I can't believe people trust elections to a machine which uses the Windows operating system.

'Nuff said.

For those who don't know, this web site runs CivicSpace, an open source content management system (CMS) based on Drupal.

This is some seriously cool stuff - a web site for the Ann Arbor public library built on Drupal:

http://www.blyberg.net/2005/12/04/lessons-learned-aadlorg-30/

These are also interesting but more specific:
http://www.blyberg.net/2005/12/01/aadl-rss-feeds-extended-to-all-catalog-searches/

I just finished reading a book yesterday by David Gerrold called Leaping to the Stars. It's mostly just a great action-adventure story, but like nearly all science fiction, it does hit upon some rather weighty issues including the relationship betwen man and technology and the nature of good and evil. In the context of a political science class, he described how the United States had collapsed after three hundred years. It was almost as if he was channeling both Howard Dean and Barack Obama when this book was written in 2001/2002 (first edition was printed in 2002, well before Dean exploded onto the national scene).

I think we're on the verge of a very interesting and revealing point in our history. One of the reasons I got interested in the internet in the first place was that I believed it had the power to change things for the better by providing nearly immediate access to information - I wrote in a high school English paper eight years ago that the internet had the potential to be the greatest tool for freedom that we've ever known.

The Dean campaign showed that I was only half right - I had never even considered the interconnectedness and the organizing ability it would bring until I started hearing about how they were using the web to build inter-linked local organizations. When the Dean campaign took off, I thought we were finally at a point of critical mass, so to speak - where there were enough people online and interested that the first person to take advantage of it would be all but unstoppable. Unfortunately we're obviously not there yet, even though I think we should be from a purely statistical standpoint (with fully half of the country online now). The worst part, though, is that I'm now not even sure it is possible, not because of the limitations of the tools but because of the limitations of the people we're trying to sway with them.

I think that how a campaign is run is indicative of how the administration would be run if the candidate is elected. Bush's new blog is a prime example of that - top down and pure propaganda with no way for voters to participate, just like his presidency which is more or less an oligarchy (or a monarchy with Rove as king). The people have no say whatsoever.

Clark at least made a respectable pass at getting some public involvement, though it's still top down (much to the shagrin of Fowler). Clark seems like the sort of candidate who would make comments about young people being the "foot soldiers of the campaign" - rather befitting an ex-general, too, I think. Clark has an opportunity to turn has campaign around by accepting this revolution and becoming a part of the future, or by continuing the top-down campaign style and being passed up. I certainly hope he chooses the former, because even with all his faults, I still see him as being a great leader in the Democratic party, at least in the future if not now.