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Re: Digest for opensourceparty@googlegroups.com - 2 Messages in 1 Topic
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Ben Towne
Jan 6, 2012, 10:39:40 AM1/6/12
to opensou...@googlegroups.com
Hi Michael,
Thanks for sharing that info on Americans Elect. I hadn't looked that much into the contributors list, other than reading an article puzzled about why they keep that secret while saying that all political contributions should be made public. However, saying that "rich people gave them money" is not particularly surprising...if you want to raise funds quickly, it does help to go to where most of the wealth is concentrated.
Instead of looking at contributor lists, I think it's better to look at what the organization actually tries to do and what positions its candidate promotes.
After logging on to the Americans Elect website, you're presented with a long series of questions about particular political positions. After answering them, you can see how other registered people have answered the question, showing overall percentages and which answer was most common in each state. Though I only have anecdotal evidence from the 100 questions I completed, this does not look like a right-side-of-the-aisle party. It looks quite a bit more liberal than that, more closely resembling the Democratic platform than the Republican.
Of course, the vast majority of participants also believe that the two-party system is broken and needs to be changed.
I would *guess* that the most widely read publication among Americans Elect "delegates" is the New York Times; and the most common TV show would probably be The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. I'd be interested in seeing more data.
I am not advocating that everybody should go out there and start promoting or donating large sums of money (etc.) to Americans Elect.
I am saying that we should be paying attention and learning from their experience. They'll do some things well, which can be repeated. They'll make mistakes, which can be avoided in the future. They'll also hopefully start to reshape the dialogue and the public understanding of how this system can work. Finally, they're trying to build big and they have publicity. If you try to introduce the Open Source Party to people, a lot will try to compare it to Americans Elect, as that's the closest thing to it that they've heard about. To move beyond that point in the conversation, you'd need to be able to accurately describe each and the differences between them. People will also judge your level of expertise on something they don't know about (e. g. Open Source Party) based on your level of expertise on a related topic that they [at least think] they do know something about, which may be Americans Elect. So, I advocate paying attention.
My primary interest at present is in the technology and platform (incl. set of processes) that this group, or Americans Elect, or any of the others, are using to come together and try to solve the problems. To use the current academic language, how can we build a "socio-technical ecosystem" that can come up with good solutions to these ridiculously complicated problems our society currently faces?
The current system is broken and has to change. I don't know yet which organization(s) will be major catalysts in this change, or if they even exist yet, but there are a lot of attempts being made and a lot of lessons that can be learned. I believe that we have a set of design considerations distilled from collective experience so far, which can be applied in new attempts to increase the probability of success. I'm proofreading an journal article that describes them today, on its way to press. My recent messages on this group have tried to raise awareness of some of these items, so that we can learn from collective history and avoid some important mistakes. (For example, I do think that the high entry barriers are likely to be the main obstacle to this group's success in the movement-building goals as I currently understand them). My messages are sent with the goals of making this group better and increasing the probability of its success; I certainly don't intend to bring it down or harm the group with criticism. I appreciate the constructive discussions and positive dialogue that I've seen so far in this group and look forward to that pattern continuing. However, I think stepping out into specific applications like the Open Source Party may have exceeded my normal scope a bit, and I will be scaling back. I'll still be around, though, and still caring very much about these issues - so best of wishes!
Grace and peace,
W. Ben Towne
Thanks for sharing that info on Americans Elect. I hadn't looked that much into the contributors list, other than reading an article puzzled about why they keep that secret while saying that all political contributions should be made public. However, saying that "rich people gave them money" is not particularly surprising...if you want to raise funds quickly, it does help to go to where most of the wealth is concentrated.
Instead of looking at contributor lists, I think it's better to look at what the organization actually tries to do and what positions its candidate promotes.
After logging on to the Americans Elect website, you're presented with a long series of questions about particular political positions. After answering them, you can see how other registered people have answered the question, showing overall percentages and which answer was most common in each state. Though I only have anecdotal evidence from the 100 questions I completed, this does not look like a right-side-of-the-aisle party. It looks quite a bit more liberal than that, more closely resembling the Democratic platform than the Republican.
Of course, the vast majority of participants also believe that the two-party system is broken and needs to be changed.
I would *guess* that the most widely read publication among Americans Elect "delegates" is the New York Times; and the most common TV show would probably be The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. I'd be interested in seeing more data.
I am not advocating that everybody should go out there and start promoting or donating large sums of money (etc.) to Americans Elect.
I am saying that we should be paying attention and learning from their experience. They'll do some things well, which can be repeated. They'll make mistakes, which can be avoided in the future. They'll also hopefully start to reshape the dialogue and the public understanding of how this system can work. Finally, they're trying to build big and they have publicity. If you try to introduce the Open Source Party to people, a lot will try to compare it to Americans Elect, as that's the closest thing to it that they've heard about. To move beyond that point in the conversation, you'd need to be able to accurately describe each and the differences between them. People will also judge your level of expertise on something they don't know about (e. g. Open Source Party) based on your level of expertise on a related topic that they [at least think] they do know something about, which may be Americans Elect. So, I advocate paying attention.
My primary interest at present is in the technology and platform (incl. set of processes) that this group, or Americans Elect, or any of the others, are using to come together and try to solve the problems. To use the current academic language, how can we build a "socio-technical ecosystem" that can come up with good solutions to these ridiculously complicated problems our society currently faces?
The current system is broken and has to change. I don't know yet which organization(s) will be major catalysts in this change, or if they even exist yet, but there are a lot of attempts being made and a lot of lessons that can be learned. I believe that we have a set of design considerations distilled from collective experience so far, which can be applied in new attempts to increase the probability of success. I'm proofreading an journal article that describes them today, on its way to press. My recent messages on this group have tried to raise awareness of some of these items, so that we can learn from collective history and avoid some important mistakes. (For example, I do think that the high entry barriers are likely to be the main obstacle to this group's success in the movement-building goals as I currently understand them). My messages are sent with the goals of making this group better and increasing the probability of its success; I certainly don't intend to bring it down or harm the group with criticism. I appreciate the constructive discussions and positive dialogue that I've seen so far in this group and look forward to that pattern continuing. However, I think stepping out into specific applications like the Open Source Party may have exceeded my normal scope a bit, and I will be scaling back. I'll still be around, though, and still caring very much about these issues - so best of wishes!
Grace and peace,
W. Ben Towne
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