[pcf] Politics panel
Posted on March 22nd, 2004
Tim O’Reilly (one of my heroes) leads a panel on “the reality of Internet and politics.”
The panelists are Jonah Seiger who worked with EFF, Bob Epstein of GetActive.com, and Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com. It takes Esther asking a question from the floor to get them to address what I think is the fundamental issue: Ordinary people feeling they can own a campaign.
Eventually, I asked if they each could find even a single sentence about how the Net is making a difference to politics, without using the word “money.” Scott did, but the others two couldn’t. “The Net lets us do old things in new ways,” one concluded.
That may well be the whole truth. But I refuse to be stripped of all hope. Without hope there is no action.
Tagged with: conference coverage
Never lose hope my friend. Your question pressing us to come up with a sentence about the impact of the Internet on politics without using the word “money” was excellent. I think you missed the point of my answer, though.
I said “no” because, at least in the world I live in, money makes everything possible. Good ideas and a compelling narative are essential as well, of course. But without financial resources its very difficult (if not impossible) to sustain a movement of any sort.
The Internet creats new opportunities to do more with less, and as evidenced by countless examples (the work I did at CDT in the early 90’s, moveon.org, and Dean 2003) does indeed create opportunities for boot-strapped efforts to break out into the mainstream. But in the end, if you can’t raise money to sustain an effort, you can’t have a lasting impact.
Hope that clarifies.
Jonah, it clarifies, and I appreciate both the role of money and your thoughts about how the Net can help finance campaigns that otherwise wouldn’t get off the ground.
But I also think you miss my point. I agree that Dean proved that the Net is a good way to raise money. But I believe that the Net is having other effects on politics as well.
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