Will Obama Be Our First President 2.0?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Technology
I think it’s obvious by now that Obama was the first 21st century candidate and he ran the first 21st century campaign.
But will he embrace the technologies that helped him ride a wave of hope into the White House for use in his administration?
Will he bring that same spirit to the halls of power?
Will he finally give us a voice?
Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff calls on the former community organizer to embrace social technologies for the greater good…
I call on president-elect Obama to create a community of committed Americans to discuss the solutions to the problems that face us. I call on him to designate a US Community Manager, with a small staff, to moderate and harvest those discussions to solve the country’s problems. Forget polls. With a few million people in my.america.gov, Obama will be able to tap into the world’s largest focus group. Communities are cheap, compared to most of what the government does. Create a space for the brightest people you know; use them to attract the best ideas. And better yet, use this energized community to sell those ideas to America.Presidents are powerful, but the reality is that politics requires compromise. But politicians with the people on their side usually win out. With a community behind him, Obama will need no further mandate. And he’ll look smarter with a few thousand idea generators behind him.
Or he could just do things the way people in Washington have always done them, in secret, watered down, inefficiently, and in the most costly way possible. That’s never worked all that well, and it’s been working even more poorly lately.
I couldn’t agree more.
It’s time for the government to open up and let the ideas of real Americans pour in. Because as we’ve seen with social technologies, the ability to participate and connect is a incredibly powerful thing and we need to embrace that if we’re going to try and solve the big problems we face in this country.
In short, yes we can…and technology will only help us get there faster.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 5th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
The problem I foresee in this is the host of record-keeping regulations that apply to the White House these days, not to mention the whole issue of classified information.
It’s one thing to run a campaign on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, it’s something else entirely to run a government that way.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I think it’s a fantastic idea and I was thinking the same thing yesterday. Imagine the impact you could have if you harnessed all of america like that. Any difficulties like mentioned ^^ would be worked through.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Another problem: trolls. What better opportunity would /b/ and their ilk have than the government’s own forums?
One solution I see is a public community, out of which certain members are selected by the committee (or whatever) for their intelligent comments. Those intelligent members then get to participate in their own forum, which would allow the government to pay special attention to what’s being said there. This would greatly minimize the signal/noise ratio. Otherwise, you’re just going to end up with another thing like the YouTube comments section.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Needless to say, all of the forums in this environment would have to be moderated. Think of it as providing some new jobs. How about we don’t try offshoring them?
November 6th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
I think this is part of your answer -
http://change.gov/
Pretty cool…