Pew Internet has a new report out about the role of the Internet in the recent presidential campaign. It confirms that more than half of us went online for info, and many of us were quite active. In fact, here’s one nugget from the report:

Due to demographic differences between the two parties, McCain voters were actually more likely than Obama voters to go online in the first place. However, online Obama supporters were generally more engaged in the online political process than online McCain supporters. Among internet users, Obama voters were more likely to share online political content with others, sign up for updates about the election, donate money to a candidate online, set up political news alerts and sign up online for volunteer activities related to the campaign. Online Obama voters were also out in front when it came to posting their own original political content online–26% of wired Obama voters did this, compared with 15% of online McCain supporters.

Lots of fodder for thought in this survey…

[Tags: election campaign politics pew ]

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As I clean my home office for Passover, ere’s a quick refresher on the holiday’s symbols:

The pointer came from my brother Andy, who, in a non-unrelated-email also pointed me to an ACLU petition to get a special prosecutor to look into W’s torture policy.

[Tags: passover pesach liberation torture ]

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Tim Karr, campaign director of Free Press, moderates a small panel: Nathaniel James ( Media and Democracy Coalition) and Ellen Miller (Sunlight Foundation).

Tim: We’re in a period of turmoil, torn between “two distinct value systems”: Mass media and social media. Now is the crucial time for making the right policies. We’re seeing a perfect alignment of three movements: media reform, free culture, and open government. The principles of the unity of these three movements: Openness (neutral, nondiscriminatory net), transparency, innovation (through copyright reform), privacy, access.

Ellen: As Andrew Rasiej says, technology is not a slice of the pie, it’s the entire pan. (Ellen talks about the origins and current projects of the magnificent Sunlight Foundation.)

Nathaniel mentions that he’s very involved in One Web Day. But his talk is about fighting for the freedom to connect. He says the process of providing access needs to include a diverse swath of the country. The Internet policy process ought to be as participatory as Internet culture itself. “Are we building programs that allow empowerment and peer to peer education?”

Q: Politically, what’s it look like with the new administration and Congress?
Tim: We’re more hopeful. “The more the public gets involved in the sausage-making, the more visionary and courageous our politicians become”
Nathaniel: The Dems and Reps are equally opportunity offenders in this area.
Ellen: When it comes to the new admin, “it’s a delight to be pushing on an open door.”

Q: [googin] We’re seeing an increase in bottom up business, not just in media.

[Tags: f2c egov egovernment transparency f2c09 ]

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Congresspedia has become the Open Congress Wiki, where we can build transparency and knowledge together.

[Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous e-gov egov democracy congress politics ]

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Now that Sanjay Gupta has decided that the money isn’t good enough to become the US Surgeon General — just how much does patriotism pay, anyway? — let’s give it to Howard Dean! (Thanks, Stephen Fox!)

[Tags: howard_dean obama surgeon_general politics ]

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Peter Suber gave a terrific talk last week, hosted by the Berkman Center. Afterwards, I sat down with him for a podcast on the politics around open access.

[Tags: peter_suber open_access podcasts knowledge libraries journals publishing ]

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Christopher Beam at Slate has a lively article about the Republican National Committee’s meeting to come up with new ways of using the new media to build the party back up. The article gives the sense of a group that simultaneously is Getting It and Floundering in It.

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James Surowiecki has a piece in the New Yorker that finally got me to understand why Obama is including a tax rebate in his stimulus package. It’s not the mere pandering to the Republicans that I thought it was. It actually sounds pretty smart.

And while you’re there, you might as well read Atul Gawande’s argument for building our health care system on what we have, rather than sweeping it all away and beginning fresh.

Then finish it all off with the dessert wine of Mariana Cook’s 1996 interview with Barack and Michelle Obama, in which the future president expresses love’s swing of mystery and familiarity. Just in case you weren’t gushy enough about the two of them.

[Tags: economics obama michelle_obama health_care health_insurance health_reform new_yorker infohist james_surowiecki atul_gawande mariana_cook ]

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Even if Justice Roberts hadn’t flubbed the oath, I’d still count this as Day 2. The Inaugural day doesn’t count, does it?

So, how’s it going so far? I’d say pretty damn well.

When Hillary Clinton arrives at the State Department she tells the workers that she loves nothing better than a good debate. They cheer, and you realize that on top of everything else, George Bush totally sucked as a manager.

In case there was any doubt about this, I have friends in the Justice Department who have been demoralized for years. Now they’re eager to get to work.

Hillary cheered at State. Holbrooke heading out to Afghanistan and Pakistan. An unabashed preference for science. Closing Gitmo. Planning with the military the withdrawal from Iraq. Making open access to information the default, not the outcome of a lawsuit. Limiting the implicit corruption of the revolving door. The Internet to be kept open.

Obama is making it look easy. As easy as saying, “Yes, waterboarding is torture.”

My daydream: George W. Bush is in in his new home, sitting in his penny loafers, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper’s articles about Obama’s first day. “So that’s how you do it,” he thinks. “So that’s what a president does.”

What’s the opposite of disappointment?

[Tags: obama ]

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Gene Koo has a great post about why Obama’s speeches don’t produce sound bytes. Gene calls them “non-reductive.” The speeches are too complex for soundbytes. Obama’s soundbyte failure is, as Gene says, a strength, although he points out that politically Obama has also benefited from the ability of others — Will.i.am, for example — to produce soundbytes on his behalf.

I loved yesterday’s speech. I’ve loved it each time I’ve heard it. I liked it even more when I heard it on the radio, free of distractions. And Gene gets at why. The speech actually says something. It takes us through a set of gates to get to where we need to be. Gate 1: Yes, times are hard. We have to look at that squarely. But there is hope, based on some real things. Gate 2: We are pushing past the old contradictions that formed our idea of what is possible. Not big government or small government. Not security or liberty. Not Republican or Democract, black or white, Christian or Muslim or Jew or Hindu or non-believer (yay for the shout out!). Gate 3: Together, we are strong and resourceful and imaginative. Gate 4: We share, and should return to, our abiding values. Call them hope and virtue.

There was more in there. But, there was nothing I would take out. And there was also, therefore, little I would excerpt in pursuit of a soundbyte.

[Tags: obama inauguration #inaug09 gene_koo speeches ]

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