Peer-to-Peer Politics

[Nicholas_J]

Should Howard Dean be a little bit afraid of the Internet?
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Monday, July 14, 2003, at 4:29 PM PT


It's too early to say for certain, but Howard Dean may turn out to be the Napster of presidential politics: the force that enables the Internet to upend an entire industry, threatens to transform the way it collects money, and opens the eyes of the average person to yet another way to use the Net. But if Dean is a political Napster, it will probably mean more for politics in general than it means for Howard Dean. After all, two years after Napster went dark, people are still logging on to the Internet to swap music files. Ultimately, Napster empowered music users more than it empowered itself. Something analogous will probably be true with Internet politics. That's good news for political junkies, but it could be bad news for Howard Dean...

But by encouraging so much spontaneous organization, Dean has—knowingly or unknowingly—ceded a lot of control to these unofficial groups. It's a gamble that may pay off, but it's still a gamble. If television took some power away from political parties and handed it to the candidates, the Internet has the potential to transfer that power again—this time by handing it to the voters or, more accurately, to organized activist groups like the ones that are now swarming around the Dean campaign. Dean hopes to assimilate the growing online liberal Borg, but it's possible that the Borg will assimilate Dean.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2085610/

[dsc]

1. a kind of goofy analogy

as Napster went under only due to being sued out of existence. It would still be going strong but for that. It was one of the very few internet concerns which made money.

[w4rma]

3. That is just the point I was going to make, dsc. Napster was *sued* (n/t)

Also,

Dean wants to be Napster, but his supporters are more like Gnutella: They don't need to go through Dean to connect with one another.

We are electing someone to hold an office. Therefore, unless the executive office is done away with, folks will *have* to chose *one* U.S. President.

[Aaron]

2. This article got me wondering if Dean's speeches/videos are on p2p

Maybe Kazaa or WinMX could use some Howard Dean speech mp3s, and videos? I wonder if the Dean campaign would mind their stuff getting shared. Anyone know?

[msanger]

4. Great idea.

I hope the dean folks give it an "ok"