The video below is funny, but it does touch on a fundamental questions about the Internet rEvolution. Will we translate our election involvement into participation in our government?
So many of us, of all political stripes, were not only infovores, but prolific bloggers and commenters. Reading, dissecting, learning, changing. I've seen my own teenagers become informed on politicians' policy stances, histories and statements. The snarky comment of an old white guy in my voting line wasn't only rude, it was just wrong. My kids -- and trust me, we aren't talking straight-A students interested in a future in politics -- knew the positions of the candidate they voted for. They argued their cases, they volunteered, they voted, Lee even blogged about it.
How will that passion and intensity be channeled now? Will we pay attention to what our policymakers are up to? We have an incredible array of new tools, of new voices, of new ways to do so, if we choose to use them.
The Obama administration seems to believe that we are committed to participating in our democracy far more deeply than going to the polls. But even if his site, which pledges to keep us informed and consider our opinions, is a ploy to placate us, we have our own blogs. We have access to dissenting views all over the place. We have the Drudge Report, Daily Kos, Andrew Sullivan, NewAssignment.net, Laurence Lessing. We can check out CNN, BBC, Fox, Al Jazeera for ourselves.
Most profoundly, we have each other: Vast networks of online connections sharing news and information person to person, without a middleman. People who link and share and write and correct and agree and contradict. We have a means for anyone to say anything, to blow the whistle, tell the truth, make up a story, get found out.
What will we do now? I'm not being rhetorical. What do you think? Will most of us go back to whatever we did before we got 'netted or are we transforming our culture, our goverment and our country?
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