Mass Defection

go direct to Dean Campaign Purchase instructions

I had some great hang time at OSCon with Doc. Doc is the metaphor meister, but he’s nobody’s fool. I emphasize his non-foolishness because historically the king’s metaphor meister was a brightly dressed fool who was allowed to say outrageous things that the nobles could not. Many of the fool’s gems were metaphors, and Doc comes up with more pithy comments than anyone, and also reports everyone else’s. I think of him stalking through the jungle with his metaphor net and pith helmet.

Yesterday he quoted Jakob Neilsen: “Cluetrain was marketers defecting to the customers’ side of marketing.” After a week at OSCon, I’m back to report that Neilson’s describing a cultural trend, not an isolated event. We’re all defecting from tired viewpoints to previously inconceivable ones.

On the evening of June 30, I heard Howard Dean speak in New York. He worked the crowd with his articulate plainspokenness regarding health care, state’s rights to regulate couple’s rights, and in a clever finale to the list, the glory of a balanced budget to secure our future. He got a rousing, lingering round of cheers and applause. When we quieted down, he added, “Look what just happened: A crowd of liberal New Yorkers cheering for fiscal responsibility!”

That’s a mass defection. What a contrast to the mass defecation on George Tenet this week!

The Open Source Democracy

Back Story

Remember when people quit asking if you had an email address and just asked for it? Happened with fax numbers a decade earlier. Here’s a news flash from OSCon: that kind of tipping point is happening with Open Source software, in the biggest companies in the world. That’s not according to the OSCon presenters, it’s from the corporate IT guys in the audience and hallways.

There were lots of big company guys spreading the gospel, sounding like evangelists. Folks from Morgan Stanley and Merril Lynch, Ticketmaster and Real Networks and on and on. The people there were IT guys in big companies, plus big vendors who feel huge pressure from their customers to get their enterprise-class apps working on Linux.

The sense you took away is that the Open Source genie won’t fit back in the bottle; that the tools are plenty good enough and are only getting better. Companies are no more likely to back away from Open Source than we are to stop using email.

Am I just seeing penguins or is this a cultural trend?

• We’re tired of waiting passively for software vendors to make their stuff work right.
• We’re tired of waiting passively for professional educators to fix schools while our children’s futures slip away, so we’re home- and charter-schooling.
• We’re tired of watching cheery TV news drivel so we’re reporting hard news to each other.
• We’re tired of Network time slots so we Tivo our own channels.
• We’re tired of telecoms’ last mile roadblock so we’re building wireless networks ourselves.
• And music acquisition? Heh.

Which is why big companies are using open source tools to do DIY IT, as Doc calls it.

Is Democracy the Killer App?

• We’re tired of waiting passively for parties, politicians and pollsters to forge a democracy they’re not interested in.

What would an open source country look like? It’s been done many times before. They’re called revolutions, hard reboots that are really messy, with all those bodies and widows and orphans. Usually they end up hacking a Colonel. Those are the lengths people will go to install an open source government.

Democracy, the killer demo.

Unfortunately, like our current republic, most of those revolutionary open source installations suffer from a slow but persistent memory leak. The revolutionaries revert to type and act like the old leaders. Think of Castro and the NeoCons here. Remember the Gingrich Contract with America? (Reproduced below for convenience & blog stickiness. BTW, did anyone else feel a disturbance in the Force when they made a newt our most powerful legislator?)

That’s why Thomas Jefferson felt that a new open source government should be installed by its users every generation or so.

The Über Issue

As I said last time, an ad hoc smart mob might be reaching a critical mass around the Dean campaign. If it is, the mob’s collective sense may be that the key issue behind the movement is their new sense of empowerment, not the candidate or issues. That might not even bother Howard Dean. Every leader wants to leave behind something larger than himself, and open source democracy sure would be it.

Make no mistake, these people love Dean and there are many reasons why they should, the DLC and pundits notwithstanding. Dean is smart, human, informed and charismatic. On the main points that people like in a president, he seems ahead of the candidates of both parties. On his campaign blog a while back, a worker commented that Dean had left his notes behind before a talk, but that, “as usual, he just improved on the notes.” Doh. Natural, coherent speech seems the most presidential of traits.

