Ooh, an online democracy conference! This looks new and shiny and exciting and empowering, doesn’t it? Boing Boing announces:
Personal Democracy Forum, NYC, May 18
This year’s Personal Democracy Forum in NYC on May 18 looks like an incredible show, with speakers like Esther Dyson, Craig “craigslist” Newmark, Eric Schmidt, Larry Lessig, Arianna Huffington and many others, discussing the theme, “The Flattening of Politics.”Technology and the Internet are changing democracy in America. Personal Democracy Forum is a hub for the exciting conversation underway between political professionals, technologists, and anyone else invigorated by the remarkable potential of technology to engage citizens in the democratic process.
New and exciting for the same old leech-like white faces making money off it, you mean. and by ‘exciting conversation’ they mean over cocktails between those already heavy with money, influence and power.
Arianna, Esther, Craig – same old boomer faces, same old boomer politics, Democrats for ever rah rah rah, sis boom bah, must protect our nice comfortable way of life from scary fundies and scarier anticapitalists. This conference is just another Middlle Class White American (I’d’ve said Middle Class White Assholes, personally, but then I’m uncivil) share-the-profits-circle-jerk.
For ‘democratisation’ of the internets and blogging read: circle the wagons, the natives’re getting uppity.
Here’s an alternative view on the topic from Donna at The Silence of Our Friends. :
What is imperative for everyone to know, is that the majority of middle class white American people are untrustworthy and unreliable. (A handful of these people have discovered this, and those are the ones who tend to be trustworthy and reliable.) The reason for this is that they are completely self-centered. So you ask, “But Donna, isn’t everyone self-centered?” Yes, but it is the extent I am talking about. MCWAs’ are oblivious to everyone else around them and throughout the world. Only their problems, their issues, their concerns matter. Everyone else is just a “special interest”. In the blogging world, the major liberal/progressive/Democratic blogs are close to useless for informing or being informed by anyone but MCWAs. The only time people of color; poor people, including whites; those with disabilities; foreigners; labor, especially blue collar; just about anyone who isn’t a MCWA is mentioned with any concern on their blogs is when that person can be used for their agenda, not because the concern is real. Sometimes appearances is the only agenda, because when they can make themselves appear like they care, they all get to sit around and feel all warm and fuzzy and enlightened.
I gave up on the male-centered liberal mainstream blogs long ago. I thought that maybe since the women had to deal with the oppression of sexism and misogyny that I’d have more in common with them and have a place to work through our issues together. Wrong. Because they are privileged, but blind to it, they only see their issues. Since they are middle class white Americans, usually able bodied, usually heterosexual, usually white collar workers, etc they pay lip service to issues related to poverty, people of color in the US, anything about another country, anything about disability, most GLBT issues (but since some middle class white women are lesbians, this gets a little more interest), or anything having to do with blue collar workers, low level white collar, or part time/temp workers.
No, the big issues on their blogs revolve around preserving only what they already have and getting more for themselves, they really could care less if you are out in the cold looking in. Oh sure, sometimes they talk about poverty, or women in India, or immigrants in America; but look at the framing. Almost every topic leads back to how it affects them, it’s not really about the people they are using. If they don’t center it on the middle class white woman, someone (usually several) will do it in the comments. Even on our blogs, we have white people show up wanting us to reassure them that they are good people. That is tiring for those with little to keep propping up those with much. Figure out another way to work on your self esteem, like maybe doing something to make a difference, instead of whining that you don’t mean to be racist. I much prefer the ones I usually get, if they ask anything, instead of asking me to tell them that they are good people, they ask, Am I doing something wrong? What should I be doing? But I have seen this on other POC blogs and expect it as I continue blogging.
They are untrustworthy and unreliable and we should stop looking to them for any sort of help. It won’t be there. But you know something, in this country they are a minority, just like they are in the rest of the world. So whose issues are “special interests”? We the POC, the poor of all colors, the labor movement, the disabled, people from all over the world, all of us who are oppressed and truly care for each other need to come together and help each other. We don’t need them, they will soon be needing us. We will remember the ones who were by our sides and we will remember the ones who turned their backs or used us. So you middle class white feminists might want to jump on the bandwagon right about now, show some real concern for women who aren’t just like you. I’ll be happy to help you with your problems, but not at the expense of my problems, we will work TOGETHER. It’s not good enough to work on you keeping your privileges at my expense.
Well quite: that’s exactly what this conference is about, the haves keeping their privileges by forming cartels to take control of the technology so that only their voices, and voices of which they approve, are heard.
