Archive: Year: 2008

With just 19 days to go (gulp) til Personal Democracy Forum 2008 opens its doors, we're pleased to announce that Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, and the author of the important new book, The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It, will be keynoting day two of the conference. I recently heard Jonathan speak (at the Berkmanat10 event) and he is at the top of his game right now. Plus his book is a must-read; it's convinced me that the term "generativity" ranks up there with "open source" and "networked" as one of the key organizing principles of the new world we are living in. Zittrain makes clear that the...

The Tuesday night ritual of gathering around the electronic campfire to share in the evolving politics of the 2008 presidential race may finally be over, at least until November. Here are some snapshots and observations from tonight: 1. Hillary Clinton hardly seems to have folded her tents. Her homepage was touting her "18 million" votes, and she still seemed to be very much interested in building her army, with a big box seeking names, emails and comments. 2. Barack Obama is riding an incredible wave of interest and support. On Twitter, for example, check out this chart showing mentions of "Obama" in the last day: 3. John McCain continues to perplex me with his abject approach to the web. Can anyone explain how...

[What follows is the first-person account of the making of the viral video of Pastor John Hagee that precipitated Senator John McCain's decision to renounce Hagee's endorsement of his candidacy. Wilson is a co-founder of the E Pluribus Media blogger collective, and blogs at Talk To Action. This is his story, the story of a citizen journalist who changed the course of the race. It is reposted with his permission. The editors.] Bruce Wilson In the day or two following the McCain-Hagee rift, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, AP, The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, Yahoo News, ABC News, and WaPo credited my website with causing the McCain-Hagee "God Sent Hitler" scandal. But, to be more precise, I was the...

This photo is crying out for a good caption. Any suggestions? (It's from Joe Trippi's annual Memorial Day clambake.)...

It's one thing to read about an event in the newspaper; it's another thing to watch the event in its unexpurgated form as raw, unedited video. And as more people carry video cameras or video-enabled mobile phones, it's a safe bet that high-, medium- and even low-visibility political events are going to be recorded by participants and find their way to the web. Not every video will be a "macaca" moment, but these primary documents have their own power to persuade or affect opinions precisely because they're so organically real. This morning I went looking for raw video of Barack Obama's visit yesterday to a Boca Raton synagogue, where he was making a direct appeal to Florida's important bloc of...

We're still hard at work finalizing the program for this year's fifth annual Personal Democracy Forum, which is taking place June 23-24 at Rose Hall in New York City, and I'm pleased to be able to share these updates with you on speakers and panels. Don't wait til the last minute to register, by the way--the early bird rate is going to expire after May 31 and prices are going up. Save $100 by registering now. We've added these panels to the mix on Monday's sessions, which are focused mainly on how technology is changing campaigns, elections and political media: - Cyrus Krohn (RNC e-campaign director), Matt Ewing (MoveOn.org Operation Democracy), Austin Walne (Fred Thompson 2008), and Randall Winston (Project Agape/Facebook Causes)...

Is Barack Obama actually using the social media tracking tool FriendFeed to follow tech gurus Andrew McLaughlin, Chris Messina, Chris Pirillo, Dave Winer, Dave Sifry (how'd he slip in there?), Fred Wilson, Jason Calacanis, Jeff Jarvis, Michael Arrington, Loic le Meur, Robert Scoble, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Steve Rubel, and Susan Mernit along with lowly tech-politics bloggers like Patrick Ruffini, Luigi Montanez, Josh Levy and yours truly? Alas, the answer appears to be a big fat "No," according to a source inside the Obama internet team. Someone is "squatting" on the Obama name on Friendfeed, apparently--though they don't appear to be using it in a malicious way. One of the quirks of all these new services for sharing and tracking information, like Friendfeed and...

For the next 45 minutes, you can join in and watch the "Open Media" session at the Berkman at 10 conference. It's being streamed live to web by uber-video blogger Steve Garfield....

Here's the archived video of the "Transparency and Government" session at the Berkman at 10 conference that I participated in along with Sunlight Foundation head Ellen Miller this morning. (I am a consultant to Sunlight.) It was streamed live to the web by uber-video blogger Steve Garfield, who is the official videographer of the event....

Is the Internet good for democracy, or not? John Palfrey is up leading a distributed conversation on that topic for the second plenary session. Here's the short description, from the conference program: The Internet is changing how politics is conducted at every level, from local to national to global. Ten years ago, some predicted the online utopia of "everyone a pamphleteer." It's clear that the changes taking place on the Internet are more subtle than some anticipated, that they vary by place and context, and that the changes are not all good. Optimists argue that things are on the right track -- that the development of the "networked public sphere" is, overall, a very positive thing for democratic...