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

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  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?