Space for Dean

August 8, 2003 12:00 AM

DeanSpaceis an open development community providing web-tools, support, and advice to Howard Dean's supporters. The goal is to better interlink existing web activism, bring new citizen participants into the political process, and assist individuals to network and organize for taking action in Howard Dean's presidential campaign.

According to some, this could be another sign of the approaching singularity. Smart mobs on election day anyone?
posted by cbrody (5 comments total)

The real question is though, is this an experiment doomed to failure (e.g. not enough tech-savvy people at all levels in the campaign to make it work) or is this the first step in creating a multi-tiered, online information resource which could have wider uses than the one envisaged by its creators?

Think of thousands of small, local nodes, corresponding to geographic constituencies (or meetup groups), with a built-in mechanism (e.g. moderated or weighted RSS feeds) to filter information such as news stories, canvassing returns, individual voter opinions, etc. upwards to higher, more connected nodes, which in turn filter information towards one or more root nodes. Important information also moves downwards, this direction being more important in a campaign situation where a platform has already been agreed.

Such a thing already exists of course, but is this the beginnings of a true "online democracy" which merges gracefully with the real world, or is it pie in the sky?
posted by cbrody at 6:11 AM on August 8, 2003

I find it interesting that no one else finds this thread interesting enough to comment on: I know other such sites exist (such as Indymedia) but this does look like something new to me. Am I wrong? Perhaps everyone's sick of election 2004 links...
posted by cbrody at 9:19 AM on August 8, 2003

I think the lack of response, at least on my part, is that you click the link and get presented with what looks like just another blog.
posted by zeoslap at 11:01 AM on August 8, 2003

I think the word "Deanfilter" comes to mind.
posted by thatweirdguy2 at 2:00 PM on August 8, 2003

cbrody, it's bold and I'm still trying to understand it's potential impact.
posted by ericrolph at 1:03 AM on August 9, 2003