Also, here is an old article (from last summer) about Obama’s web campaign.

However, I think one of the most interesting parts of the article is a brief discussion (on page 2) of how the Obama campaign has intentionally played down its internet involvement in order to avoid being labeled “the next Howard Dean” and treated merely as a flash in the pan.  Unfortunately, the article does not really elaborate on this point.  Would playing up his internet credentials really cause Barack Obama to be taken less seriously?  Would some voters be turned off by social networking sites dedicated to him?  Would Howard Dean comparisons be fatal?  I believe that the answer to all these questions is probably “no,” but clearly at least one media director in the Obama camp felt otherwise…

First, in social networking sites’ advent onto the political scene, are we entering an era where Americans wear their votes on their sleeves much more than before? And if so, does that matter?

We’ve been talking a lot about how grassroots approaches are more en vogue than ever, in part because of the Web…but I wonder if the other side of that is that voters “pick sides” more conspicuously — by joining Facebook groups, becoming a “supporter” of their favored politician, etc. (I know I have been much more up front about my allegiances this time around, largely because of Facebook.) This may not be a bad thing if it means more people are engaging with the issues and contributing to the political debate. On the other hand, I think there’s a legitimate concern that social networking sites might lead to politics becoming more of a superficial popularity contest. Now that people can broadcast their political preferences with the click of a button, I see the potential for quite a “bandwagon” effect. Ultimately, will the benefits from increased political participation outweigh the potential harm of fostering (or deepening) a “herd mentality” among voters?

Second (and harder to answer): is Web political involvement (including on Facebook) as meaningful as “real world” political involvement? When people join politicians’ Facebook groups, are they strengthening democratic ideals? Or encouraging a sort of “democracy-lite” society? (In this respect, we run into a familiar question: is the Web a substitute for or add-on to real-world behavior/ media/ relationships?)

NYT columnist Thomas Friedman has one view, expressed in this article that appeared in the Times last fall. Trippi (who thinks the internet has encouraged campaigns to engage people in “real dialogue”) and DW seem to have a different view. In Broadcasting and the Voter’s Paradox, DW (who will kill me for quoting from his writings) says: “Voting is gloriously paradoxical. Each person gets one and only one vote, equal to everyone else’s. When we vote, we are mere faces in the crowd, yet we rejoice in our mere-ness. Yet with that one vote, we express what is unique about us.” And later: “We don’t yet know what the effect will be now that we have remembered that democracy is about connecting as much as about standing alone in a voting booth facing a lonely, existential decision.” So he seems to think Web involvement may end up being MORE meaningful in some ways.

Will voting post-Facebook still involve expressing “what is unique about” ourselves? Or will we veer too sharply toward becoming “mere faces in the crowd” of our Facebook groups? Will we really do more talking and “connecting”? or just more clicking?

Why not a pledge for lobbyist? Pledge to give information but not money. This is a good idea and Larry seems to like it as well.

How do you protect this organization from abuse and give it trust? Ummm… Larry doesn’t know. I think the key is to try and keep it bipartisan and out of the ugly political trenches. Is that doable, I don’t know, but it should be a goal.

What is the future? What about gerrymandering? Who knows.

What is the real problem with PACs? They aggregate small donors into real donations. But the problem is the lack of transparency that ends with one entity have amplified power.

6:12 Questions.

Why don’t incumbents support public financing? I think that equal dollars being spent would make incumbents even harder to out.

What do we need? Some victories. That is true. But which issues should be first?

6:10 Congressman Cooper:

The system is hopelessly broken. We have to make change happen. (and he is done, wow that was quick).

6:07 – Is this destined to fail? Can we Change Congress? Perhaps, but nonetheless we need to try. </end>

5:59 – We need lots of people to make this work. People like YOU!

Reagan and Jefferson both feared capture of gov’t. But who is capturing gov’t? It is us. And this is profoundly destructive. (oh and there is the Mickey shout out I alluded to earlier).

5:48 – Earmarks. Not mostly a cost problem, but a corruption and corrosion problem.

Earmark example in OR. I find it interesting that he has used mostly democrat examples. I wonder if this was intentional so that it can’t be easily dismissed by people on the right?

Level 1 of CC (Change Congress, not Creative Commons although that is interesting isn’t it?). A way for candidates and citizens to pledge commitment.

Level 2 of CC. The wiki like tracking function. See Congressman Cooper here.
Level 3 of CC. Emily’s list model, become an organization driving for reform.

5:41 – 88% of people (in the Bay Area at least) believe that money changes outcomes. Even if it doesn’t actually change things everyone believes it. So what do we need to do? Change the role of money.

Public Financing of Elections. Why is gov’t so big? -> B/c congressmen must get elected. Now that is clever. I like it. Could public financing be shown to pay for itself by reducing the size of unnecessary gov’t?

Might this work with “safe” districts?

5:28 – Is the gov’t stupid? Larry says no. The system is just busted. Well doesn’t that mean the gov’t is stupid right now? It just doesn’t require that is has to be stupid forever…

Congressmen are good people just working in a system that drives them to do bad things.

