Little Part of a “Big Noise”
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia asks folks to blog about his new vision for changing political campaigns. And to the handful of folks who read this fledgling blog, I’m happy to oblige. Personally, I think this kind of thinking is, at best, ahead of its time. Don’t get me wrong here — I am a big believer in the power of peer publishing to change the very nature of our collective media experience (and, thus, our entire culture and society), but I think the notion that “The candidates who will win elections in the future will be the candidates who build genuinely participative campaigns by generating and expanding genuine communities of engaged citizens” underestimates the continued power of “mass” media methods to sway the electorate. I want what Jimmy says to be true, and in many ways the organization of the Christian Right in this country proves his point, but maybe I’m just cynical. Maybe it’s my midwestern roots — when I go back there I realize just how much of a bubble we live in here in the Bay Area (and coastal urban areas generally) when it comes to technology adoption (let alone political leanings). Having just graduated from UC Berkeley business school, where despite the fact that most of the student body considers itself reasonably tech-savvy and certainly tech-interested, I suspect more than half the class couldn’t even tell you what a wiki is, let alone how it can be used as part of a new paradigm of political campaigning. So, I wish Jimmy and his crew all the best, and I will continue to do my small part to spread the gospel of peer publishing and media empowerment, but until the MySpace/YouTube generation starts making the decisions in the halls of power, we might have another few cycles to go with big-money, image-based politics. I hope I’m wrong.
I think this is absolutely right, and is one of the major reasons why the “liberal blogosphere” is so much less potent than it’s members and observers believe it to be, in terms of changing the country or the Democratic Party. The technology adoption just isn’t there in most of the country. Sure, people get the internet now, but there’s another leap to be made there, where you start to read and believe and make time for all the things you read online. I think most of America is still glued to the tube more than the computer, and it’s because people think of the computer as just that: a box that sits in the corner of their house that they use to do some stuff.
Comment by Doug Hennessee — July 19, 2006 @ 7:29 pm