Tim O’Reilly (one of my heroes) leads a panel on “the reality of Internet and politics.”

The panelists are Jonah Seiger who worked with EFF, Bob Epstein of GetActive.com, and Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com. It takes Esther asking a question from the floor to get them to address what I think is the fundamental issue: Ordinary people feeling they can own a campaign.

Eventually, I asked if they each could find even a single sentence about how the Net is making a difference to politics, without using the word “money.” Scott did, but the others two couldn’t. “The Net lets us do old things in new ways,” one concluded.

That may well be the whole truth. But I refuse to be stripped of all hope. Without hope there is no action.

Categories: Uncategorized dw