Sunday, July 13, 2003

Mainstreaming

A Washington Post story today on AOL blogs. (Thanks to Bill for the link.)

To hell, though maybe not back

Om Malik: Fly, Buy, Die!

Mitch Ratcliffe: Profoundly unclued at the FDA.

EDCon

My biggest take-away from OSCon wasn't about open source. It was about emerging democracy (or maybe just plain old democracy, without the industrial distorions of the last century) at work.

No, politics wasn't on the schedule, except in one BOF that Britt added at the last minute. But it was at the heart of the best off-topic conversations I enjoyed at the show.

Read Britt's Steal This Campaign post. Read the comments people posted on one of the several Dean campaign blogs.

Note that many of the people giving money to the Dean campaign are excited simply to be engaged with a political process that seems to be about better government and better governance, rather than hot-button issues.

There is a tsunami building. It's a democratic one, in the small-d meaning of the word. I believe it's happening for citizens — Republicans as well as Democrats — and that the Dean campaign is just the most high-profile and illustrative example of it, for now.

In any case, the Tsunami matters more than the surfers who have figured out how to ride it.

By the way, Howard Dean will be guest blogging for Larry Lessig while Larry's on vacation.

YSMV

A number of people have alerted me to some kind of Google slowdown problem lately. Here's one blogged case. I haven't noticed, but I haven't been especially connected this last week.