Dean - What this means for everything. Here is an except from Chris Lydon's interview with Joe Trippi - Dean's Campaign Manager. Lessons for us all Trippi's thinking began with next fall's campaign and worked backwards. The question was how to find 2-million workers and raise $200-million... [Robert Paterson's Weblog]
Great interview. Trippi gets it big time. To use the Internet effectively you must give up command and control. Some people are comfortable dealing with the chaos that a complex system presents and some are not. Compare chemistry and biology. Chemistry is mainly abut process, identifying the proper method to create the desired end product in high yield from the starting reactants. Once the process is defined, it is repeatable. That is the nature of a process - to repeat success. You exert 'command and control' over all the relatively simple reactions that occur in order to proceed from reactant to product. If you expect 80% yield and you only get 35%, you are wrong, not the process.
Biology is very different. Life evolved, in many ways, to deal with the fact that ambiguity can be more important than process. Trying to control life's processes has turned out to be incredibly complex. You can do two reactions, with exactly the same components, in parallel and come out with different results. Many of life's processes are stochastic, meaning that probability and statistics describe the reactions. The difference between chemistry and biology is, in many ways, similar to the difference between Newtonian and Quantum mechanics.
Now, remember that Einstein did not want to make the leap to Quantum mechanics, while Feynman thrived. Both men were geniuses in their own domain. I think we will see something similar with regard to using the Internet. Its complexity and redundancy requires a different approach, one in which the command and control of a chemist is useless. It requires the joy for ambiguity seen in a biologist.
Rove is an inorganic chemistry. Very powerful in his own domain. But Trippi is a biologist. It should be an interesting struggle. I believe that in the long run, the approach Trippi is using will be best. Life developed its huge complexity in order to be able to deal with changing surroundings. Any organism that could not rapidly adapt when circumstances arose would die. Times of rapid change selected for those animals that could deal with the changes. Complexity permits a wide response to a tremendous variety of stimuli. Command and control usually permits just a few.
You find very few hierarchical organisms. In fact, if you map the interactions of the large group of proteins found in a cell, if you examine their network, you find that it looks eerily similar to two other networks that adapt to complex circumstances: human social networks and the Internet.
Human beings are incredibly proficient at solving problems, particularly complex ones, when a variety of diverse viewpoints are brought to bear inside a social network. Effective social networks are incredibly nimble. Information flows throughout the network, rapidly interacting to create knowledge. The Internet is actually facilitating the creation of these social networks. Organizations that leverage this ability using the tools of the Information Age will be more successful dealing with complex problems in a rapidly changing world.
Industrial Age command and control structures usually only permit the possibility of a few viewpoints, all rigidly controlled by the command structure. Hierarchies require information to flow only up or down, not sideways. Information flow is greatly hampered, compared to adaptive social networks. I would not expect command and control hierarchies to be as successful or as nimble dealing with rapidly changing conditions.
Well, a long winded discussion regarding why I think Rove will have a hard time effectively using the Internet in any positive fashion, while Trippi and Dean continue to astound pundits because there are effectively using the new tools. It may not be enough to get them elected but this election cycle will be long remembered because of what they do. That is what is really important. 11:37:18 PM 
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