Re: Wikipolitics

In response to a post on BarackObama.com

Wikipolitics is not new, actually. We have been out here waiting and building for years. Not me, specifically, since I've only been around since 2003, but the concepts have been there. And the infrastructure has been in development.

Let me recommend a few more books to read.

"The Revolution will not be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the overthrow of Everything" - by Joe Trippi.

"The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations" - by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom

"The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to create a world that works for all" - by Tom Atlee

"50 Ways to Love your Country" - by MoveOn.org

In July of 2006, I got an email from Jimmy Wales. Or maybe it was a blog post. I can't remember. Here is what it said:

http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Mission_Statement

I jumped in as the lead volunteer admin of Campaigns.Wikia, and have been pushing Wikipolitics ever since. I'm an admin on dKosopedia, and I keep finding more and more sites out there waiting to be discovered, used and built.

But it's not just about wiki software or Web 2.0. The town meeting where people have a chance to listen to the experts on an issue and voice their own opinions is the same core concept. Party and campaign meetings where people share their experiences and work together towards common goals, it's the same thing. Read Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and you can see the same thing.

I break it down in very simple terms. People are reaching for two possible goals. Either you want peace, or you want power. The path to peace is cooperation. The path to power is control. The Barack Obama campaign represents for me the ultimate collaborative effort to take back our country through the means of cooperation in the pursuit of peace. John McCain represents for me the candidate of control, supported by a political party that wants control of the country's politics in the pursuit of power. Power over what we see, what we hear, what we buy, how we live. They don't want to cooperate with others, they want to control others. We won't let them. Not anymore.