Context is people

As usual, an insightful post from John Udell about what it takes to make sense of government data – or other data – online.
Udell has been covering the emerging array of tools to expose government and legislative data online. Then he tried to use the tools to follow a bill he cared about:

What I found is that, even with power tools like GovTrack and MAPLight, it’s really hard to make those connections. That’s partly because we lack good mechanisms to track the flow of bits of legislative language through an evolving assortment of bills, and to relate those fragments to the activities and interests of their sponsors.But it’s also because a novice who tries to read and interpret this record lacks context.

In order to understand the progress of a bill, you don’t just need a bill number and a tool to show differences in document versions — you need to understand committee process, legislative calendars, procedural maneuvers; written and unwritten rules; social and political dynamics.
Udell points to tools like GovTrack which are attempting to create a substrate for communities following bills. I’m seeing a trend that is fascinating and a little bit lower tech. National blogs like FireDogLake, local blogs like TransBayBlog, social network communities like the Get Fisa Right network in MyBarackObama.com, provide their communities with more detailed context on the dynamics of legislation and the process of adding ingredients to the sausage. In the context of a community, members learn more about the legislative process than civics 101 class, or than getting email from the Sierra Club.
The data-driven tools that Udell envisions, where the system allows citizens who are tracking the same bill to find each other, are cool, visionary, good right and true. A lower tech solution is here today. Bill numbers are good search terms. Google a bill number and you’ll find resources on the bill. The ability to google for a bill number, find a great blog and discussion, and engage in some informed networking and activism, is here today.

Complete Streets Act queued for California Senate

The Complete Streets Act, sponsored by Assemblymember Mark Leno, is queued up for debate in the California Senate. The bill requires local governments to take into account users other than cars when updating general plans. Pedestrians, bicyclists, children, people with disabilities, seniors, all need to be considered. In a “complete streets” world, cars have a vote, not a veto on how streets are used.
More background on the bill from the TransBay Blog. The bill is queued for the Senate floor, but is being held while the Gov. plays chicken with the budget. If you live in CA, call your state Senator in support of the bill.

Mirror, mirror – who’s the fairest reporter?

Glenn Greenwald’s incendiary analysis reveals that ABC News knew at the time who was spreading the word that Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks, one of the threads in the case for war. They still know and they’re not telling. Compare and contrast to Matthew Ingram’s reflections earlier this year about the internet blurring the lines between fact and rumor.
Traditional media can be influenced. PR and propaganda go back far into the history of mass media because they work. This is why companies have pr departments and famous people have media agents. Representatives of traditional media who believe they report fact without rumor or influence are Snow White’s haughty and deluded Evil Queen.

Political blog readership – cause and effect

What does it mean that readership of political blogs in the US is politically polarized, according to a recent study of political blogs in the US. Readers on the right and left reading different blogs, and are more partisan than average Americans. Blogging isn’t a tool for discourse across the spectrum, but a tool for organizing and message-building.
Is the partisanship cause or effect? “We don’t know if blogs polarize their readers, or if highly ideological readers gravitate to blogs that reflect their partisanship.” A comment on Crooked Timber, group blog of one of the study’s authors has an insight. MQ writes, “I think this stuff is going to change over time. The blog world took shape at an extremely politically polarized time, and the polarization was still there in 2006.”
The connection between blog-reading and activism is supported by a multi-national study showing that blog readers in France, Germany, the US and the UK are more likely to be politically active. It would be interesting to find out how many of the the people reading and organizing using blogs have been partisan and politically active all along, and how many have been mobilized by blogs.
Personally, I’ve become more partisan as a result of reading political blogs, and a more active participant in electoral politics. I got involved in tech policy activism before the rise of political blogging; but the issues weren’t particularly partisan at the time. I’ve become more partisan in part because of the evolution of the right in the US toward defense of torture, government spying, aggressive wars, unlimited executive privilege and other radicalism. And partly persuaded by the argument by Markos et al that the attitude of reasoned nonpartisanship on the part of Democrats enabled them to be rolled by those negotiating in bad faith, the “bipartisanship is date rape” tactic. I admire the Obama campaign’s message of hope, but when Obama backpedals on his commitment to the constitution, the right strategy is to organize. It will be wonderful to contemplate varying points of view when the path to compromise isn’t “how much of the constitution do you want to give up.”
It would be exceedingly interesting to find out whether there are meaningful numbers of people getting mobilized to political activity through involvement in blogs and social media.

