A muddled article on Spiked argues against the use of social software to increase participation in the democratic process.
Martyn Perks has a couple of plausible points, and one illogical conclusion.
He criticises a BBC-sponsored effort to spark online discussion of local issues. He thinks it’s astroturf. Online chat about the local organic food coop isn’t doing anything to help the democratic process.
And he argues against blind faith in technology. “The danger of such patronising thinking is that technology will have the final say, instead of us being smart enough to see otherwise. ”
Because internet democracy can be done badly, he argues that it shouldn’t be done at all.
“What both the mainstream politicians and the social software advocates fail to register, is that most people are unmotivated by politics because the content sucks. Innovation in networking technology is vital, but encouraging greater access to the political process isn’t going to reap the expected returns.”
“The real consequence of the discussion around social software is a cheapening of participation. Ross Mayfield, who runs a weblog devoted to discussing social software, argues: ‘as the cost for forming issue groups falls, expect similar groups and coalitions to form around otherwise less fundable issues.’ (9) For Mayfield, low-cost engagement brings more diversity to the table. But by reducing the meaning of political debate, we only reinforce the helpless feeling of being consumers first and foremost, and citizens second.”
This is a circular argument. If more people join the process and express their views, that might– gasp — change the content.
It doesn’t sound like Perks believes that citizen participation in government is a good thing. Perks isn’t arguing against internet democracy. He’s arguing against democracy itself.
(Ross Mayfield’s rebuttal is here.)
Blog-campaigning for Howard Dean
The Howard Dean campaign has a weblog, and it looks like they’re doing a good job of using the web to build a network of support.
They’re using Meetup to organize a local network.
The blog and Meetup are both soliciting money for the campaign.
The blog is written by supporters, not by Dean himself, but they seem to have access to the candidate. They’re doing a Slashdot-like interview, gathering questions from readers to report to Dean.
A recent post shows that the blog-campaigners get the point. They’re using the web to help organize a national grass roots network and national funding.
A big reason why McCain lost in 2000, besides SC, was that he lacked a nationwide campaign structure that might have benefited from his NH win. The combination of the very crowded early primary schedule and the massive nationwide influx of volunteers (see Meetup.com) supporting Dean have made it possible for the Dean campaign to build a national campaign much earlier.
Social Network Analysis is Dangerous Knowledge
HP analyzed email data to trace the real lines of influence in the organization, as reported in this Natureasks: “will people risk getting laid off if their email usage patterns indicate they not as important as they think they are?”
No, people will risk getting laid off if their email patterns indicate that they are MORE important than the organization thinks they are.
Think about departments where the person who’s important on the real org chart is junior, or female, or the administrative assistant, or a nurse?
Even when an organization discovers the real org chart — the organization still might not be able to cope with the difference between what’s nominally going on and what’s really going on.
This is dangerous knowledge.
Groups that get things done
In a recent Discover article, Steven Johnson writes about the work of Valdis Krebs, and Judith Donath, researchers and consultants who use social network analysis to map the groups that really get stuff done:
In his classic novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon. A karass is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable links, that actually gets stuff done
Candlelight vigil in Stacy Park
Went to the candle-light vigil in the little park across from my house last night. There were 80-100 people, standing quietly among the trees. Those experienced at candle-light vigils had wax-coated paper cups to catch the wax.
I brought a havdala candle, the multi-wicked candle used to mark the transition between the Jewish sabbath and the weekday. It felt appropriate, because we’re marking a transition between a time of peace and a time of war. Also, the candle has multiple wicks, which has a nice e pluribus unum feel to it.
Structured Blogging
Seb’s been thinking about how we could evolve blogging tools to allow people to author more structured (dare I say semantic?) content, so that other people could find their stuff that they find of interest more easily.”
As I said in comments to his post, I think this is a great idea bottom-up, closely tied with communities who define the categories. A group of Austin Bloggers or Emergent Eemocrats or movie lovers finds that they have a topic or set of topics in common, and creates a set of categories that can be used to aggregate posts. The categories come out of the community.
I’m more skeptical about implementing this top-down. An information architect friend was telling me that even professional categorizers categorize things differently over 50% of the time. I don’t think there’s any scheme that’s going to work to auto-create categories, outside of the context of human communities to define those categories.
Raging Cow and Anti-Links
Blog popularity indexes like Daypop and Blogdex showed that The Raging Cow story was one of the top-linked items last week.
If you haven’t been paying attention, the Raging Cow campaign was created by a marketing company attempting to influence bloggers to blog their endorsements for a new soft drink.
At first glance, the marketing company was probably ecstatic about the amount of publicity generated by the campaign. With a closer look, many of the blog posts derided and mocked this attempt to generate “astroturf” support in a grassroots medium.
The problem is that the indexes rank stories according to the number of links they attract. They can’t tell whether the links mean that bloggers LIKE the story or HATE the story.
There’s a lively discussion about adding a hyperlink attribute that would express an opinion about the linked content — love it or hate it, thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
Links here, here, and here.
Blog Network Metablog: How it Works
There’s a new Blog Tribe Metablog which aggregates posts about blogging.
We built the metablog using Version 2 of the Austinbloggers infrastructure. Bloggers add a trackback ping to their posts, and those posts are aggregated into a central blog on the topic.
