"open source politics" in action
I'm sure this happened all the time before, but now we've got a name for it. Dean in New Hampshire.
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I'm sure this happened all the time before, but now we've got a name for it. Dean in New Hampshire.
Lessig Blog by Lawrence Lessig is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Comments (2)
There are authority figures in open source, also. At the simplest level, there are those who are allowed to commit to the project and those who are not. This is like some campaign blogs. Some get certain privileges (e.g. Edwards' blog), yet most do not.
Talk of combining the ideas of the people into a populist platform is just marketing. Even Linux is a result of the vision of a few, despite claims of a mass mind.
The story of human civilization is that a very small number of people with vision, charisma and ability have risen to prominence and made decisions for the masses. If Dean merely wanted to help out average people, he could have remained a doctor. But I imagine he has other, more powerful ideas - ones not subject to approval from his former patients. We can help tell him what ails us - but in his mind, he already has the cure.
I hope Dean does as he says. Regardless of what Bush replies, Dean will have shown that he listens to the people supporting him.
More than this, he will have shown that open-source campaigns work.
With regard to Ed Lyons' remarks, of course, there are people with vision and others who are more or less followers. That is why Linus Torvalds gets the credit for Linux. But Torvalds got thousands of people all over the world to contribute to Linux in one way or another. I am sure each of them feels a certain ownership of the software. They feel great because they accomplished a worthy goal cooperatively.
This is the big thing. Dean is getting people all over the country to cooperate with each other for the sake of a common goal. If he truly listens to them, he will not only win, but achieve greatness when governing - if he keeps on listening.