Intelligent Centralization

Jonah Sieger certainly made a lot of insightful points last night. Walking away, though, something bothered me about the Bloomberg "decentralization" plan. The way Sieger described it, the mayor's campaign has established an advanced peer-to-peer volunteer campaign in which people of the same neigborhood or ethnicity would be campaigning to one another. The Internet, of course, is the tie that binds here, as the tool that brings these volunteers to the campaign and, then, to the voters.

While I think this strategy makes for good campaigning, I'm not sure I agree with the term "decentralization." To me, this represents merely a step toward decentralization -- and not a very large one. After all, the campaign presumably still trains the volunteers, arms them with talking points and brochures. They just micromanage less. What is decentralized about it, we asked? Sieger pointed to "definitive compromises" made between the campaign and its grassroots volunteers, including the major decision of when to have the captain meetings.

Again, I think this is the kind of campaign innovation that wins elections. I'd even call it "intelligent centralization." But, don't call this decentralization. The reality is, campaigns don't want more decentralization (the theory itself is inherently risky), and the daring ones that actually try it to any large extent get called "utter failures" in the end.

Thanks, Damien, for getting the ball rolling here.

Woo! Go China!

Although I'm writing this under exile having been late getting auto-updates up and running, I want to call all of our attention to the wonderful government of China, which according to Yahoo! News is forcing all Chinese websites to register with the government. Seeing as how this governmet has already jailed 54 owners of sites already registered for "subversive content," I can't imagine why anyone would be hesitant to follow orders here.

In light of considerations of possible FEC regulation of the blogs, it's time to thank China for once again for tossing in a bit of perspective.

Enter the Blogging Congressman

Congressman Conyers may be the most unlikely hero one can imagine for the liberal blogs. Having been in Congress for 40 years, we should all be surprised this guy knows how to check his e-mail or even know what a blog is, much less write and operate his very own blog.

But, of late, Conyers has found the blogosphere the perfect place to vocalize his consistently progressive dissent. He took the fore on the Gannon/Guckert scandal, the Ohio election investigation, and most recently, the Downing Street Memo, which has his supporters talking about impeachment. Of course, Conyers knows impeachments better than anyone -- he's the only member of Congress ever to have served on two impeachment hearing panels. The Detroit congressman not only has fallen in love with the new media; he's virtually become the de facto representative of the liberal blogosphere.

It seems like the blogs are an amazing platform from which a politically marginalized officeholder can take root and rally the troops with the hope that blog-lightning will strike and something will catch fire. So far, nothing Conyers has talked about has been effective at doing major damage to President Bush -- even though a lot of fiery subjects have been discussed.

The larger question this raises is how seriously will America take calls for impeachment that are ignited by the blogs? Is it just a matter of pressuring the media into making it news?

Buckley Makes Me Want to Curl Up in a Big Ball

Russell Buckley has successfully scared me to death.

No, it's not the heart attack-triggering scared like the time my little sister hid in my closet one night and proceeded to emerge once I was safely tucked into bed. It's more the throw-your-arms-up-in-helplessness scared.

As Buckley signals the "death knell of privacy," I start to think: why haven't I been worrying about this for years? And why does everyone else seem to be oblivious or less-than-mildly concerned? Sure, I'm that type of person: the worrier about how all this wonderful technology is going to end up ruining my life. After I took a class with a professor who was a resident expert on privacy issues, I decided I'd rather not have databases of information -- however innocuous -- about me floating around to propsective insurers, employers and friends. I'd rather not have someone be able to Google what I bought at Harris-Teeter last month and then decide they can't insure/employ/respect me because I may or may not be chemically dependent on Diet Dr Pepper.

I feel very alone on this one. I watch others in front of me happily swipe their VIC (is that Very Important Customer?) cards and get their well-earned discounts while a database somewhere fills up with how much sodium they're eating. The public seems oblivious and generally unperturbed by these Orwellian prospects.

So far, the heavily intrusive implementations of these technologies have yet to be used to any great extent -- at least, not publicly. Perhaps if employee-tracking became common in America, we'd see some uproar.

From an admittedly contradictory political perspective, however, the possibilities are endless. I'll submit to you a quick three that come to mind:
1) A campaign that is targeting young, single intellectuals might be able to hit everyone with a mobile device in a coffee house in its district.
2) GOTV efforts can be boosted by poll-tracking devices that know if a voter has yet visited the the polls. Furthermore, you can more easily reach the voters who haven't.
3) Campaigns should be able to pinpoint where visitors to their website are logging on (not to mention which parts of the site they're looking at), lending to a much tighter targeting ability in canvassing and direct mail messaging.

As Buckley says, the good uses for this technology require creativity and ingenuity, as we're seeing in the Wired story about saving lives in South Africa or the CNN story about war protesting with mobile technology. But the evil uses are easier. And we all like our jobs easier.