politics

For some time politics and the web have been quite good friends. But, the political web is somewhat unbound. Political bloggers are everywhere, espousing their opinions in their small piece of the web. This week’s quick idea brings them together. “Second Congress” (which would not fly as a name because it is derived from Second Life) would pull political bloggers / thinkers into a social network in which real debates take place, and the best thinkers shine.

Basics: Everyone gets a page / blog; you build a network of friends and supporters; compete for fake campaign currency and the best of the best are chosen to a simulated congress. Essentially simulate government, but let it be run by the unfunded, less-supporter-biased masses that spend their time online. And kick it all off with a big publicity stunt in which you actually fund the campaign of the highest rated user to run for office offline.

I would love to build this, but don’t have the time / resources (unless someone wants to help me make this a reality).

Quick Ideas is an ongoing series in which Josh Amer publishes one idea for a website or product each week.

DOPA, is yet another example of foolish law making restricting freedom in what is supposed to be the land of the free. First the gov’t seeks to ban online poker, now social networking sites in schools and libraries. Poker seemed to be driven by lack of tax revenue from offshore poker sites, but most popular SNs in the US are US based. So this seems to be based more on the governments desire to have Americans believe that we need the government to protect us. Banning the entire scope of SN sites is foolish. This would have been like banning all P-to-P technologies when Napster was the hot issue. The problem is that the Government cannot discriminate on an individual basis, so they either have to make the law fully applicable or the law cannot pass. This is a seriously overbroad law, it will impact all social networking sites that do not have sexual predators as well those that do. This means that a site like FaceBook (I’m assuming) would be banned from high schools, that’s pretty terrible. My Gf’s younger brother will be attending Duke this fall and thanks to FB he already has 50 or so friends at Duke. That’s pretty helpful (of course, he went to a private High School, and he probably never used FB at school, so this isn’t the best example). The gov’t however, only manages to see potential problems, and for some reason thinks that it is their responsibility to protect people from these problems even when people can do a perfectly fine job of protecting themselves. If individual schools want to restrict access to sites I don’t have a problem with that. If schools want to block things that will hinder their ability to push their academic agenda, that’s fine, but a wide-sweeping ban is irrational. The more the government restricts our ability to access the internet, the more we will fall behind in out technological advancement. I’m not sure why the government thinks restricting the internet is a good idea, when allowing full access will enable us to fully optimize the economics of the web, which will make our country richer, increase employment, and help strengthen our place in the global economy.

I really am not a big fan of talking politics (or law), but such extreme ignorance brings it out.