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.
Some big news from techPresident - this morning, they launched 10Questions.com, in cooperation with the NY Times and MSNBC (and supported by a ton of political blogs). The premise behind 10Questions is simple – you upload your video questions for candidates, the crowd decides on the top 10 questions, and the candidates respond. You’ll be able to submit questions for the next 28 days – my friend and fellow techPresident contributor Ruby Sinreich has already submitted hers.