Story about vaccines. The vaccine process might be good,the process just looks very bad. As a result some people don’t vaccinate their kids. That ain’t good.

Shout out to Maxed Out! You go Prof Warren. (ps. Unintentional puns are the best ones.)

5:22 – (c). Gov’t always extend (c) retrospectively. Why does the gov’t get this wrong? I think I saw an ominous Mickey Mouse shadow in the background of the last slide.

Sugar. Ok, that is just scary. But what is gov’t doing telling us what to eat anyway?

Global Warming.

5:18 – <geeks>. Larry was invited to MSFT? Wow. The 90s were crazy (and oh yeah baysian filters, those were the days). But geeks solve problems without thinking about law. I see east coast code vs. west coast code showdown coming (it sort of came…). Geeks think gov’t is hopeless (or just stupid?). My money is on the latter.

5:16 – <teachers>. Drug companies spend lots of money getting doctors to like their products. They also spend lots of money on “false science”. This is a corruption of science.

5:12 – <stories>. So raise your hand if you thought that Lessig would start with Ronald Reagan? I totally dig it but I feel like I might be in the minority on that one.

5:11 – Welcome Larry! (and the lights go down). Ok, the CA weather joke is getting old everybody. We don’t need to be reminded that the weather here sucks. We know every time we look outside.

5:07 – JP giving the introduction. 10th Anniversary of Berkman, happy to welcome back Larry (he has lots of history here). So, if Larry really wants to get this Change Congress thing moving he should probably head back to the East Coast. The shuttle makes it real quick to get down to DC Larry! I’m sure Dean Kagan would go for it. We’ve hired away all of UofC and a good chunk of Yale, we need to get started on Stanford.

5:05 – Tick tock? Congressman Cooper is in the house (or at least his doppleganger)

4:57 – More people watching: room looks ‘full’ though there are a good number of empty seats scattered around. Also, Larry and Terry Fisher have an uncanny resemblance. They were just standing together at the front of the room and but for Larry having his hair slicked back you might have thought they were brothers.

4:49 – A lot more people here now, I totally suck at guessing crowd sizes but I’d say at least twice as many as earlier (maybe even more). No one really exciting in the audience yet (aside from all the Berkman folks of course). However, I probably wouldn’t recognize many internet famous people anyway aside from the Tron Guy and only then if he was in costume.

4:39 – Got a quick preview of the deck, first slide is <stories>. Good looking group so far, I’d say more than 50 people all ready and we are still 20 minutes out.

Oh and Larry just walked in.

_______________________________________________

In a little bit (hopefully around 5?) I am going to be live blogging Larry Lessig’s presentation at HLS on “Building the Change Congress Movement”. However, in the mean time I’d thought I’d throw up some links for folks to check out if they are interested:

Live Webcast! (starting at 5ish obviously)

Berkman Center Announcement

http://change-congress.org/

Since this is being webcast, and I feel safe assuming archived, there will be less transcription and more commentary (yay or boo? let’s go with yay for now and reevaluate later).

In somewhat of a tangent, this is similar to something Tom Clancy wrote about in one of his novels. In The Bear and the Dragon, Clancy suggested in 2000 that the CIA should broadcast CNN’s coverage of a war against China on a website available to the Chinese public to try to stir them into action. See the Wikipedia article here.

The NY Times featured an article this past week on Austin’s South by Southwest music festival, and it made some interesting observations about today’s music industry that I thought were relevant to our discussion of the web difference in the music world. The author reiterates the point made in class that more and more musicians will turn to concert sales to make their living (as opposed to record sales). He ultimately characterizes the festival as “as close as the concert business gets to a level playing field.” He adds, “Big names and small play the same beery clubs, through the same sound systems, without their accustomed arena video setups or undistracted audiences.”

So in the growing popularity of these live music festivals, we see another example of the Web breaking down barriers to entry in the music business, a development which we in turn expect to improve information flow, increase choice, and drive competition.

I don’t know much about the festival, but Wikipedia says it is the largest revenue-producing event for the city of Austin – bigger than things like UT football games and even the more storied Austin City Limits music festival! (For more, see this article.) So it seems clear that the internet – by bringing about phenomena like the decreasing importance of major record labels, the popularization of off-label music on the Web, and increasing fan demand for live concerts – is also having a significant impact on local, non-Web entities like local governments/ economies. I think all this is interesting because music is one area where the Web has enabled a distinct online culture (MySpace, Bradsucks) to develop, but everything we’re seeing now suggests that the benefits from this online community are being transferred to (or at least shared with) the non-Internet world.

Brad of Bradsucks seemed to be focused more on the opportunities to make (and distribute) a new kind of music that have been made possible by the Web. He said he was less into the live performance opportunities, and is happiest when he’s at his computer, mixing and recording songs. But for many other musicians, the internet is changing the landscape of the live music industry and, in so doing, creating all kinds of opportunities to do what they love most – perform in front of a music-loving audience. All in all, it seems like the web difference in the music world has benefited all musicians. I wonder if this is truly a Pareto improvement vis-à-vis the artists themselves – or if there are some musicians out there who were happier before all these changes?