politics + internets = ?

Welcome to Redefining Politics. This site has been on the backburner for some time. If I keep plugging away at it, I hope to have a site that examines the effect that social technology is having on the formal political sphere. The way I see it, the web’s effect on politics can be divided up pretty neatly along the following lines:

Politics 1.0:

Pretty much everything that falls under the category of the web as the new fax machine; ie - a tool for the traditional political establishment to cut costs and increase access to the electorate. So, mundane things like campaigns’ use of email, to making forms accessible online. Overall, pretty tame, basic use of the web. Basically, a cost-cutter.

Politics 2.0:

This is where it starts to get exciting. There are interesting initiatives from around the world happening regarding government at all levels - from state to federal, regarding such themes as:

-Transparency (mapping elected representatives to incoming and outgoing cashflow, facetime, and voting record)

-Accountability (real time verification of statements and actions on record vs rhetoric, etc.)

-Participation (citizen feedback on legislative items, suggestions, plebiscites, grassroots-led legislation, etc)

Politics 3.0:

Where we’ve largely scratched the surface. If we accept that any government is nothing more than an interface on the sovereign decision-making apparatus tasked with allocating the sum of all available knowledge and resources to best promote the general interest, then we have a hell of an interaction design opportunity. (And yes, I most recklessly did come um with my own definition for the word “government”. Given the name of this site however, I reserve the right to do so :-)). Therefore, information visualization, collaborative evidence-based argumentation, tactical consensus, processable opinion formats…these are some of the levels of research that speak to a true paradigm shift.

RedefiningPolitics.com welcomes collaboration, and while I have high hopes for the site, for the time being it’ll take the form of a link dump for a bunch of research I’ve been stockpiling over the years. Once I get the information organized, it might make sense to turn this into a wiki. But if this area interests you, and you’d like to be involved in mapping out the categories and mining through hundreds of links, holler.

Meantime, any talented graphic designers with too much time on their hands should drop me a line too, stat.

Thanks for reading.

Felipe

www.felipetr.com

ftr[at]felipetr.com