual is the “upstanding citizen” who is “strong in the face of evil.”  Democrats have government as the  “nurturing mother” who is attentive to injustice and social needs, and who reaches out to provide aid and comfort.  The ideal Democratic individual is a “well-nurtured, happy person” who is “happy enough to be nurturing to others.”

Neither of these images quite fits the rock-out, individualistic, creative and free, post-conventional knowledge society that is at the vanguard in the world today, and that is most attractive to young people who are in position to choose.   The creative life is what people want.  Thus government—and an effective political party—would establish a community ethos that encouraged people to develop and use their gifts, to enjoy their individuality while sharing in love and communion with others, and to make diverse and unusual contributions to society.

In fact, I’m not sure that people want the government to be a parent, at all.  I think perhaps the right metaphor is more ecological—people want a context, an environment, and ecosystem that allows their creativity to thrive.  The proper role of the government may be as groundskeeper, or forester, or gardener.  Working unobtrusively in the background to help ensure the diversity and richness of the ecosystem—but respecting that the essential creativity in the system comes from new species and ecologies—and that generally these require neither strict fathering nor gentle mothering.

Just a quick note about the value of delight!  I think on the east coast we take life a bit too seriously—or perhaps this is just a comment on my own life… in any case, here in Iowa we are having the kind of few days where your body just opens up—your sides relax, love just flows, and fun takes over. 

Maybe some of it is the weather.  Daytime around noon it hits 80 or so, and nighttimes have been cool, with last night probably just under 70.  Clear sapphire colored skies—well, ok, just blue, but they seem sapphire to me.  The open skies occasionally play host to huge fronts of rainclouds that sweep in dark from the west—but the clouds do their work—rain, lightning, coolness—and then sweep on out, leaving clear open skies and sunshine again.  Now that’s my kind of rain!

One of the high points of our life here is the Mt. Vernon city swimming pool.  The pool population has two age peaks—6 and 16.  Sixers pretty much wander around and splash—and sixteeners spend a lot of time talking in little groups, sunning themselves, painting their nails—and occasionally jumping into the pool for riotous water fights.  The boys, and a few of the girls, are also heavy into doing wild, flaying flips off the diving boards.  All of this to a constant soundtrack of a local pop music station.  “Gimme the beat boys to soothe my soul, I wanna get caught in your rock and roll, and drift away..”

PS, I don’t think it’s the weather.  It’s the people, and it’s us.

I promise on Monday to be back writing something more serious about emergent democracy and so on…