Political Technology

"Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn't through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat."

A New York Times op-ed today by Tom Friedman - quoted above - brings up some interesting points.  Enjoy. 

The big news in geek-land this week is the recent release of Google's new location-based mobile application, Latitude. Latitude is a mobile social networking app for smartphones that allows your friends to see where you are in real-time, and vice-versa. Users see a little mug-shot of the people nearby, and have the option to text, call, email, or IM them by tapping their picture.  

NDN and NPI have written a lot about the importance of mobile technology and its effect on the political landscape. Location apps will add another layer of complexity to the picture. Today, location-based mobile social networking is still an emergent technology, with most users being early-adapters and geeks. Google's entrance into this space is likely to help get location-based networking off the ground (although tech reporters are quick to point out that, without integration with the main social networks like MySpace and Facebook, these apps remain limited in their utility).  

In this experimental stage, the uses and etiquitte for location-based services have not yet been fully identified and codified; for a fascinating and slightly creepy introduction to the location revolution, read the recent Wired feature, "I Am Here: One Man's Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle." Novelty aside, they are mostly limited (for now) to random meet-ups with friends in bars. However, I believe they have real untapped potential for organizing purposes, potential that we are really only beginning to understand. 

One of the challenges for progressives of all stripes (not just politicians) in this new political era is to understand how technology can broaden our reach and our horizons while making our world phenomenologically smaller and more inter-connected, and how we can utilize these advances to enhance solidarity and promote political and civic participation. So go get Latitude (or Loopt or WhosHere or Brightkite), play around with them, and start thinking about what comes next.

Bridging the gap between winning an election and governing with the help of the Internet and other new political tools has been one of the most interesting subtexts of the Obama transition. President Obama has of course made the weekly YouTube address a fixture of his administration, but in the past week, the Obama administration web team has taken their economic message online with new web sites: strongmiddleclass.gov, the website for the task force led by Vice President Biden on the middle class, and recovery.gov, a web site to be used for tracking the expenditures of the still-to-be-passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Here's what recovery.gov looks like now: 

NDN has discussed the Wired White House quite a bit. Click here for more of NDN's work on the topic.

NDN affiliate The New Politics Institute has become one of the nation's leading experts and advisors on how the rise of a whole new set of media and technology tools is changing the practice of politics. The New Politics Institute has produced one of the most influential and dynamic series of papers in politics, the New Tools series. These papers, along with hundreds of major events and great videos about an array of new tools, have helped many progressives manage the transition to a 21st century media and technology environment.

I'd like to use today's New Tools column to highlight some of this body of work:

• Mobile Media in 21st Century Politics by Tim Chambers, Co-Founder of Dewey Digital and Media 50 Group

• Go Mobile Now by Jed Alpert and Chris Muscarella, Co-founders of Mobile Commons, October 2007

• Mastering Online Search for Politics by Arve Overland, CEO & Executive Creative Director
  Overland Agency, Inc., May 2006

• Use Search by Pete Leyden, September 2007

• Reimagine Video by Dan Manatt, PoliticsTV, October 2007

• Engage the Blogs by Jerome Armstrong, Founder of MyDD and Internet Strategist, September 2007 

• Advertise Online by Henry Copeland and Megan Mitzel of Blogads.com, October 2007

• Leverage Social Networks by Chris Kelly, Chief Privacy Officer and Head of Global Public
  Policy for Facebook, November 2007

• Buy Cable Smart by Alixandria Weise, September 2007

• Microtargeting by Mark Steitz and Laura Quinn, Catalist, October 2007

• Speak in Spanish by Simon Rosenberg, President and Founder of NDN, October 2006

Each one of these must-read papers can teach you how to message, organize, and advertise more effectively using the tools of this new political era.

If you're still hungry for more, or if you can't take the time to read through everything right now, you can also learn more about these new tools by watching top experts explain them here:

Co-Founder of Dewey Digital and Media 50 Group Tim Chambers speaking on Going Mobile:

Chief Technology Officer for Catalist Vijay Ravindran on Microtargeting:

Google’s Director of Elections and Issue Advocacy Peter Greenberg on Advertising Online:

CEO and Executive Producer of PoliticsTV Dan Manatt on Reimagining Video:

For more New Tools videos, click here.

Add one more to the list of firsts from Tuesday's Inauguration -- the event set a new all-time high for internet traffic in the U.S., according to an article in today's New York Times. From the article, "Online Video of Inauguration Sets Records":

Internet traffic in the United States hit a record peak at the start of President Obama’s speech as people watched, read about and commented on the inauguration, according to Bill Woodcock, the research director at the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit organization that analyzes online traffic. The figures surpassed even the high figures on the day President Obama was elected.

