Who are these People and Why
do They Rule Us?
American politics is as blind
to American values as Buick's
design department. So how is it that politicians and their hacks
control our lives?
I've been ranting lately that
the central dysfunction in American
Politics isn't the lack of qualified candidates, but in the petty
agendas of the local party hacks who control the vital supply chains
that bind us: the Candidate Distribution System ("CDS")
and the Vote
Distribution System
("VDS").
I've stipulated that All
Politics is Yokels and there's
no way
that regular mainstream Americans (people-with-a-life) are going to get
involved in local politics, so we need a back channel to find and
promote the candidates whom We The People deserve.
The only back channel available
is via the Internet, so we're stuck
with technical solutions to political infrastructure limitations. Our
technical focus
alienates us from political pragmatists–we're saying that
only a
pure-play, "Nothin' but 'Net" solution can redeem American politics
– something as technically innovative and as populist as low
cost
printing presses were for the 13 Colonies.
Joe
Trippi
and Matt
Stoller and,
certainly, Ken
Mehlman
think we're
nuckin' futs. If we don't play the traditional game, we're kidding
ourselves. Though I consider myself a friend of Joe and Matt,
I'm
saying that the real action is on the road we started down, under Joe's
tutelage, in January, 2003; that we shouldn't abandon the code base
just because version 0.07b didn't capture 51% market share on its first
outing. As they used to say, "In for a dime, in for a dollar": If
there's a there here, we owe it to ourselves and our grandchildren to
persevere until we at least produce code that conforms to the spec
we had in mind at the start.
But it's even worse than we
thought. Not only do we have to
re-imagine politics, we have to reinvent governance. We need to re-form
how we govern ourselves because, no matter how cool our Politics 2.0
is, we'll still
be stuck with the People
in Power Problem.
Like it or not, the secret of
aligning politics with the
sensibilities
of "real" working-class America is to string
up the
politicians. We don't need to
hang them until dead, we just need
to realize that politicians are, essentially, marionettes, and once we
learn how to pull their strings better than the lobbyists, their little
money game is over.
(FWIW, if you're not aligned with the instincts and constraints of
"working class" Americans – i.e., you're clinging to an
aristocratic dream that the best-intentioned, smartest, most highly
educated (or richest) dudes
really should be running things – just go home and hang up
your
spikes.
What is your Tory?)
We'll
own the politicians as soon as we realize what they know so well:
We've
got them outnumbered.
Yep. At some deep subconscious level, most politicians "get" the
threat posed by a connected electorate far better than We The Users
seem to:
This whole 20th Century Centralized Authority House of Cards comes
crashing down as soon as we click our heels and expose the fake
Wizards
behind the curtain. Of course they don't deal with it consciously, but
they're in the same position as the music industry was the week before
Napster was released, still high on the money and the power and the
groupies and the intoxicants.
The Network has
the power to make
American Politicians as irrelevant as the British Monarchy.
This
is where the pragmatists roll their eyes and congratulate themselves on
their blessed freedom from the naiveté of the
techno-idealists
who dream we might "fix" politics in one or a few election cycles.
Hang 'Em High!
So how do we connect the dots
strings? Simple,
really. First we recognize how fragile the current system is,
vulnerable
to just a few new votes that can swing most races. Then we take
advantage of
the improbably strong urge of the average person to read, write and
comment on whatever content floats to the top of mind. And then we
parse our opinions into explicit policy and publish our commitment to
vote our conclusions so that our will is obvious to all. This is a far
more explicit process than retail politics as presently practiced:
legions of amateurs canvassing strangers listed on the "Voter File" of
people who voted last time, all with hardly any effect.
Our collective urge to speak
out contradicts the collective
illusion of retail politics: that you need to spend big bucks to
energize voters enough to get them to the polls. Hell, scratch that.
New voters don't go to the polls, so you only spend the money to reach
the ones who voted last time. All politics (and its hell spawn,
gerrymandering) is based on this cynical 20th century conceit: zealots
attracting zealots, on TV and through the local political apparatus, in
a raucous cacophony of nonreason. No
online networking, no peer-to-peer dynamics, no smart mobs or means for
regular people to connect directly with each other and serve up the
bits that we all want to listen to: the harmony of our
core values. We no longer need some slick dude with an advance team
to tell us who we are and what we think.
We need a Napster for facing
the
political music, and I'll say it again: we can do for retail politics
what
Amazon and UPS have done for retail.
It sounds like a silver bullet
and it will be, as soon as we learn
how to build and deploy it.
Silver Bullet Proof
The big time professionals who
surround politicians are silver bullet proof.
