In a variety of different ways I’ve been working with politicians on the net for more than a decade now. At one level it’s fine work – everyone knows the future is going to be online, right? It’s cheaper to communicate online than it is through traditional media, so the […]
Tag: Clay Shirky
The need for a credible bargain – what the EU should learn from today’s #EUCO Twitter wall experience
There’s a legendary story for those of us that look at political activity on the web that concerns change.gov, Obama’s platform to allow the public to put forward their political ideas that went live the day after he was inaugurated. Give the people a platform, so the argument went, and […]
The Labour/left blogosphere in the UK and Wikileaks
The whole Wikileaks saga has left me torn and confused. My automatic reaction is to welcome the leaks, to welcome the fact that we know much more now about how the wool has been pulled over our eyes as citizens about matters ranging from the hopelessness of the war in […]
Big Society under the Coasian floor (rather than thanks to Nectar Points)
There seems to be a fundamental misconception at the heart of the ‘debate’ about Cameron’s Big Society ideas. This misconception is fed both by the discourse used by the Tories themselves, and the media reaction. Take this piece in today’s Guardian for example – councils are wondering whether some sort […]
Public intellectuals on Twitter – where are the Brits (or even the Europeans)?
Attending Personal Democracy Forum, re:publica and other equivalent events has – both directly and indirectly – opened my eyes to the writing and thinking of a whole group of US public intellectuals. I’ve had fun meeting Jeff Jarvis, have heard Lawrence Lessig, Clay Shirky and Cory Doctorow present, and have […]
Cruddas has a vision for Labour fit for 1990, not 2010
On October 19th Jon Cruddas delivered the Aneurin Bevan Memorial Lecture, entitled ‘Taking back the Big Society”. The text of the speech is available at Liberal Conspiracy here and if you’ve ever heard Jon Cruddas deliver a speech live you can almost imagine how he would have delivered it (I […]
What’s the value of an e-mail (or a thousand) in a political lobbying campaign?
If you’re an elected representative, what does an e-mail mean? If it’s from a constituent, individually written, it’s clear enough. But what about if it’s part of a campaign? In the clip above Clay Shirky argues that the predictive value of an e-mail for a member of Congress is zero, […]