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As we watch the most incredible of events unfold in the Middle East, we certainly don't know how they will conclude and it may take longer to understand them. Social Media, nay, the Internet, didn't cause the revolution in Egypt. They underlying cause is more likely ineffective and unjust totalitarian rule. We can dismiss how Milennials are shaping the first world today. But whenever you have the largest demographic bubble in history at the peak of youth, and they don't have a just role to play in an unjust society, they tend to find one.
Democracies look back fondly at student revolutions, from 1968 and beyond. But what is happening in the developing world today could hope to end so well. About 15 years ago there was an article in the Economist that I can't access now that predicted the large concentration of impoverished youth in the Middle East would push thing to the brink. Were it not for the aggressive growth policies of Bejing subsidizing the poor in the Chinese hinterlands there would have been bread riots in a civilization predisposed to revolution.
Revolutions happen when circumstances are unjust, there is enough of a body to form a politic and they have the ability to organize. The internet certainly reduced coordination costs to bring #jan25 together. But perhaps we have reached a point across the world where enough connections have happened that people expect the ability to communicate with a high degree of freedom. Even when forbid by dictatorial or oligarchical rules of law.
I believe in Egypt enough people had just enough of a taste of free communication to know what it means. The ability to communicate across distances, groups, openly published or with a semblance of privacy. And when you have that, it is hard to picture going back.
I believe where Mubarak failed was not in his believe in his own power. But they way he wielded it in the end within this new environment. He let the internet become a terrorist.
While that word may spark a strong reaction, let me explain. Since the time of the Zealots, terrorism has always been a series of tactics deployed by the minority to provoke change by the group in power by turning the people they have power over against them. Terrorists cause terror to provoke an overreaction by the State against them. As the State's countermeasures trend towards abusing their own norms and laws, and take away the civil liberties of the people, the people turn against them.
The protestor's use of the internet served to coordinate their actions. But it was also an act of publishing. One the state was not prepared for, let alone accustomed to. By the time it was amplified and coopted by traditional foreign media it had something it new it had to react to as a second order. But not how to deal with the first order. So it shut it down.
When Mubarak shut down the internet, the people found ways to route around points of control. But the people also I believed realized that the state was acting unjustly towards them in an extreme way. It took away something they had learn to value if not expect.
The US administration has recently grouped net freedom into universal values, and is taking a stand to support them. I can't tell you how proud I am that they are taking this stand. This isn't US chauvinism that projects unilateral power and by direct consequence dismantles the greatest multilateral system of foreign relationships ever. That happened with the last administration. This one knows that in the balance of information arbitrage, the state with information values, Wikileaks or not, will prevail if it holds true.
This new foreign plank is what we used to be good at. Taking a stand upon a right or value and building alliances upon which it stands. It is foreign policy with the most modern purpose. For progression doesn't stop at your shores when you want to build your future instead of cower in someone else's past.
I wrote most of this on the day Mubarak stepped down to mark it for myself.
This week the NY Times explores how failing to pass health reform will have an impact on innovation -- and archetypal Silicon Valley startups.
In the cradle of American innovation, workers are making career choices based on co-payments, pre-existing conditions and other minutiae of health insurance. They are not necessarily making decisions based on what would be best for their careers and, in turn, for the American economy ― that is, “where their skills match and where they can grow the most,” as another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Cyriac Roeding, says. Health insurance, Mr. Roeding adds, “is distorting the decision-making.”
...Only 46 percent of companies with three to nine employees offer health insurance, down from 56 percent a decade ago, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation...
Without health reform, entrepreneurs will continue to take the wrong risks. Starting a company is the art of making do without resources. This often means limiting your own compensation and forgoing health insurance at the start. When recruiting employees, its difficult in the early stages of a company to offer health benefits that are comparable let alone competitive with those of larger companies. This despite the fact that when a startup employee gets sick, it can have a broad impact on the productivity of the company overall.
As the economy is recovering there is no better time to start a new company. Silicon Valley is getting back to what it does best, we need Washington to do the same.
On this day, this most historic day, we celebrate what we all believed in. But we didn't hold our breath. Now breathless, we exhale, knowing that now it all begins.
I do not have words for what I feel about Barack Hussein Obama inaugurated today as the 44th President of the United States. When Rick Klau started talking to me about the man he did his part for in his local district, in electing him to the Senate, I was captivated and felt hope. For a rare moment, I feel that politics has progressed faster than technology.
My Firefox spellchecker prompts me to correct Barack Obama, but not Hussein.
And I feel hope again. For my children. For our global citizenship. For who we want to be. And how we could get there.
Obama cannot be successful for us without us. He knows that, and the new whitehouse.gov reflects more than a progression from his campaign. It now serves us and him towards entirely different goals. Beyond engagement with civic life as us, I think it could change policy-making forever.
Washington used to work through lobbying, or institutional pluralism. When that failed, Regan used the Bully Pulpit to get people to fax their congressmen, or individual pluralism. These tools still work for advancing change. And with the web they are amplified. But my hope is we don't activate mass pressure, but smarter pressure. Getting citizens together, to deliberate together, to form constituencies before not heard, to gauge multi-disciplinary approaches, and suggest better courses of action. Emergent pluralism may have its day.