As Doc points out in his link to my Steal this Campaign post yesterday, the candidate is just the start of the appeal. Beyond the issues and the candidate, which are features, lies the real benefit. The Dean campaign is facilitating a different character of participation, by entirely new people, who are not as focused on the candidate and issues as on the process they want to establish, which looks nothing like the process we have.

Fix it in the Mix

These new constituents are collectively buying the Dean campaign, just as big Republican donors are buying Dubya’s attention–I’ll bet Kenny Lay has already slipped a couple grand into his old buddy’s pocket. Dean supporters, with their $112 average contribution, seem to feel a collective confidence in Dean’s willingness to listen to them just as Republican donors feel in their ability to be heard by the candidate they’re buying. Dean’s indicated that we’ll see a White House blog in 2005, and he’s guest hosting Larry Lessig’s blog next week. It’s the transparency, stupid!

If the citizens own this candidate, and there’s a way to aggregate our collective sensibilities into a coherent expression of policy preferences, then we should be confident we can steer the country after buying our candidate. Amazon knows all about its users’ preferences, thanks to all those Linux boxes, why shouldn’t the president we buy?

Now that’s an aspiration greater than mere presidency: “I am the preferred puppet of the American people. My job is to understand their collective common sense and make it so.” If you have a puppet for pres
ident, you know you can fix problems in post production.

Are Mobs really smart?

All my smart mob talk gives Mitch and some others the willies. They say that if we get too confident we might fail to get Dean elected, that elections are won in meatspace, not cyber and so we Netizens can’t assume we’ll connect with actual citizens. My point is a different one. If the smart mob reaches critical mass, it’s a fundamentally different animal than the one that currently elects governments, with radically different capabilities. Its effect on party machines and mechanics would be like the effect of P2P networks on the music biz. And it’s all about meatspace, not segregated from it.

I went to a Dean Meetup 10 days ago and wrote 3 letters to Iowa Democrats. So did about 20,000 other people. I’ve never written a campaign letter in my life nor had anyone around me. It gets no meatier than that. This was an example of the effect of the civic level of cyberspace that Jim Moore described on the eve of of Dean’s Super Monday:

So the four levels are the infrastructure (e.g. telcos), the service (ISPs, services, operating systems), the application (browsers, blogs, RSS and other standards) and the civic level (online communities, networks of bloggers, wired enterprises, etc.).

Based on a series of digital messages, 60,000 people have registered to go to Meetups and do things like write letters with real ink on real paper. The experts who specialize in managing the torrent of money flowing into candidate’s coffers every other year don’t like this formula which is more complicated than buying attack ads on TV. Because it’s human.

Let’s try a viral mob-forming experiment. I’m dropping this in the meme pool to see what happens. I know people who can build this function overnight:

Dean Campaign Purchase Instructions How we the people can buy the Dean Campaign. At this price, it’s a steal! This purchase requires no one’s permission. The campaign or any of the Geeks4Dean sites springing up like mushrooms sets up a simple web app. This app would collect campaign pledges from site members who dig an Open Source Democracy. There would be six pledges on the Pledge Form: * I pledge to do at least one thing to support the Dean campaign or for a movement to elect a Democratic Congress willing to respond to statistically valid citizen input. I will report that action using this form. I pledge to join the Democratic Party and work to transform it into the best vehicle for expressing the will of the majority of the people through responsible governance, as measured by statistically valid citizen input. My expertise is ; I pledge hours per month to the Dean campaign and to collateral congressional restoration efforts. * I have selected the issues I care most about from the list below and indicated my stand from the choices available, or have entered my views in the comments section. * I am a producer of government and not a passive consumer. I pledge to help define the campaign’s message if asked by Dean Campaign officials to contribute my insights, and I expect the campaign to build its platform from the bottom up through this form and other statistically valid citizen input.        The $1 Billion Dean Fund (required) I make a pledge on my honor, to be charged to my card when the campaign reaches $1 billion in total pledges* $1,000 to the Dean Campaign as soon as 1 million others do (Winners’ Circle Level).    $500 to the Dean Campaign as part of a $1 billion collective commitment.    $250 to the Dean Campaign as part of a $1 billion collective commitment.    $100 to the Dean Campaign as part of a $1 billion collective commitment. * required inputs. The campaign’s membership goal is 1 million on-line supporters by 1/1/04. This pledge goal is $1 billion by 1/1/04

As the salesman says, “Sign here, press hard, third copy is yours.”

