I first heard of MoveOn in March 2003 when I particpated in a candlelight vigil at Meiji Shrine in Harajuku protesting the looming war in Iraq. The vigil was quite moving, and I felt pride at this welling up of anti-war sentiment in my usually somewhat apathetic adopted city. I had been invited by a friend, who later told me that the event had been planned by a group called MoveOn, formed in the wake of Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings to urge the country to “move on” to more pressing issues. I remember feeling vaguely disappointed that it hadn’t really been a spontaneous grassroots event, but glad that there was a progressive organization that seemed to be making its voice heard.

Fast forward to Spring 2004. About once a week my inbox greets me with a new missive from MoveOn HQ, instructing me on how to do my part as a footsoldier in the battle for the free world. I usually scan these and delete them. I was somewhat surprised to see that danah was grouping MoveOn in with MeetUp as a “networked political organization”—as far as I can tell it is as hierarchical as the RNC. Sure, they are doing a masterful job of organizing volunteers and leveraging the power of the masses—but is this really a “grassroots” organization? Or is it just a new political organization independent of its less nimble forerunners?

The Bush in 30 Seconds contest is often cited as proof that MoveOn represents a new wave of unmediated political participation through the Internet: the people are speaking through video! But really MoveOn just realized that the tools for creating professional-looking video are cheap, and that they could get a lot more bang for their buck by outsourcing their creative team. After the contest, MoveOn concentrated on getting the winner shown during the Super Bowl: hardly a peer-to-peer communication channel. A true revolution in unmediated political participation would involve people spontaneously making videos or music or games or whatever and forwarding them around to one another, not a centrally planned contest to produce content for broadcast.

So, is MoveOn bad? No, not at all. I fully support them and I’m glad they’re around. I actually don’t think that the “direct democracy” model in which every citizen is a politician sounds good—in fact, I think it sounds like a nightmare. I’d like to not have to think about politics, except maybe on a very local level. Yes, the horror of the current administration forces politics into my consciousness on a daily basis, but I’d like to think that that is a temporary phenomenon. Ideally, there would be a well-run, technologically savvy organization that knows how mobilize voters and that represented my political viewpoint. Then I could send them checks, and spend my time thinking about all the other things in life. MoveOn is doing a good job of becoming that organization.

Many of my classmates have expressed skepticism about the potential for finding a job or otherwise furthering one’s career through LinkedIn. While I tend to share their skepticism, I feel that perhaps we are not the community for which LinkedIn is intended. So rather than analyze my own (minimal) use of the service, I decided to interview my father, who was in California last week for a speaking engagement. Coincidentally, he was hired to speak as a result of a connection made through his LinkedIn network.

(more…)

…and is in rare form. Dong Resin on Rumsfeld:

I love how these republicans are all so law and order/ responsibility-for-one’s-actions until they get caught out. Then suddenly there’s a whole lot of “complexity.”

Their problems are complex, not simple, not like homelessness, which is what just happens when you’re lazy, or drug addiction, which is what just happens when you’re lazy and weak, or AIDS which is what happens when you’re Freddy Mercury. My God, he had that shit coming to him, didn’t he. I saw him fuck a panda once, he was insatiable. No, they get what they deserve, and how about a little self control/personal responsibility next time, you sad losers.

Oh, but ineptitude on a global level? No, that shit is nuanced. Better have a discussion, and keep that guy on while we do it. He has a reputation.

I’m so happy that the joint is back right in time for me to actually have time to read it.

Matt Webb has posted a nice essay on designing social software which puts together a pragmatic framework for discussing this sometimes slippery topic.

The sentence that stuck with me the most, however, was somewhat of an aside:

Clay Shirky’s essays… figure pretty big when the areas of concern to social software are summarised. That’s not a surprise, they’re great essays. But also, looking back, they’re the only standalone, well-written essays there are. Outside the context of the early 2003 discussion, most of the weblog posts just don’t make any sense.

Outside the context of [their creation], most of the weblog posts just don’t make any sense. That’s a pretty damning criticism of blogging as a serious alternative to journalism. Say what you will about the obsolescence of the New York Times; at least we can be sure that we’ll be able to understand its articles in 50 years—never mind next year. But the blog posts of 2003, robbed of context, are already slipping into incoherence.