Supernova Interview: Andrew Rasiej on How Technology is Changing Politics
Many-time Supernova attendee and co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum Andrew Rasiej does a recap of this years PDF Conference with Howard Greenstein, and talks about how technology is changing and influencing politics. He discusses CIO of the White House Vivik Kundra’s announcement at the conference of the IT Dashboard on Federal spending at Data.gov.
He states that the new tools and networks allow “organized minorities to be more effective than disorganized majorities” and this will change some very major power structures in the political landscape. He also talks about the way the rise of citizen journalism is helping to replace the holes in coverage left by ailing mainstream media outlets.
There is additional discussion regarding political fund raising using online networks, and the power of organizing on social networks.
(Disclosure: the author has worked on projects recently for Andrew, but nothing related to the PDF conference).
The point at 2:45 in the video is so spot-on: “As networks, and people who know how to use them, proliferate, we’re going to see an upending of the political power structures…the ability of individuals to create networks are going to be recognized as powerful movers of issues, and ideas, and votes, which will change the dynamics of the political system.”