Next Problem?

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Contract with America*
1994

An Example of Memory Leak in Partisan Politics

As Republican Members of the House of Representatives and as citizens seeking to join that body we propose not just to change its policies, but even more important, to restore the bonds of trust between the people and their elected representatives.

That is why, in this era of official evasion and posturing, we offer instead a detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print.

This year’s election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.

Like Lincoln, our first Republican president, we intend to act “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.

On the first day of the 104th Congress, the new Republican majority will immediately pass the following major reforms, aimed at restoring the faith and trust of the American people in their government:

FIRST, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress;
SECOND, select a major, independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud or abuse;
THIRD, cut the number of House committees, and cut committee staff by one-third;
FOURTH, limit the terms of all committee chairs;
FIFTH, ban the casting of proxy votes in committee;
SIXTH, require committee meetings to be open to the public;
SEVENTH, require a three-fifths majority vote to pass a tax increase;
EIGHTH, guarantee an honest a
ccounting of our Federal Budget by implementing zero base-line budgeting.

Thereafter, within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, we shall bring to the House Floor the following bills, each to be given full and open debate, each to be given a clear and fair vote and each to be immediately available this day for public inspection and scrutiny.

1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT
   A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.
2. THE TAKING BACK OUR STREETS ACT
   An anti-crime package including stronger truth-in-sentencing, “good faith” exclusionary rule exemptions, effective death penalty provisions, and cuts in social spending from this summer’s “crime” bill to fund prison construction and additional law enforcement to keep people secure in their neighborhoods and kids safe in their schools.
3. THE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT
   Discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by prohibiting welfare to minor mothers and denying increased AFDC for additional children while on welfare, cut spending for welfare programs, and enact a tough two-years-and-out provision with work requirements to promote individual responsibility.
4. THE FAMILY REINFORCEMENT ACT
   Child support enforcement, tax incentives for adoption, strengthening rights of parents in their children’s education, stronger child pornography laws, and an elderly dependent care tax credit to reinforce the central role of families in American society.
5. THE AMERICAN DREAM RESTORATION ACT
   A $500 per child tax credit, begin repeal of the marriage tax penalty, and creation of American Dream Savings Accounts to provide middle class tax relief.
6. THE NATIONAL SECURITY RESTORATION ACT
   No U.S. troops under U.N. command and restoration of the essential parts of our national security funding to strengthen our national defense and maintain our credibility around the world.
7. THE SENIOR CITIZENS FAIRNESS ACT
   Raise the Social Security earnings limit which currently forces seniors out of the work force, repeal the 1993 tax hikes on Social Security benefits and provide tax incentives for private long-term care insurance to let Older Americans keep more of what they have earned over the years.
8. THE JOB CREATION AND WAGE ENHANCEMENT ACT
   Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis, strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages.
9. THE COMMON SENSE LEGAL REFORM ACT
   “Loser pays” laws, reasonable limits on punitive damages and reform of product liability laws to stem the endless tide of litigation.
10. THE CITIZEN LEGISLATURE ACT
    A first-ever vote on term limits to replace career politicians with citizen legislators.

Further, we will instruct the House Budget Committee to report to the floor and we will work to enact additional budget savings, beyond the budget cuts specifically included in the legislation described above, to ensure that the Federal budget deficit will be less than it would have been without the enactment of these bills.

Respecting the judgment of our fellow citizens as we seek their mandate for reform, we hereby pledge our names to this Contract with America.

11:49:23 AM