Digital Polity Attended a networking luncheon this week where Reed Hundt gave a speech quite different than two weeks prior at Supernova. Perhaps he drank the superjuice -- it was very emergent democratic and second superpowery.
The first speech centered on his proposal to provide Universal Broadband Access to over 90% of US homes by 2013. Americans take the Net for granted more than anyone, while other enlightened countries (Korea being the poster child) make it a mission. This year's Supernova had a greater focus on policy and Reed's was the one specific policy proposal I heared -- invest an amount less than the subsidy to analog TV for digital ($75b) to maintain economic competitiveness. Unless there is a plausible path for ILEC demise, this is the best proposal on the table. Reed also gets open spectrum, so sing a hallelujah and hope something happens.
One thing is for sure. When Dean showed he could raise money on the Net, politics changed forever.
Previously the Net had demonstrated its ability to influence decision makers through individualize pluralism, beginning when Kevin Werbach set up the first citizen feedback email address. Over 2 million emails were sent by citizens on the issue of media ownership, at last count according to Reed. Blogs have also demonstrated the ability of an influential deliberative network to force the media to play their role as the 4th estate, Lott being the poster child.
But now the Net has become a constituency. Decision makers like to say they are accountable even the poorest residents of their districts, but money is the source of their power and the group they serve is the group that elects them with it. Dean has shown the Net as means to money. And now every politician is finally paying attention.
Reed's talk last week was on the digital polity vs. the analog polity. He spoke eloquently about the rising constituency and how its "not just that things reoccur, its that they get better." There are core ideals, parties are means towards those ideals, but are largely ineffective. A new party of a digital polity is emerging that holds certain core beliefs:
- We know more than our leaders
- We pay nobody to say what we want to hear
- Information is percipient and wants to be free
- We are build on systems and networks, not organizations
- We synthesize the whole instead of constructing barriers and silos
- We believe in truth and civil debate
Now I may not have everything word for word (thumbed it into my Palm). He also stated digital polity principles of privacy, representation, honesty and equity. He implies that leaders still have utility and a role to play, but they need to engage the digital constituency and build trust. We don't depend upon the media because we are skeptics and experts, we are global and can engage in collective action without government. That said, digital needs to negotiate with analog. But these are powerful and re-occuring themes.
What is encouraging, if not remarkable, is that Reed is a civil servant, nay, politician, who undertands his new constituency and its reasonable demands.
At the end he did casually remark that we should abolish the US Senate, as they are a distortion of representation, serving only 15% of citizens. The point he is making, though, is that leaders fall behind their citizens (especially in times like these). Perhaps because they are not engaged with their constituents. Perhaps because their interests are conflicted. But the difference is our representatives need to recognize our new found powers to deliberate and represent ourselves at a pace they need to understand.
Which brings me back to Dean. If a candidate and causes can raise money on the Net, they can engage in institutional pluralism. Direct participation within the social network of decision makers. This scares most policy makers, as the game has changed.
Its a grass roots game ripe for changing minds and policy. Valdis forwarded a paper, Encouraging Political Defections: The Role of Personal Discussion Networks in Partisan Desertions to the Opposition Party and Perot Votes by Paul Beck, that I found absolutely stunning. We are bi-polar in our political views by nature, tend to filter out news we can identify is from the opposition and are comfortable in the absence of change. But when an issue is socialized we have a greater chance of changing our minds. When our social network provides new ideas and affirmations, we are more likely to take new positions.
Perhaps that's the power of Dean's use of Meetup. Meetup collapses time and space for deliberative groups to get together. Inevitably, some participants are strong ties for affirmation and weak ties for new ideas. What Dean is doing is opening up discussion at the social level to enact political change. How neofunctional of him. What Dean needs to do, however, is get more of us to debate -- instead of the candidates.
4:40:43 PM 
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