NOT the Majority Opinion

This is an interesting opinion.

Mociology refers to how mobile and wireless technology has changed the way we do things: downloading music on to a mobile phone, for example, or getting the football scores texted through on a Saturday afternoon. To Trippi, however, its potential lies in how it can be used for political purposes - just as he saw and exploited the possibilities of blogs for political campaigning while running Howard Dean's unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

Blogging and mociology, Trippi is convinced, will revolutionise politics. "When I first started the Dean campaign there were something like 4,000 blogs worldwide," he claims. "There are now 20m and growing. It's an entirely new development - the arrival of the two-way printing press. We have had the one-way press around for centuries, but when you have a two-way press it means that people can actually have a conversation with each other on equal terms. Mobile technology, blogging technology, gives people the ability to connect with each other from the bottom up. It'll do for 21st-century politics what print did for the 18th."

As Dean's campaign manager, Trippi ordered the creation of a campaign blog, which he used to communicate directly with supporters. He set up a "Dean in 2004" group on the Meetup Inc website for people with common interests, which managed on one day - November 4 2003 - to mobilise 138,000 volunteers to turn up at 820 locations to campaign for the candidate. And realising that Dean, from a base as governor of Vermont, would never be able to raise the same sums from the accepted routes as Washington insiders, he used the web to ask for donations. The result was a rush of cash that astonished observers.

This new technology puts power in the hands of the average citizen. It's a qualitative difference, totally different from all previous democracies. In the Dean campaign, people realised, 'Wow! We can really connect and change the established way of doing things.' And they did. We began with 432 people nationwide. That grew to 650,000 and we raised more money than any other candidate in history. And it's not just presidential elections. Look at global warming. Is it going to be solved because the leaders do something? Or because hundreds of millions of people do something?"

There is, Trippi says, no inherent reason for mociology to favour liberal causes - "the technology doesn't know or care what ideology is using it" - but, in practice, it has not yet become a tool for the right. "I think the one problem the right has on the internet and blogging is that they tend to be so disciplined about command and control," he suggests. "That's worked very well for them up to now. But it doesn't, and it won't, work for them on the net. Conservatives tend to use the net as a data communications vehicle. For them, it's a messaging machine. The Democrats - the progressives - are much better at growing big connected communities."

What does that mean for the next presidential election, in 2008? "I think there's a good chance that a third person - a third party if you will - is going to emerge, with the power of blog behind them. It has to be from outside. The Democratic party crushed Dean from within. The party will never change from within. In the past you couldn't leave the party. Where were you going to get the money for an effective campaign? Howard Dean showed how - from bottom-up subscriptions of a few bucks. That says to me that very soon, somebody is going to step out of the two-party apparatus. I'm not talking about someone mega-rich such as Ross Perot. I'm talking about a credible party leader who steps out and says, 'You know, we don't need the traditional two parties any more.'"

So the age of the political machine is over? "Yes. The new machinery is in the hands of the people and it's blogging and it's mobile phones. There are those who say you can't change a political system that's as busted as ours. There are others who are realising that, because of blogs and the other new technologies, you can make a change. Democracy is in a lot of hurt right now and the only thing that's going to save it is getting people back into the process. These technologies are coming online just in the nick of time because this world is in a mess of trouble and it's not going to get solved unless we all connect with each other and start to work in common cause."

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1642084,00.html