[extropy-chat] What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop?

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Found via BoingBoing, from the Washington Post: For all Dean's talk about
wanting to represent the truly "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,"
the paradox is that he is essentially a third-party candidate using modern
technology to achieve a takeover of the Democratic Party. Other
candidates -- John Kerry, John Edwards, Wesley Clark -- are competing to
take control of the party's fundraising, organizational and media
operations. But Dean is not interested in taking control of those
depreciating assets.
Cheap information has allowed firms to shrink. Size is now less of an
advantage in organizations, and that means more competition in the global
marketplace. For companies, it's either reorganize or die. This is no less
true for political organizations, as Dean's success shows. He is the first
candidate to use the Internet effectively as a political organizing device.
The ability to have "virtual political parties" is the greatest challenge
the two parties have ever faced. There are strategies available to them, of
course -- deft positioning allows them to preempt competitors, as it does in
every industry, and they can use the same technology, although Internet
culture doesn't seem readily amenable to either Democrat.com or
Republican.com. Being a Democrat or a Republican isn't enough of an
advantage anymore -- there are simply too many other places where people can
get political information and find political bedfellows in an age of low
information costs.
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