PDF2008 - Come Together Now

After an opening from Andrew and Micah, discussing to the incremental changes that are "reinventing government that is co-creating government with the wisdom of crowds".

Zephir Teachout, Director of Internet for Dean 04
[Ed Note - Wow, Z looks great. New style!]

"Great Internet Poet - Walt Whitman" - terrifying amount of power - still at the beginning, will still feel like we are at the beginning of the event.

Industrial language and the Democratic language are similar. Industrial appreciates mass and resource allocation. We talk in these terms: 1MM Obama Facebook friends, $500M raised, etc.

Also think in terms of task - what are your untapped abilities to handle tasks. In Democracy, we are looking for giving power to others.

Democratic language is about giving power to the citizenry, not about marshalling the volunteerism.

What if we use technology where we can build tools for people to have power. The best is the model of the "associations" - Americans of all ages and all minds continually unite.

5% of Americans were president of their local organizations - they had access to a channel of "power" for making a difference in their community.

Right now, we are in the biggest change of transportation usage (re: price of oil) - billions of miles driven less. 80 years ago, groups would be fighting against this. If the mortgage crisis happened 90 years ago, we would be rising up and fighting. With the Internet, why haven't we risen up and fought as an association? How many people actually know that they have the power to make a change?

As we see the solutions for today - is it an industrial innovation or a citizen/democratic innovation? Is the technology distribution tasks or power? Is it empowering the citizen or the organization?

Finishes with a Walt Whitman poem, "As I Walk These Broad, Majestic Days"

I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
The vast factories, with their foremen and workmen,
And here the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.

But I too announce solid things;
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing—I watch them,
Like a grand procession, to music of distant bugles, pouring, triumphantly moving — and grander heaving in sight;
They stand for realities—all is as it should be.

Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad, and the divine average—Freedom to every slave on the face of the earth,
The rapt promises and luminé of seers—the spiritual world—these centuries lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.

For we support all, fuse all,
After the rest is done and gone, we remain;
There is no final reliance but upon us;
Democracy rests finally upon us (I, my brethren, begin it,)

And our visions sweep through eternity.