“The peak is the highest measured to date, and it appears to be mostly a U.S. phenomenon,” Mr. Woodcock said, adding that it did not appear that global records would be set.

...CNN said it provided more than 21.3 million video streams over a nine-hour span up to midafternoon. That blew past the 5.3 million streams provided during all of Election Day.

In total, a whopping 60% of Americans watched or listened to the event live, and another 20% either saw or read reports of it that day. From a Gallup report today:

The live audience included 70% of nonworking Americans, but also 53% of those currently employed -- suggesting that many workers either took the day off or had the opportunity to watch or hear the ceremonies at work.

Americans were clearly more interested in the inauguration of Barack Obama than they were in George W. Bush's second inauguration four years ago. In 2005, only 40% of Americans said they watched or heard the inaugural ceremonies live.

These record-breaking internet numbers match the record-breaking crowds Obama drew here in DC this week, and are an appropriate marker for the start of the first 21st century presidency.

The news is not all good, however. Many people experienced problems when attempting to watch the proceedings online:

The viewing troubles may have been more a result of the limited Internet capacity coming to offices and houses, rather than a lack of overall bandwidth from the media companies, according to Mr. Woodcock. The United States continues to suffer from less-than-robust bandwidth, which Mr. Woodcock attributes to inadequate government attention and limited competition between Internet service providers like AT&T and Comcast. President Obama, in fact, mentioned the issue in the very speech that people were trying to watch.

Luckily, President Obama seems to recognize the importance of expanding our internet infrastructure so that all of America can join in, and not just those of us that can afford expensive computer equipment and a broadband subscription. Currently, the United States is 19th in the world in broadband penetration, right behind Estonia. The stimulus package currently contains $6 billion to increase access to broadband internet, which will go a long way towards ensuring that more Americans enjoy the advantages of the digital revolution.

It was a worldly week for NDN, with Simon quoted in Agence France-Presse (France, English translation here), Diario Público (Spain), Telemetro (Panama), RTBF (Belgium), Realitatea (Romania) and Globo (Brazil) on how President-elect Obama will reinvent the White House the same way that he reinvented how political campaigns are run. From the English translation of the AFP story:

"Obama is going to change the game with government the way he changed the game with politics," said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a Washington-based progressive think-tank.

"We should expect that experimentation is not just going to happen in the White House, but there will be competition inside the administration," he said at a panel discussion this week on the Internet and policy-making.

"Using these tools is going to become a critical way that Barack is going to evaluate the performance of his own team," Rosenberg said.

Simon was also quoted in the El Paso Times about last week's Obama-Calderon meeting and the beginning of a stronger US-Mexico relationship. 

Morley Winograd and Mike Hais were quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Advertiser, the Boston Globe, and Prophetizing.com about Obama's use of technology and his appeal to civic service, both themes that they explore extensively in Millennial Makeover. From the San Francisco Chronicle piece:

Morley Winograd, a fellow at NDN, a Democratic advocacy group, and co-author of "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, & the Future of American Politics," said that the speech will probably include at least one reference to a theme that Americans on both sides of the aisle will welcome: "rebuilding America's civic spirit."

"The way to solve that is through a unified effort, a perfect millennial theme, the 'Joshua generation' - that we hold hands and blow down the walls together," he said. "I don't think it will have a single digit of partisan tinge. ... It will be 'everybody is in this together.' "

Morley and Mike were also quoted in The Hill about Speaker Pelosi's Rickroll YouTube video (now there's a sentence I never anticipated writing). From the Hill article: 

“I think this is part of the congressional wakening that, given the power of social networks demonstrated by the Obama campaign, Congress needs to get with the program,” said Morley Winograd, coauthor of the book Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics.

“The key to success in YouTube or any other social network is to have something that's inherently interesting, and I think that's what they're trying to get at with this choice,” Winograd added. “I think it's important for politicians using this kind of medium have a challenge to make sure their use of pop culture isn't exploitative or old-fashioned. It's a delicate line to walk.”

Finally, Rob was featured in Roll Call on the need for a carbon tax, and NDN's pollster and longtime friend Sergio Bendixen was featured in Politico.

