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December 24, 2003

Wired's take on Dean

Gary Wolf's written a terrific article about the Nettiness of the Dean campaign. For example, he tells of a conversation with Joi Ito:

I contact him to ask if he thinks there's a difference between an emergent leader and an old-fashioned political opportunist. What does it take to lead a smart mob? Ito emails back an odd metaphor: "You're not a leader, you're a place. You're like a park or a garden. If it's comfortable and cool, people are attracted. Deanspace is not really about Dean. It's about us."

You should probably pair this article with Ed Cone's. Gary's is more concerned with the theoretical while Ed's takes you right into the cubes in the Dean HQ. Add in the NY Times Magazine article on the ethos of the campaign, and you have a pretty damn good picture of what's going on, what it feels like, and why it matters.

Posted by D. Weinberger at December 24, 2003 07:18 PM

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Wired's take on Dean:

» Gary Wolf's "How the Internet Invented Howard Dean" from Joi Ito's Web
The Gary Wolf article, "How the Internet Invented Howard Dean" in Wired Magazine that I blogged about earlier just came... [Read More]

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» Presidential Campaigns Are Conversations ? from d o t - c o m a *:o)
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» The Internet and the 2004 US Presidential election from Headshift
The Dean-Internet ticket is picking up more and more excited coverage; is it just another novelty that will be adopted by all parties eventually or does it presage real change in the US electoral system? [Read More]

Tracked on December 29, 2003 08:50 AM

» Dean is Rallying a "Stupid Netwrok" from Get Real
Good piece at Wired byby Gary Wolf making the parallel between the Dean emergent democracy network and Isenberg's "Stupid Networks" concept. Make the network stupid. The Dean campaign is a network rather than an army, and that is one of... [Read More]

Tracked on December 30, 2003 01:03 PM

Comments

I believe that the real story (but maybe not THAT interesting to a US audience) is that Deanspace - which runs at the heart of the Dean internet campaing - is based on Drupal.
Drupal is a european based open source project (www.drupal.org) - and thus the Dean campaign is using a basically european piece of social software to advance Howard Deans bid for the presidency. As I wrote in my blog some months ago when I realized this: "Will non-americans win it for Howard Dean?" While that may be to put it too strongly, I believe that we are witnessing a shift in politics. Now I - a european - can contribute, and make a difference on the american political scene.

Posted by: Gunnar Langemark | December 25, 2003 03:59 PM

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