Peripheral canal and farmers market salmon

The man who sells fish at the Menlo Park farmers market with his family is a good guy and a community leader. There is no local salmon for him to sell this year, because the Delta where the salmon grow up — an estuary at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers — is dying.
Today, water is drawn from Northern California through the Delta. Too much water is being taken out, and too much fresh water is being drawn through what used to be a tidal flux.
My weekend housecleaning radio listening was a KQED forum program about a proposal to build a Peripheral Canal, which would route less fresh water through the Delta, and would take more water around the Delta. After listening to the program, I’m still not sure what to think about the canal proposal. I think that key questions are how much water is moved, and how we live with less. One of the guests on the program was Peter Gleick, a water expert and Macarthur grantee who’s written a report on California water policy.
These water debates are the stuff of Cadillac Desert and Jared Diamond’s Collapse, the tactical decisions that affect the rise and fall of civilizations over time.

Why branded communities fail

These are some good reasons that branded communities fail: focus on features; lack of facilitation; lack of success metrics. The title of the piece implies one more reason — the concept of branded community itself!! The term “branded community” telegraphs the wish that the community will will be about and for the host. Being a good host will surely enhance the reputation of the host. But hosting a party is about making the time and place comfortable and fun for the guests. Communities focused on the goals of the host more than the goals of the participants won’t keep participants around very long.

Organizing inside MyBarackObama.com

When Barack Obama reversed his position about the bad FISA bill (that updated US surveillance law by pruning the fourth amendment), Obama supporters didn’t just get mad, they organized. What’s new is that they used Obama’s online social network, MyBarackObama.com to organize their opposition to their candidate’s position.
Barack Obama’s campaign has been innovative in using online social networking to organize his supporters — it’s a milestone like FDR’s use of radio, Kennedy’s use of television, and Viguerie’s use of direct mail. But a social network is not like radio or direct mail. Participants can talk to each other and organize. This is the first well-known instance of a candidate’s supporters organizing using the candidate’s tools. I don’t think it will be the last.
The FISA opponents lost this battle. Marcy Wheeler’s debrief shows that the participants are learning lessons for the next battle, not just about online organizing or even messaging, but about longterm strategy and tactics, understanding the unwritten legislative process; dogging committees; and organizing primaries against key adversaries.
The discourse about social media often sounds like marketing rebranded; how to market to the buyers inside the social networks. But the people in social networks can talk to each other, and that’s a fundamentally different thing.

Blogher, consumerism, community

The Blogher party last Saturday night was at Macy’s, which is a propos. Conventional wisdom is discovering that a network of women bloggers is the next generation of women’s magazine. This isn’t a sellout shock like yoga fashion; it’s not as if BlogHer comes from any kind of ascetic ideal; the founders of BlogHer came from media, and intended from the first to be a new kind of commercial media; The early BlogHer conferences had sessions on how to make money from your blog; now the dream is starting to come true.
Also, there is a basic difference between Parenting Magazine and home blogging – a journalist writing about being a parent and quoting parents in little snippets is different from people writing about their lives. A feature article with quotes from 5 families is different from a comment thread with people talking to each other. The number of voices and kinds of voices in a handful of mass-produced magazines is going to be smaller than the number and kinds of voices in the blogs of individual women. And folk culture does its own transformations of the products of advertising.
And yet there’s a big caution from history. One of my favorite books, Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s More Work for Mother, tells the story of the way that advertisers helped construct the culture and identity of middle class women in the age of automation. Laundromats and storebought clothing might have enabled women to do other things with their time than clean house and sew; and early feminists argued in favor of using automation for liberation. Makers of soap and manufacturers of appliances allied with people who believed that women’s place was in the home, to advocate that women ought to clean clothes more often instead of using their time for other things. When the sources of revenue are makers of consumer goods, how does this affect the lives and conversations of those of us dependent on that revenue? How reluctant do we become to bite the hands that feed us?
There were some excellent sessions on women working in open source communities developing blogging tools; hopefully we will continue to create ourselves as makers not just consumers. I talked to one woman who has a video project on the history of feminism; I hope that the community continues to host that sort of work. And I am hopeful that the lesson of the Obama campaign is that social networks are and remain tools for organizing at the same time as they are tools for marketing.

Glad to be in California, #53

The first time I heard the radio ad on the network news radio station, I was driving in traffic and wasn’t sure I heard what I heard. The next time I listened closely. “We’ve been planning this day for a long time” says the woman’s voice. Kathy and I want the day to be special. “Rick and I wanted to a symbol of our love and commitment” says a man’s voice. The radio-dignified voiceover: “Shreve and Company. A San Francisco tradition.” Schmaltzy, yup. Consumerist, check. An every day sign of culture and values. Also yes.

Economist alt energy issue

I read the Economist’s alternative energy special. It made the case that a post fossil fuel future is sooner than one might think, and had good stats on overall market size, growth rate, and competitive costs.
The big weakness was in the way it handled energy efficiency. The article pooh-poohed notions of energy conservation, identifying it with dour do-goodism. The economist doesn’t have trouble with other sorts of efficiency driven by technology price/performance, or reducing labor. But somehow, if you can get comparable results with less energy, that’s not worth considering.