In a special pre-Inaugural video, Simon reflects on the confluence of forces that led to the election of Barack Obama and the dawning of a new political era:

For more of NDN's thinking on these historic changes now taking place before our eyes, please see:

The Long Road Back - 11/18/08

Obama to Reinvent the Presidency - 11/7/08

More Evidence of a Sustained Progressive Revival - 8/15/08

Hispanics Rising, 2 - 5/30/08

$55 million and the emergence of "a virtuous cycle of participation" - 3/6/08

On Obama, Race, and the End of the Southern Strategy - 1/4/08

"The 50-Year Strategy" - Mother Jones, 10/30/07

"The Democratic Opportunity" - Politico, 4/11/07

The End of the Conservative Ascendancy - 11/12/06

A Day of Reckoning for the Conservative Movement - 11/7/06

Foreward to Crashing the Gate - 3/7/06

Thoughts on the Internet, Politics and Participation - 12/03

This week, President-elect Obama's transition team introduced Change.gov's newest feature, the Citizen's Briefing Book. Somewhat similar to Open for Questions, the Citizen's Briefing Book allows users to submit policy proposals and vote on other submissions. From the introductory email:

We wanted to tell you about a new feature on Change.gov which lets you bring your ideas directly to the President.

It's called the Citizen's Briefing Book, and it's an online forum where you can share your ideas, and rate or offer comments on the ideas of others.

The best-rated ones will rise to the top, and after the Inauguration, we'll print them out and gather them into a binder like the ones the President receives every day from experts and advisors. If you participate, your idea could be included in the Citizen's Briefing Book to be delivered to President Obama.

Back in October, I wrote:

With the launch of new sites like BigDialogue and WhiteHouse2.org, the tools are there waiting to be picked up. These sites aim to give people a more direct voice in governance...These are some of the most exciting new tools that I’ve seen in a long time; the question is, will our next president embrace them, or ignore them?

That question seems to have been answered, and the team has even addressed the main complaint I had about Open for Questions by improving the navigational scheme for this tool. All in all, Obama's team seems to be adapting with impressive speed - this no longer seems like a gimmicky experimental feature, but something of real and lasting value.  

However, the successful implementation of this tool raises its own interesting set of questions about open-sourcing a representative democracy:

In the first round of Open for Questions, one of the top questions was "Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?" At the time, the Obama team essentially dismissed the question, issuing a one-line response saying that Obama was not in favor of legalizing marijuana. However, as of right now, the top submission in the Citizen's Briefing Book is "End Marijuana Prohibition," and there are three other posts about ending the drug war in the top 20, as well as other proposals like "Revoke the George W. Bush Tax Cuts for the Top 1%" and "Get the Insurance Companies out the Health Care."

There has been much written about the massive moral and economic failure of the "war" on drugs, and I personally believe it is a very important and serious issue that deserves more attention. However, for many political and social reasons, it's something no politician will ordinarily touch with a fifty-foot pole (despite very broad acadademic and popular support for reform), and given Obama's likely pick of the wildly un-progressive Republican Jim Ramstad for Drug Czar, the prospects for these proposals seem especially grim.

In this light, it will be very interesting to see how an Obama administration handles this kind of situation - are they merely attempting to create the appearance and feel of accessibility and openness, or do they really believe deeply in the intrinsic value of this enterprise? How far will they be willing to push this experiment? How far should they? These are questions that undoubtedly will come increasingly to the fore as we enter headlong into a new era of American politics.  

As I mentioned in a New Tools update this Monday, President-elect Barack Obama's decision to include a participatory text-messaging component to the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball shows that, better than most politicians today, he understands the evolving relationship between Americans and their mobile devices.

However, text messaging is only a part of the developing mobile landscape. A few new studies this week emphasize the growing importance of mobile devices in Americans' media consumption habits. One from the Cisco Visual Networking Index finds that a higher percentage of consumers in the United States watch video on their mobile phones than in any other country -- a whopping 23%.

Another report, this one from Ad Mob, documents a dramatic increase in the use of mobile phones to access WiFi networks.

Eight percent of total ad requests within Ad Mob's U.S. network came from WiFi networks, up from three percent in August.

Typically, users can access WiFi in the home, office or hotspots where personal computers are presumably present and available. Yet the results suggest that users are opting for their cell phones and are potentially more engaged with their handset than the PC.

The emergence of WiFi-capable phones, combined with ever-increasing WiFi penetration, means that more and more mobile users are able to access high-quality media on their devices. It also means that mobile phones are increasingly becoming the go-to devices for mobile internet access; for example, when I went abroad over the holidays, I brought my iPhone with me but left the laptop at home, a phenomenon which is becoming increasingly common.   

Finally, just for fun (and to see just how far mobile technology has come in a few short years), check out LG's new Watch Phone, unveiled at CES 2009 this week:

A touch-screen phone with 3G and Bluetooth capables, the watch also takes pictures and records video. I'm not sure I would rock one at this point, but only because I don't have enough yellow outerwear to go with it.

For more on why mobile phones and web video matter in politics today, and how to use mobile technology and video to message more effectively, check out our New Politics Institute papers, Go Mobile Now and Reimagine Video.