A special note of congrats to fellow TechPresident contributors – four of whom where featured on the New York Times op-ed page today. Quoting Josh Levy:
Today the New York Times published an op-ed on “Changing the Terms of Debate,” giving “seven people with experience in both new media and old” the chance to weigh in on what “a real new media debate” would like. Included were techPresident’s Micah Sifry, Andrew Rasiej, David All, and Zephyr Teachout. Four out of seven ain’t bad!
While I enjoyed all of the pieces, Zephyr Teachout’s resounded especially. She asks:
I propose a full day of live one-on-one debates on unannounced issues, with no aides to help or reply. Each candidate would be paired with another candidate for seven 60-minute sessions. The candidates would switch off against one another until each candidate had debated everyone else: Mr. Edwards against Mr. Dodd, then Mr. Edwards against Mr. Obama, then Mr. Edwards against Mr. Kucinich, and on down the line. In an eight-candidate field, four debates would be taking place at once.
Each debate would have a live audience and Webcast. All 28 debates would be stored, open to the public, and licensed with simple software tools so that citizens could easily rewatch, remix and share. An ambitious blogger could create “Democrats on immigration,” splicing into one online video the smartest, funniest, most provocative statements from the debates.
The Internet doesn’t just enable cool avatars and the shorter form. It also allows the deeper form: cross-linked blog posts, extensive research, simultaneous screens and raw debate footage that anyone can scan online, at any time. New media are not constrained by the scarcity of TV network time.
This sounds a lot like a Political Commons to me: a funded, independent space that would create and distribute political content for anyone and everyone to remix, rebroadcast and mash up. The commons would act as more than a data store (though a data store of open-licensed political materials would be a good start), it would produce content with light context that would enable remixers to create innovative derivative products. The Poli Commons could provide a Digg-like system for voting and discovering submissions, and awards could be presented to those who make the most innovative content.
Like the source code for voting machines, our national political conversation should exist in a space where we are free to use and remix the content. With the exception of the CNN debates, most everything broadcast on television is copyright controlled. A foundation or effort dedicated to bringing conversation into a more “open” space seems to be idea long overdue.
Update: It looks like Yahoo is going to be holding a mash-up debate; Wired bemoans the mashups as inauthentic, however.
Tags: media, politics, techpresident
“Like the source code for voting machines, our national political conversation should exist in a space where we are free to use and remix the content.”
Of course. But I think you’ll see the former before you’ll see a public compendium of real debates. With voting machines, so long as there’s any fluidity of political control both parties have it in their interest to maintain legitimate elections (in theory, anyways). But who benefits from real public debates (other than the public, but we don’t really count here)? Among politicians, it’s those without much power – those who are struggling for name recognition and a sense of legitimacy – who would stand to benefit the most. The big boys/girls are all about incredibly tight image control, and given that some/many of them can’t really put together coherent thoughts that aren’t pre-packaged political pablum, I’d be surprised to see this or anything like it happen.
Pleased, but surprised.
“seven 60-minute sessions” Ouch! That is 7 hours of debating right? It would turn into a Jerry Lewis Debate-a-Thon. Or maybe I am misreading this.
… or a Jerry Springer fight-a-long …
This is an excellent idea, though, how much difference would it really make in the discourse. The people interested in this already pay attention to politics. Those that would remix the content probably blog about it.
I think the issue should be using new media to bring politics to people who previously could not or did not participate, not giving those already involved another means to amuse themselves.