The Obama campaign has been using technology extensively to reach out and engage (potential) supporters. Check out http://my.barackobama.com/. The website has the same look and feel as highly popular social networking sites like FaceBook, LinkedIn and Plaxo. It is a virtual place to communicate and collaborate. User and usage data are collected and databases are sliced and diced to obtain actionable information about voters, their preferences and propensities. It not only gives the president-elect good insight in his supporter base, it provides him with a tool to engage and seek input from a very large numbers of active participants. Obama can directly interact with millions. This will change the way politics and government will be conducted in the coming years. In many ways we will see the opposite of the secrecy and exclusive style of the Bush administration. Obama will create transparency and a highly inclusive approach to solving the tremendous problems that the US and by extension the world is facing.
An interesting article in the Herald Tribune puts it as follows: “As a result, when he arrives at the White House, Obama will have not just a political base, but a database, millions of names of supporters who can be engaged almost instantly. And there's every reason to believe that he will use the network not just to campaign, but to govern…. More profoundly, while many people think that Obama is a gift to the Democratic Party, he could actually hasten its demise. Political parties supply brand, ground troops, money and relationships, all things that Obama already owns.”
Under the banner “Web 2.0” a host of new capabilities has come to the Internet. Web 2.0 is about on-line communities and web-based collaboration. The idea of the online community is to bring people together, exchange ideas, create excitement and prompt action, independent of their location or time of the day. The most important aspect is the multi-directional exchange of information, either through real-time interaction or posting of messages and information. While web 1.0 was primarily broadcasting, web 2.0 is as much about as uploading as downloading, more “engaging” than “entertaining”. The tech world is full of jargon and we have been deluded before in the dot.com era, but look closer and you see the ground swell that will change politics, entertainment and even the way we interact with friends and family.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/weekinreview/23stolberg.html?ref=weekinreview
ReplyDeleteArticle in todays's NY Times: A Rewired Bully Pulpit: Big, Bold and Unproven
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 22, 2008
It is one thing to run a movement, filled with passion and an army of true believers set on a single goal, and another to run a country, where competing agendas are often fueled by deep divisions. And while the communications stars do seem to be aligned for Mr. Obama, historians, political scientists and strategists say that being the first Internet president poses its own challenges. The Internet, after all, is a two-way medium, and the bully pulpit is inherently one-way.