Archive: Year: 2008

Here's the clip of Andrew Rasiej interviewing Elizabeth Edwards at home via Skype video Monday at PdF2008, when John Edwards happens to drop in. They discuss the impact of the Internet on politics 2008. Edwards says "It's the only reason Barack Obama isn't taking public financing," noting that it's given him a huge fundraising advantage "over Bush"--a slip quickly corrected by Elizabeth, who you can hear chortling in the background. Andrew tells John that the "internet community really loves your wife," to which he responds, "I know, so do I!" And then Elizabeth comes back on to say goodbye, noting, "PdF is enormously important in building this community--thinking about how we can use it [the net] is enormously important." A little...

Mark Pesce, who closed out the second morning of plenary talks at PdF2008, has posted the text of his talk on "Hyperpolitics (American Sytle)." Dig in!...

Yesterday, things got a bit heated on the plenary session with the presidential campaign internet staffers. Mark Soohoo, the deputy internet director of the John McCain, was defending his boss for not personally understanding how to use a computer. Tracy Russo, Soohoo's counterpart on the John Edwards campaign (where she was deputy director of online communication), took issue with Soohoo, and then the fireworks started. Here's the video: If you want more background on Russo's thoughts about why it's so important our next president personally understand the new technology, you can read her post for us here. I'm issuing an open invitation to Mark Soohoo or anyone else from the McCain campaign who would like to respond....

Here's the live feed from Robert Scoble's Nokia N95 that he is using during the PdF2008 panel on "Making and Building the World Live Web."...

A quick post since today is going to be a very busy day. A few weeks back, I wrote a long post asking whether Obama's networked movement was going to do more than just work to elect him president. Well, it looks like the battle to hold him accountable to his promises has already begun, over his support for the FISA bill, and especially over a provision giving the telecom companies retroactive immunity for breaking the law when they gave the Bush Administration access to Americans phone records without judicial authorization. See for example Glenn Greenwald's scalding attack on Obama in Salon. Note that Obama's spokesman promised he would filibuster any bill containing retroactive immunity for the telcos, back in...

I'll be going live to the web from time-to-time during the next two-and-a-half days as...

We're pleased to announce a first for the Internet Election of 2008: Starting tonight, a designated representative of both of the major presidential campaigns are going to participate in a free-wheeling debate on technology and government, moderated by Time magazine blogger Ana Marie Cox and channeled via Twitter. The McCain campaign will be represented by Liz Mair, the online communications director of the Republican National Committee. The Obama campaign will be represented by Mike Nelson, a professor at Georgetown University who served in the Clinton White House under Vice President Gore on tech policy issues. The debate is an initiative of Personal Democracy Forum and is being launched in tandem with next week's annual PdF conference, which is taking place Monday...

The Twittering congressman is now the Qik-ing congressman: Texas Republican Rep. John Culberson is doing live video streaming of interviews with his fellow members of the House during today's vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. You have to wonder what his colleagues think when they see John coming....

This morning, the Obama campaign sent out an email to its supporters urging them to watch an "important announcement" that "he wanted you to hear first." The news? As expected by many observers, Obama has decided to opt out of the presidential public financing system for the general election. Instead of taking approximately $85 million in public funds and agreeing to stop raising money and abide by that spending limit, he has chosen to rely on his gigantic donor base, which currently numbers 1.5 million individuals. It's important to take note of how Obama is framing this decision. He says he's a supporter of "robust" public financing systems (and indeed this is true going back to his days in Illinois state...

We're in the final stretch to the start of Personal Democracy Forum 2008, and the buzz keeps building. If you're blogging about coming to the event, use the tag pdf2008; on Twitter we're going with the hashtag #pdf2008. It's not too late to register, and if you're already registered, you can start connecting with your fellow participants by using all the social networking tools provided on pdf2008.confabb.com. We're pleased to announce a few more fantastic speakers are joining us: * Gina Cooper, the executive director of Netroots Nation, will be joining our final plenary on leadership in a networked age. * Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein will be speaking on Day Two on the power of information to transform government. * Sean Parker, the...