Freedom to Connect (F2C), part 1

I arrive in time to hear from Donna Edwards, formerly of the Arca Foundation and current candidate for the US House of Representatives from Maryland.

Where Donna lives in MD, she only has access to dial-up! Her talk is about access inequity. "When I think about public policy... we can't just hope that the... service providers will do right... we actually have to legislate and mandate this stuff. It's not efficient for some companies to reach out to some communities.... How do we develop technology policy that works for our most vulnerable communities? "

Q&A:

From David I: "There is a representative of the McCain technology policy team in the room, Jim Baller."

Jim: "I am not involved in any way with John McCain... What David's referring to is an article I wrote evaluating the candidate's positions on broadband policy." Jim ranks the candidates like this: Obama, Clinton, McCain. The paper is here.

Micah Sifry is talking about a dialog that Durbin held on a conservative blog. It sounds like overall, the conservatives on the blog understood broadband as a target for government investment. The ones who came on just to insult Durbin were routed to a separate thread."

Sifry: "We don't have good tools yet for mass deliberation... The process is broken. No one seems happy about it. What would do that would be different? The Obama platform talks about wikis and other tools? What would that look like in practice?

Alec Ross (Obama technology policy consultant): "Some of the Obama campaign's talk about how it would use... social networking tools.. etc. Technology tools are used to keep dialog in the pen... What's nice is that... within the Obama campaign... that's often where the policy people engage... people are actually dipping into the blogosphere... on myobama.com... [they're saying] last night I spend an hour [looking online] and these were good ideas. In terms of how this would work [in governance]... you have to turn to the people developing policy is to say "part of your ob is to get in there and see what people say. it is a qustion of attitude more than what's the best widget."

Donna 'I've been connected to technology for 30 years... Technology is just a tool. It's not a substitute for real engagement..."

Matt Stoller: "I come from a position of relative privilege and power... As we think about technology and deployment of technology through governance... I haven't seen much help from technologists in the political process... How are you going to devolve power to people who don't have it... Not just technology- it's about literacy; it's about nutrition."

Alec: Clinton pulled the Connect America plan after Art Brodsky took it apart and Mat Stoller blogged about it.

Q&A

A different David Isenberg: What can Congress do to incorporate or at least solicit the stuff that is available outside of the government, since NGOs are doing a better job creating transparency?

Alec: The candidate is not talking about the government directly empowering the grassroots. "...third parties are likely the folks who are going to get the information and do something with it. Part of what a President Obama would do is put data and information out there..." for these actors to work with. "By giving the information to the grassroots, they will have the means to use their power more effectively."

Micah: The OMB contacted OMB Watch, usually its adversary, about licensing fedspending.org for $600, saving the taxpayers something like $13 million.

Charles Benton: "Donna is the godmother of the Media and Democracy Coalition... That was a great contribution... We are most thankful for making that happen... Alec, I read this weekend Obama's technology platform. A major section of this paper says, 'employing technology and innovation to solve the nation's most pressing problems' This is the heart of this document... What can we do between now and the next administration to really develop the case studies, the facts, to make this connection between the technology and the needs it can meet to serve the values of equality and excellence, and to save us money?"

Alec: "What's been interesting to me is to learn what makes campaigns care about things.... It's remarkably simple. There is a lot of blogging and communications power in this room, and it gets noticed... When [sombody} digs into something and the community shares it, it gets noticed... [Campaigners] need good information, distilled down. If there's good research, sharing it with the campaign matters."

Donna: "Candidates care about things people say in their communities. [When I was campaigning and walking the neighborhoods] I remember only one person at one door who asked me about Net Neutrality, but people asked me why there kids don't have better access to technology, business people asked me about how to jump start their business into the 21st century." The way we talk about technology isn't necessarily how people experience it.

Matt: "Be precise about how you talk about power. For instance, it wasn't Congress who gutted the Office of Technology Assessment, it was Newt Gingrich. Don't grant presumptions of goodwill to political actors who don't deserve it."

Tom Mandle, entrepreneur: "What the hell is the matter with the word 'entitlement." The kids in that school are entitled to that technology. That said, governments are not founded on trust."

In the back channel, people decided that the Strange Bedfellows Coalition would be a great organization name. Apparently, www.strangebedfellows.org is available.

Some other resources that came up:

punchclockmap.sunlightprojects.org
http://www.customizegoogle.com/