Personal Democracy Forum in New York on Monday!

Davar Iran Ardalan, Senior Producer

We'll see you at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York on Monday. Jacob Soboroff and I will be blogging from the conference and interviewing some big names in internet and politics.

Click below the video for an interview Liane Hansen of Weekend Edition Sunday did with Andrew Rasiej, the Founder of the Personal Democracy Forum. The interview will air tomorrow between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. on most NPR stations across the country.

 

Liane Hansen,Weekend Edition Sunday
I bet you never thought you'd hear of a Twitter Debate Twitter Debate in conjunction with the U.S. presidential election, but think again. Last night, representatives from John McCain and Barack Obama's campaigns began a four-day internet debate about technology policy and government reform, and the debate was carried via Twitter. Twitter is a social networking and blogging service that uses instant messaging as a form of communication. Each answer or "tweet" is limited to 140 characters. The debate was organized by the Personal Democracy Forum, a conference and website that explores the relationship between technology and politics. Andrew Rasiej is the forum's founder and he's in our New York studio. How did the Twitter Debate work?

Andrew Rasiej: Well, Ana Marie Cox, a well known blogger who now works for Time Inc. started "twittering" her ... two members of the political establishment, one from the Obama campaign, one from the McCain campaign, 140 character questions, via Twitter, which they could respond to via Twitter, but it could all be followed online by a massive audience, looking at short, quick answers to her questions.

Liane Hansen: Sounds very informal.

Andrew Rasiej: It's very informal, in fact, that's the whole point of Twitter, which is to simply provide very quick information about a particular subject in a very defined manner, so that you are really forced to think about what you're saying so you convey it in very clear terms.

Liane Hansen: So you're not allowed to do the rambling "non-answer" in other words.

Andrew Rasiej: Correct. We go into the super sound bite, as opposed to the sound bite.

Liane Hansen: Now this Twitter debate was launched in advance of the big conference you're going to be holding in New York starting tomorrow, it's called the Personal Democracy Forum, and your focus will be on rebooting the system. Some of the topics you will explore will be online political advertising in 2008, the internet fundraising frontier, and how to generate a money bomb. What's a money bomb?

Andrew Rasiej: A money bomb is when a politician tries to raise a large amount of money in a very short period of time, using their network and using the power of social networking tools, to generate the income almost instantly. Setting a goal and getting a lot of people involved in the process.

Liane Hansen: And using the internet to do the whole thing?

Andrew Rasiej: Exactly. Various platforms like Facebook and MySpace and YouTube and e-mail and other tools—even Twitter, to try to get people to donate money in a very quick moment.

Liane Hansen: How do you expect the internet to change the way we approach politics?

Andrew Rasiej: I think it's going to do more than just change politics, I think it's going to change democracy. You know, our forefathers had designed the Constitution to be amended from time to time as we learned more about our country and our democracy and as time taught us about how we live and what challenges we have. And the internet has actually started to amend our Constitution itself. And there's the potential of the internet to be used in a way that makes being involved in civic life and politics, to be involved in the process of governing a much more relevant activity. Less abstract for the average American.

Liane Hansen: What do you mean by amend the Constitution?

Andrew Rasiej: Well if you think about the fact that people are using this technology to find out more about their elected officials and find out more about their government than elected officials know, the notion that elected officials were there to serve the public and take care of the country's business is now giving way to a bottom up wisdom of crowds where individuals using these various tools that the internet provides are connecting with each other and engaging with their government in a way that is redefining how we will look at governance going forward into the 21st century.

Liane Hansen: You know there is an interesting philosophical question you've been exploring about the internet age and the fact that it requires a new way of thinking about American democracy. What was the question you've asked some of the people who will be attending the forum?

Andrew Rasiej: We're actually releasing a book, it's a series of essays, and the fundamental question is, if the Framers of the Constitution had had the internet at their disposal in 1787, how would they have redesigned the Constitution, knowing the power of this communication tool? And various people have approached it from different perspectives, some saying it will create huge opportunities for transparency, some people saying that it's going to create privacy issues and concerns, some people talking about open wikis where legislation is going to be crafted not by people in a back room, but by people working together who know more about a particular subject than any other people that we can find. So we are challenging a number of people around the country, leading thinkers in the world of politics and media to ask themselves the question, how do we redefine our democracy in an information age?

Liane Hansen: Are there some examples of interesting answers?

Andrew Rasiej: Well, some of the answers include one by David Weinberger, which, he says that echo chambers are going to be created, and a lot of people think that echo chambers are bad because we're only going to be listening to the same information that we already know but his argument is that the echo chambers are good because they help build consensus around a given idea and allow it to flourish in the minds of many people at the same time. Allison Fine, one of our co-editors believes that people are going to be using cellphones and mobile devices to vote, and to be able to do it collectively. I wrote a piece myself about the notion that this cognitive surplus that we have of people being able to not spend their time watching TV passively, but able to participate in the read/write web will be able to collect their thoughts and to solve problems on behalf of the government on behalf of themselves, faster than the government could do. And Joe Trippi, well known former campaign manager for Howard Dean, and recently a strategist for John Edwards, talks about how the Hillary Clinton Campaign was the last top down political campaign and that all campaigns in the future will be much more modeled on what we're seeing in the Barack Obama campaign of 2008.

Liane Hansen: So it's more than just replacing the quill pen with a mouse, right?

Andrew Rasiej: It's far more than that, it's really rebalancing the power not into the hands of the special interest and those with money, but into the hands of citizens who actually now can organize themselves. And, let me just add that organized minorities are always more powerful than disorganized majorities.

Liane Hansen: Andrew Rasiej is the founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, which is holding its annual conference beginning tomorrow in New York. Thanks a lot for your time.

Andrew Rasiej: Pleasure to be here, thank you.