Today I heard someone on the radio saying the FDR needed to the depression and Lyndon Johnson needed the civil rights movement and other presidents needed citizens demanding solutions to challenges to make them as great as they were. This is but one thing for the coming administration, but how they engage us, beginning today, could be the greatest.
Larry Lessig's Change-Congress.org seeks to reform the influence of money on politics by enabling emergent pluralism. It calls for citizens and candidates to take a pledge. Click on the badge to see mine. The principles behind the pledges are:
1. No money from lobbyists or PACs
2. Vote to end earmarks
3. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency
4. Support publicly-financed campaigns
Lessig put out a call to action yesterday:
I'm asking you today to go to the site and first tag the candidates in your own district. When that's done, then please work on as many other districts as you can. You'll get points as you do this (we're not sure what those points will get you beyond whuffie among reformers). And please spread this please of mine around to as many others as you can. Blog it, spam with it, talk about it at parties: We need to complete this map as quickly as possible and it will only get done with your help. Here's the link to get started:
Friday night I had dinner with the Prime Minister of Estonia, Andrus Ansnip. He was in town to open a "tech embassy" in San Jose, part of Enterprise Estonia. While most of the world knows Estonia for Skype, there is a little more to it, as I've blogged before.
The setting of the dinner was too noisy for real conversation, which is unfortunate because these are such interesting times. Wage growth and inflation are a concern and Eurozone entry is at risk. Lacking monetary controls as stimulus, and maintaining a tight fiscal policy, GDP has slowed. Even the fundamentals of the housing growth are changing with the credit markets.
As I suggested to the last Prime Minister and the last President, a significant opportunity exists in relaxing immigration controls, particularly for technology skilled workers. This is politically difficult given that 25% of the population are Russians who came as occupiers, and policies aimed at protecting Estonia's language and culture. If it was as attractive and welcoming to work there as it is to invest there (no capital gains tax, etc.), it could be a significant form of economic stimulus. And with the IT sector actually being small, with Skype, Playtech and banks employing most of them, it is critical to attract more employees for future growth. A H-1B visa program, without limiting quotas, to fast track technology and research immigrants could be one solution.
Before dinner I of course Twittered for questions, and got lots of fun ones:
Image credit: BBC, picture of Linnar Viik's card
As far as we know, this is the first time that an elected official
has initiated a political wiki; a sea change in the relationship
between representatives and voters is clearly underway. -- PDF
Utah State Representative Steve Urquhart, Chairman of the Rules Committee that decides what legislation goes to the floor, launched Politicopia -- a Socialtext wiki for open government. It is off to a great start:
One week into the experiment, Politicopia is working. Citizens are participating and citizens are being heard. Legislators are talking to me about things they’ve read on Politicopia. Because of input I received, I have changed a position I've held for years. Already, citizens are using Politicopia to shape the debate. As a matter of fact, a reporter emailed me, to ask why Politicopia wasn't linking to her article. That has never happened in the two-plus years I’ve been blogging.
He introduced the wiki last week on the Personal Democracy Forum with The Revolution Will Be Wikified:
Politicopia joins the revolution to improve people's ability to understand and control their government. Politicopia starts with three simple notions.
1. People need more control over government.
2. Insiders have too much control over government.
3. The Internet will disintermediate government.In politics, intermediaries tightly control information. Those intermediaries are (1) special interest groups, (2) the media, and (3) bureaucrats. There's nothing wrong with the fact that those three entities exist; they can be quite helpful in proper dosage. The problem is the overwhelming degree to which those intermediaries filter content and control political dialogue.
Citizens can elect representatives, lobby if their interests are special enough (institutional pluralism) or go public with campaigns that appeal to change (individual pluralism) with great effort and cost. But citizens have had no role in sausage making, let alone transparency into the process of legislation. When citizens collectively disintermediate politics, emergent democracy happens.
Urquhart further explains Politicopia:
The people must wrest control from the intermediaries. How? By (1) improving access to information and (2) improving the ability to organize.
Politicopia will improve people's access to information in my state, Utah, by presenting a wiki-based forum for the compilation and presentation of information on actual bills pending before the Legislature. If a citizen wants to learn about an issue and shape the dialogue, Politicopia will provide a quick and solid handle on the process -- without the intermediaries filter. And if a legislator wants to hear unfiltered suggestions from interested citizens -- instead of mainly hearing from organized special interests -- Politicopia will give him or her a new source of input.
Using a Socialtext wiki, Politicopia will list the bills, present a brief summary of the issue and the bills status, invite pro and con arguments and comments, and provide links to relevant sources. Users will provide and control the content. Adding a forum where commentary and links can be added to the great information already provided on the Legislative website, Politicopia should become a very useful source for quick, accurate information on issues that the peoples representatives are deciding in Utah. Please check it out and help supply content or start a site for your state, city or mosquito abatement district.
Citizens link to the bill, build pro and con arguments, track status, link in external references and deliberate. The issues may matter to you, even if you don't live in Utah, such as:
For more on Politicopia, see Phil Windley, Doc Searls, Brit Blaser, David Weinberger and Micah Sifry. I'm encouraged to see social software employed in politics for more than campaigns and become a new valve for the heart of the legislative process.
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