They're as big a part of the problem as the Lilliputians
controlling local
politics. Collectively, they just
know that the only way to win
elections is money, media, local
power brokers and all the conventional wisdom of retail politics as
it's existed for the last few generations. In other words, our father's
Oldsmobile.
Even if they knew how to deploy
a silver bullet to transform
politics, how could the professionals embrace it? It discounts their
mysterious sway over the process, as inscrutable and unassailable
as witch doctors.
ORGware's Vote Delivery System
("VDS")
I suggested last time that our
new little company, Open Resource Group, LLC, has a way to
deliver voters to the polls as systematically, though not as reliably,
as UPS puts an Amazon order in your hands. The steps are similar,
though necessarily more convoluted. We're developing a web services
framework, working title "ORGware". Some of the techniques are based on
the Korean model, where millions of young Koreans texted
one of their own into office. But, since our great country is nowhere
near as connected or spontaneous as Korean yuppies, we need to help the
smart mobbing along with a structured model.
ORGware's VDS attempts to shine
a coherent light source on politics. Coherent light is what a laser
produces, and the metaphor is apt. Ordinary, incoherent light bubbles
randomly off a hot object and bounces around until it illuminates
something adequately. Not enough light? Turn up the heat. But
collectively, we're moderates – seekers of light, not heat.
Armed with the promising flash tube called the Internet, we expect more
from our democracy.
You may recall from your high
school physics class that a laser is a mirrored tube full of random
molecules stimulated to produce random light that's trapped except for
a half-silvered mirror at one end. None of the light can escape, except
for the light striking the half-silvered mirror at just the right angle
(literally, a right angle). All of the escaping light marches out the
end of the laser in perfect step, lined up and ready to do something
bright. That's precisely the ORGware Vote Delivery System architecture:
excite individuals into producing thought that bounces around a
community until it forms a consensus around an issue or candidate.
Formulate those thoughts into specific, coherent policy. Then provide a
single avenue of action: to vote for the cause or the person that
inspired the group to start with. And finally, make the determination
to vote visible for all to see.
In order to understand how to
deliver the needed number of votes to
the right polling places at the right schedule on election day, we need
to work back from the desired result. This is like an airline crew
which spends its entire trip with a single purpose: arriving at the
right end of a commodious strip of concrete, at the right airspeed,
height, weight and heading, with the wheels, flaps and fuel exactly
where they belong. Success in either venture is not won by some
romantic notion of self-righteous kumbaya, but by formal processes and
the aggregation of personal commitments that are so meaningful to the
participants that they cannot imagine not delivering their votes as
agreed.
Delivering the Votes
The following is a reverse
chronology of an issues campaign that proceeds
according to the VDS
vision - starting with the result and showing how
it gets there. This vision borrows nothing from retail
politics, because the entire existing mechanism is too cumbersome.
There's no pandering to the local party, because there be dragons there
– it's a waste of time. There's no reliance on the golden
goose of
retail politics – the "Voter File" – because the
Secretary of State's data is obsolete,
uncleansed, expensive and worthless compared to what we already know
about each other. Besides, talking to strangers about
their vote is as obsolete as opening the door to the Fuller Brush man.
| VDS Reverse
Chronology: |
How the web can
reliably deliver a vote to a polling place |
11/7/06;
11:15 am
(Election Day) |
John Doe and his roommate and 4 of their friends drop by John's
favorite coffee shop after voting for a City Charter amendment
promoting city-wide municipal WiFi. They join 14 other supporters of
the amendment at an "event" mediated by ourcitydoneright.org. They
have supported this initiative and have urged their friends to support
it for 8 months. Contrary to conventional thinking, every action John
has taken, online and in the streets, has energized him, rather than
wear him down. |
11/7/06;
10:55 am
(Election Day) |
John Doe and his roommate and 4 of their friends leave PS 123 after
voting for a City Charter amendment promoting city-wide municipal
WiFi. |
11/7/06;
10:03 am
(Election Day) |
John Doe and his roommate meet 4 of their friends at PS 123 to vote for
a City Charter amendment promoting city-wide municipal WiFi. |
11/7/06;
9:48 am
(Election Day) |
John Doe and his roommate leave home for PS 123 to vote for a City
Charter amendment promoting city-wide municipal WiFi. This is
interesting. John is 26 years old, and he and his roommate are not
expected to vote today, according to any of the professionals who
consult to politicians. |
11/7/06;
9:15 am
(Election Day) |
John confirms his appointment to meet 4 of his friends at PS 123 to
vote for a City Charter amendment promoting city-wide municipal WiFi;
and to get coffee afterward. |
11/7/06;
9:02 am
(Election Day) |
John clicks a link in an email from Scroggins & Smith, LLC, a
public accounting firm, ratifying his personal calendar item and
appointment to vote for a City Charter amendment promoting city-wide
municipal WiFi, at PS 123 at 10 am today. He is redirected to a page
that informs him that the firm's continuing audit of ratified votes has
climbed to 235,762. The amendment's committed votes include 47% of
eligible voters. |
| 11/6/06;
9:35 pm |
John posts a comment on his personal blog at ourcitydoneright.org
re the
importance of a City Charter amendment promoting
city-wide municipal WiFi. His blog post is item number 172,853 since
the charter amendment's viral campaign launched 11 months ago. |
| 10/31/06;
6:27 pm |
John meets with about 148 other supporters of the WiFi amendment plus
62 interested voters, at Parnell's Pub, using the Meetup API, but with
the arrangements mediated in parallel at ourcitydoneright.org.
