Eli Pariser and Zach Exley, names probably familiar from your inbox — Eli has a disconcertingly consistent pattern of vowels and consonants — are talking to a packed crowd of about 400, explaining how MoveOn.org got started and how the Internet is enabling us to rebuild some of the community that’s been lost over the decades.

They humbly stress how they stumbled into success, and make the good point that, when something succeeds, inevitably people look for geniuses which is “terribly disempowering” to everyone else.

They stress that we’re just at the beginning of the Net-izing of politics. “In a few years, we won’t be talking about a 2 million person email list. And we won’t be focusing on MoveOn. We’ll be talking about 40 million people and hopefully lots of groups.”

They say that the report of 6M names on a Republican list is an exaggeration, and if they have that many, it’s because they bought ’em and thus the names are less effective. “The Republicans are doing a good job on the Internet, but don’t be intimidated by that 6M number. It’s more like 400,000.”

“And they haven’t yet learned the power of having a two-way dialogue.”

What will the connective platform in 2008, they’re asked. Who knows, they answer.

The unsinkable Molly Ivins introduced them. She loves the Net and the way it’s connecting us. I’d take issue with her call to find “some way” to get rid of the bad information on the Net — get used to it, Molly — but what a treat to hear her talk, if only for a few minutes.

[Cross-posted at Loose Democracy]

Categories: Uncategorized dw