personal democracy forum

Amazing set of speakers at the plenary this morning at PDF.

Doug Rushkoff, the author of Open Source Democracy, opened the session. He gave a passionate denunciation of the oxymoron of putting the ideas of “personal” and “democracy” together. Going back to the origins of the notion of the individual in the Renaissance, Rushkoff explained that the rights of the individual reduce a sense of community and inevitably to more centralized, and powerful, government.

This was reinforced in the last century era of top-down media that mythologized the idea that people as individuals are powerful and that they don’t need one another to collaborate to solve problems. We gave problem-solving away to others — elected officials, broadcasters, corporations — in this model.

The apex of this model is the idea of “branding.” In Rushkoff’s words, “The brand doesn’t want us engaged with one another , it wants us engaged with it.” Hmmm, fightin’ words for Millennials who are very engaged with and confident in the social responsibility of various brands.

Rushkoff wasn’t totally negative, and said that new social media can create the conditions by which we can finally do things for one another in local, place-based communities.

The next speaker was Morley Winegrad, the author of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics. He gave a great overview of the demographics of Millennials and their idealism which we here at Social Citizens know well.

Where we diverged was that Morley is very optimistic about Millennial participation in government and public policy beyond voting. His belief is rooted in a historical perspective of civic change generations like the Greatest Generation, the Civil War generation that preceded them. I’m not as optimistic based on the data that informed the Social Citizens paper. Worth another conversation.

Finally, Larry Lessig, professor at Stanford Law School, presented. If you’ve never seen Larry present, it’s a must-see — like the Grand Canyon or the Taj Mahal. He gave a very persuasive presentation on the history of corruption in the U.S. government and the grave threats to us now. I don’t have a video link for his presentation this morning, but you can see the way he presents here.

Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post gave a typically candid and sassy talk. I’ll summarize her pointed jab at the mainstream media:

• The old media has given up truth behind the cloak of “neutrality.”
• Mainstream journalists haven given up on the truth by insisting on giving equal time to two sides of an argument that don’t exist. So, for instance, the climate debate doesn’t have two equal sides although the media pretended that it did for years.
• Transparency, accountability, and community are the keys to new media.
• It’s not enough to break a new story, we have to stay on a story, we need the obsessive compulsive behavior of the new media. We can never sell our independence for access, because that’s what’s happened in the old media. We are not partisan so we don’t protect those we are reporting on (eg. Mayhill Fowler reporting on Obama’s “bitterness” comment).

Clay Shirky is the author of the terrific book Here Comes Everybody. Clay gave an overview of an essay that he wrote for an anthology called Rebooting America (OK, I admit it, I am one of the editors of the anthology!) that was released in concert with this Forum.

Clay discussed the gap between social density and connections (in other words, social capital) and social media tools that don’t always bring people together locally or over time. He believes there is latent power within communities of smart people who want to contribute to community efforts — but they are often hamstrung by laws and distance that hamper their efforts. Clay would like to see new kinds of incorporation models, like in virtual companies such as Do Tank and “Community Interest Companies” that combine the best of formal organizations and the power of social change.

Kari and I are at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City today and tomorrow.

You can see a live stream of the happenings here.

We’ve seen a few fascinating presentations this morning. We saw a demo of Linkfluence, neat spirographs of communities of bloggers through links between blogs.

Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake was a great example of how a blogger can taken an issue (hers was the Valerie Plame affair), run with it, and build up a following. However, I questioned her “actions” boiling down to taking ads out in newspapers. It’s very MoveOn.org. Is that the best we can do, take online passions, and take it to on land media?

Then Patrick Ruffini spoke (he’s a conservative blogger). He said, “A small networked group beats a large atomized group any day of the week.” Interesting — but I wonder when those small groups become impenetrable cliques?

Interesting stuff, more to come!