MySpace.com/johnadams2007

I attended a colloquium yesterday entitled "Rethinking Governance in the Age of MySpace.com." Held at USC, it was the inaugural event for a new series in honor of urban planning expert David Abel and it analyzed how the internet is changing politics and society.

The star-studded panel was a policy wonk's delight, premised on the Founding Fathers and illustrated with an image of John Adams at a computer.  They even set up MySpace.com/johnadams2007, which is not an active community but does post the visual.   

The panel included academics, media types, and government types.

Some of the most thought-provoking panelists were John Perez of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, LA County Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen, and Deaniac leader Joe Trippi.

Discussion evolved around a hypothetical campaign to institute direct democracy in the US.  (According to Trippi, this could happen "next week.")

Here are highlights of the panel discussion:

• Technology enables; it does not create
• Margaret Mead's "only a small group ..." credo still holds true
• According to Janssen, we won't need politicians in eight years time.  We'll just vote directly from our mobile devices.
• Trippi: "Technology changes everything."  Remember, it used to be that only the ruling class could message the masses.  "We now have a multi-way printing press, so to speak.  There's only one medium on the planet that lets five million people give $100 tomorrow morning.  That's a huge power shift.  It's possible only because of technology."
• With the possibilities of e-government, direct democracy, and online information, do we need politicians any more?  Do we need hard-copy newspapers?
• What does it say about our society when we have low voter turnout for political elections but millions empower themselves to vote in American Idol and Dancing with the Stars?
• Imagine a scenario where the European Union, for example, calls a press conference and urges the American people to log on and sign the Kyoto Treaty on behalf of their country.  What would it mean if 50 million Americans signed?
• Trippi: If the Establishment -- corporations, political parties, government -- are the Goliaths, power is shifting to the Davids.  To capitalize on this shift, the Establishment needs to become the slingshot.  Consider the case of the music industry.  Consumers demanded the ability to pick and choose and buy rights to music they wanted.  In came Apple with the iPod and iTunes. 
• Trippi told a story of a Congressmember who approached him during the Dean campaign and said, "Do you know what you're doing?  You're giving Americans faith in strangers again."  Trippi continued by saying that no one in their right mind would post a flyer to a power pole with their home address and say "y'all come." But, online, 175,000 people organized house parties and invited strangers into their homes. 
• Radio journalist Warren Olney and former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg closed the panel.  Hertzberg raised the provocative notion of liberty.  The whole internet phenomenon, he said, begs the question of how liberty is delivered.  Liberty is the trade-off we get for coping with an ever messier democracy, he argued, in a majority-versus-minority-rights stream of thought.  "How do we deliver liberty so we can pursue happiness in the new world order so that we can become the next greatest generation?  If we don't figure this out, liberty is threatened."

Print this report | Send to a friend

About Andrea Adleman | All Reports by Andrea Adleman

---

Browse in : [ Reports ]

Ratings