Version 1 used TopicExchange from Phil Pearson. TopicExchange uses trackback to aggregates posts to a URL at the TopicExchange site. This is very handy, if you simply want a list of posts on a topic. If you want to create a site that has richer formatting, you can aggregate the posts into your favorite blog tool using RSS. Unfortunately, that introduces a time delay.
So we developed Version 2, which uses a Python script developed by Chip Rosenthal, to instantly aggregate an abstract of the posts that issue the trackback pings, and to post them to a MovableType blog. Version 2 also has a right-column sidebar of announcements. The template contains a second MTEntries section running down the sidebar which displays posts having the category “announcements.”
The AustinBloggers site has moved on to Metablog Version 3, which uses Chip’s custom-written CMS and server-side includes to display the page.
But the Blog-network site uses Version 2, so it can be easily maintained by people who know Movable Type.
If you have any more questions about how this works, feel free to ask me.
Building communities with software
Excellent Joel Spolsky article about the design decisions to build the Fog Creek tech support forum.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html
He talks about small touches designed to improve the conversation and the social space:
* a simple design to eliminate impediments to posting. “That’s why there’s no registration and there are literally no features, so there’s nothing to learn.”
* no feature to “email replies to post” — that kills discussion, since users never check back
* no branching, since branching makes discussions confusing
* topics listed based on time of original post– drives a life cycle for conversations
* need to scroll through all the posts before you respond –means users are more likely to respond in context
* no “preview mode” — means users are more likely to be careful before posting
* “reply” doesn’t quote previous post — reduces redundancy
* human moderation — need to remove troublemakers, much less socially and technical complicated than Slashdot
Creating the Commons
In his talk at SXSW, Larry Lessig expressed disappointment and surprise that the Supreme Court ruled against Eldred.
He argued the case using a good conservative legal argument. According to the intent of the framers of the constitution, copyright holders should be granted a limited monopoly in order to catalyze the creation of more work. Nevertheless Congress has extended copyright terms well beyond the plain meaning of “limited term”, and well beyond the incentive for artists to create new works. Despite the clear legal case, the justices still ruled in favor of extending copyright.
The conclusion Lessig draws is to be pessimistic about the court and political system. Instead, he’s working build market share for more moderate licenses, using the Creative Commons approach.
On the one hand, I don’t think it’s necessary to be quite so pessimistic with respect to the political process.
On the other hand, I don’t think Lessig is pessimistic enough about the influence of money on politics.
Also, the success of Creative Commons depends on new, profitable distribution channels for content. I believe that it’s possible, but I don’t see the way from here to there yet.
Courts, Politics, and Dred Scott
The Eldred case is the Dred Scott case of copyright law. In 1857, the Supreme Court argued that Dred Scott must remain a slave, despite the fact that he had been living in free states.
Although there was legal precedent and a good case to free Dred Scott, common knowledge accepted slavery as a fact of life and a part of the system. The court was able to rule as it did, because slavery was a reasonable outcome at the time.
Today, common wisdom holds that intellectual property is property, like a house or an automobile. Just as it would be unnatural and communistic for the government to seize one’s house and give it away after fifty years, it is “stealing” to take creative works and give them to the public domain.
The idea that “content is property” was pervasive in the late-90s, when the DMCA and copyright extensions were being passed. Media corporations were almost the only voices speaking to Congress.
That picture has changed. Geeks, who were largely technolibertarian five years ago, are aware that the government isn’t going to wither away, and we need to wake up in order to preserve civil liberties. The mainstream media is covering the story now – there was a front page NY Times article on Eldred.
And there’s a good story to tell to the public at large. Snow White, Pinocchio, and Mickey Mouse came from the public domain. New culture is built from old culture. We need to keep telling that story. When common sense changes, congress and the courts will act differently.
All the Money in the World
One reason for Lessig’s pessimism with the political process is that the advocates of closed culture have “all the money in the world.”
The US political process is dominated by money. The cost of running a campaign has doubled in the last decade. Politicians spend 80% of their time raising money. Politicians need money, corporations want law, corporations buy politicians.
In his speech, Lessig gave a moving re-interpretation of a Jack Valenti speech, citing values like democracy and freedom. But we don’t live in a democracy any more, we live in an oligarchy. Money rules.
If we don’t develop effective ways to reduce the role of money in politics, the wealthier side of an issue will continue to be able to buy the law. I’m trying to think globally and act locally on this issue, but I don’t see a clear way out.
Creative Profit
The goal of the Creative Commons project is to build market share for new, more moderate content licenses that reserve some rights for content creators, and create fewer restrictions on the reuse of content. For example, a new Creative Commons license for music permits sampling, but doesn’t permit copying the whole song.
The success of Creative Commons depends on getting non-trivial market share in terms of dollars, not just units (as the market analysts put it). How many authors will follow Cory Doctorow by publishing their work online? (Cory’s license enables readers to freely download and copy the work, as long as they attribute it, don’t resell it, and don’t make derivative works). How many musicians will follow Janice Ian, who argued that Napster helps her career.
If a hundred thousand bloggers, writing for love and fame, use Creative Common licenses, that will put more culture in the public domain. But it won’t change the way business is done.
Most creators sell their soul to publishers, in the futile hope that publishers will market their books and music, and turn them into stars. In theory, there are new business models for freer content, but there are few success stories yet.
What will be the Creative Commons equivalent of IBM, which uses Open Source Software to make billions of dollars in hardware and consulting sales?
I believe there’s an opportunity, but I can’t see the commercial business model yet.
What do you think?