Supporters of the WiFi amendment are thinking way too big to balk at
Meetup's nominal charge for use of their API. |
10/31/06;
9:14 pm
(a week to go) |
John clicks a link in an email from Scroggins & Smith, LLC, a
public accounting firm, ratifying his personal calendar item and
appointment to vote for the City Charter amendment promoting city-wide
municipal WiFi, at PS 123 at 10 am on 11/8/06. He is redirected to a
page that informs him that the firm's continuing audit of ratified
votes has climbed to 201,181. The amendment's committed votes include
41% of eligible voters.
John has been ratifying his support of the amendment every
week since he got on board with it last spring. John does not regard
the auditor's email and his response as a nuisance, but sees it as a
welcome ritual: every time he ratifies his intent, joining the swelling
chorus of highly visible, empowered voters, other voters get on board
and he feels energized by the civic crescendo he feels a part of, and
in some way, a leader. John never thought he'd be a civic leader. |
| 8/1/06
- 10/1/06 |
John becomes an observer and commentator on a civic forum which
generates a detailed, specific plan that spells out the economics and
political realities of a City Charter amendment promoting city-wide
municipal WiFi. The final recommedation is generated by 17 individuals
who have been contributing for 9 months to a broad and general
discussion about the wireless plan.
John doesn't mind that he's not one of the 17 primary
developers because he trusts their judgment and he can see how they
respond to the comments on their public work. Besides, they're spending
a
lot of time on this. |
| 5/1/06
- 8/1/06 |
John participates in a civic forum considering whether his city should
install free municipal wireless Internet. In this forum, every entry,
by thousands of citizens, is rated by anyone with an opinion. At the
end of the period, no participant has been rated, but their
contributions have been. It's chaotic: People try to game the system,
but finally the authentic voice of the participants rises above the
noisy corporate-funded "content", and the thought leaders emerge. The
primary differentiator is their clarity of thinking and the
authenticity of their tone. By the end of July, the 17 best
contributors have been designated.
John is an enthusiast who sees the initiative as a 21st
century version of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway Trust Fund. In the
process, he educates himself on the economics of wireless Internet and
the business opportunities it offers to otherwise ordinary citizens.
He's also seen the amazing cynicism of the phone and cable companies
who have fought the measure, and the politicians in their pocket.
John has learned to moderate his formerly extremist views
about government and discovered that the power of this initiative is
not in its tax-supported underwriting of free Internet for the clueless
masses, but rather that more business activity is A Good Thing: that an
explosion of microbusinesses is better than fewer and fewer companies
growing larger and larger. |
| 4/1/06
- 5/1/06 |
John Doe is invited to join an online discussion about citywide
municipally-funded WiFi at ourcitydoneright.org. The
invitation
comes from his good friend, Fred Brown, who says that John really needs
to get involved in this discussion, so Fred has pre-positioned John's
registration data for him. John enters his preferred password and he's
into the dialogue in seconds, and finds that he appreciates Fred's
help. John will
ultimately use the same entry tool (straight out of his Outlook address
book) to engage 17 of his friends who then engage 147 of their friends
and, ultimately, 29,738 people, directly attributable to John's
rolodex. John knows that many of them would have ultimately become
members of the dialogue, but he believes the experts who note that
every keystroke avoided by a prospective member increases the odds of
registration by 3%.
John is pleased that ourcitydoneright.org keeps
track
of all the people his efforts have generated. But he's excited that
ourcitydoneright.org has a formal process to derive
specific initiatives from a general conversation and to expose the
participants' political will as an audited pool of votes determined to
get their way. Democracy has never felt so immediate to him. |
9:41:25 AM 
|
|
