Friday, April 28, 2006
Fast break
They Came from Cleveland
June Holley, Valdis Krebs and Jack Ricchiuto have launched Network Weaving. It's about creating smart economic networks... from the bottom up, using network weaving and social network analysis. Which they are extraordinarily good at.
All the news that's fit to link
Dave:
If I were working for a Presidential candidate for 2008, one of the things I'd do right now is raise money for a good political news network for the Internet. One that represents all points of view and takes no advertising, makes no profit.
Get donations from the usual places. Use your star power to attract money to upgrade the flow of political information. This is the kind of use of the Internet that pays off. It's an application of "the more you send them away the more they come back."
(That principle, by the way, is one part of my side of the argument I was having with Steve Gillmor the other day.)
Except for the advertising part, how is Dave's plan different from Personal Democracy Forum, Spot-on or The Huffington Post? (Other than the fact that all three of those were launched by liberals.)
That's a leading question. Here's one place it might go: Since Fox and blogs came along, all political journalism is both personal and — to the extent that persons that care about politics have positions to advance — biased.
That's a theory. I'm not sure it's so. And I would love to see what Dave's calling for come into being. Because I do think that most of the issues that matter are distorted by loud voices at the political poles.
For example, I'm concerned right now that Net Neutrality, a complex issue (which I think has to do with a definition of the Internet) is turning into a left vs. right issue (left for, right against). Most voters are neither all-right nor all-left. Most issues aren't, either. But it seems that most people who care about politics are on a side.
Can we change that? Don't know.
Assignment
J.P. Rangaswami on the digital equivalent of opposable thumbs. Brilliant stuff that we should be talking about at the Internet Identity Workshop next week.