Andrew Rasiej is interviewing ex-Senator Bob Kerrey. How does he use the Net? Kerrey says he uses it for everything, including decentralizing control at The New School. He stresses that the Internet brings about a loosening of control. If he were running Kerry’s campaign, he’d use the Net for raising money and communicating out, but also for enabling people to connect, “But to do that, you have to allow communities of interest to develop on their own and then keep those communities organized in a political fashion,” i.e., it has to lead to people voting.

“What I see happening with the Net is truly a dispersal of power. In the old days, if there were a national security crisis…70 or 80% of the president’s information would come from classified information. Now 70% of national security information is open source…Today, anybody with a notebook computer can be an analyst…It can be very threatening if you’re trying to control it.”

“We may get through this whole campaign” and each candidate has spent $150M on television ads, “and people say all of a sudden that those 30 second ads aren’t important.” “People are making judgements independent of the campaigns and they’re doing it out on the Net.”

[I like this guy! I’m happy to hear any politician recognize that it’s not just about fund-raising and campaign-spam.]

Andrew: Is blogging journalism? How does it fit into the mix?

“It’s not something you can control. Blogging is like gravity: It is. The question is what are you going to do with it?…Any individual out there can put together is own newspaper.”

Andrew: When will we have elections over the Internet?

A: Not until companies like Diebold make their source code open. We don’t need a paper trail. We need open software so it can self-correct. [Bzzzt! Wrong answer!]

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