The attendees as this conference may call themselves the Democratic opposition or the netroots, or whatever they like – but at heart they don’t want to challenge the political status quo at all. They want to use technology to their own political and personal benefit, notto extend democracy to the unwashed toiling masses, who, after all, are too stupid to know what it is they want and who need an Arianna or an Esther Dyson or a John Aravosis to tell them.
No doubt the delegates (though they’re not delegates as such – no-one delegated them, they chose themselves) will feel all smug and ‘vanguard of the revolution’-ish as they network away and contemplate their new exciting roles in the sexy, exciting world of online democracy, but this is not an event for the average blogger or grassroots political activist. Look at how much it costs to go, for a start:
Registration for the Main PdF Conference includes:
Full access to the Main PDF Conference, May 18, 2007
Continental breakfast
Lunch
Networking post conference cocktail hourOrder
at $295.00 each
Price: $295.00 Processing: $0.00 Total: $295.00
Ooh, cocktails, the high life we’re living! Add on to the conference fee however much it costs to travel and rent a room in NYC and there’s not going to be much change from a thousand dollars, at a minimum. And isn’t it cute how they have the Unconference too, for the smelly poor people to maybe lap up some crumbs from the rich attendees tables while being kept away from the real powerbrokers. Isn’t that kind? Noblesse oblige.
God these people make me angry. Democratisation my ass – the MCWAs are doing what they always do, co-opting a movement built by others to their own benefit, while the real voices of the grassroots are effectively silenced. It’s not just the usual suspects either but those who were thought to be sympatico: I’ve noticed recently that the group of blogs that cluster around Atrios and Kos, all the names on the infamous email list, are pulling up ladders, erasing links, purging blogrolls and closing the drawbridges. The reformists are forming cartels and they don’t include us.
And they wonder why we hold them in contempt.
Donna
May 13, 2007 at 11:31 pmYes, this is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. My latest post is in a similar vein and I was thinking about adding something in about the uproar over the “amnesty day” delinking by Kos and Atrios. They’ve got to turn their nose up at the riffraff who made them what they are. I always get so mad when anyone pulls the “You’re just jealous” retort, because these medium sized and smaller blogs aren’t jealous, they feel betrayed and rightfully so, they have been supportive of both those blogs and can’t even get a link on the blogroll?
Palau
May 14, 2007 at 4:06 amEvery time I read one of the big blogs self-congratulatorily patting themselves on the back I think Hah! we put you there, bigshot. Back along before the war, when the election was being stolen and real antiwar activist overseas were looking for a bit of sense in the ocean of bullshit that was coming from official US media sources, we found a few lone voices, like Atrios and Kos, speaking out.
Understandably they were feted abroad as being the last remaining sensible Americans and we all flocked to read and encourage them; the left supports those who speak out against injustice. As disquiet over the war spread – fed by the constant stream of information from antiwar bloggers and activists around the world – those US blogs, because of the input of their commenters – many of them activists and acdemics abroad – began to get a name for themselves for having good information and analysis.
In encouraging antiwar sentiment in the US we created a monster: the blogging kool kidz. They now think it’s all their own work and don’t acknowledge either the support of those thousands of small bloggers worldwide who supported, publicised and linked to them. or the later leg-up they’ve been given by influential lfriends in the Democratic party structures and media.
That latter kind of co-option is the way the establishment works to neutralise potential threats, and the bigger bloggers, enamoured of their own importance, either don’t see or refuse to see it. They think they made themselves popular and influential. Nope, we made them popular to to begin with, but as soon as big media saw that the nexus of intelligence clustering around these blogs could be a threat they moved quickly to absorb the bloggers themselves into the existing power structures. It’s happened in quite a subtle way; by having shifted from their initial antiwar focus to concentrate on the shortcomings of the mainstream media the big bloggers have in actuality become a necessary adjunct to it. Big blogs are shoring up the very media/military/political structures they claim to be railing against. It’s fascinating how by being suckered by party politics into arguing on the rightwing media’ ground they’ve already accepted the right’s framing of current political issuess as cultural and insular rather than fundamental and global. So the kool kidz’re becoming part of the problem, not the solution, liberal blogging as another branch of showbiz.
I’m sure the big bloggers would disagree vehemently – after all, aren’t they the good guys? But meaning well is not sufficient, meaning well is not revolutionary, meaning well is accommodationist and reformist. Take the Huffpo or Kos – these big blogs, while superficially enabling democracy and challenging The Man, are enabling a sham democracy that challenges little. That kind of ‘liberal’ blogging changes nothing fundamental, it just makes shit more palatable by allowing people room to bitch about it.
While I’m not one to deride political space, god knows we need more free political space – this kind of blogging has turned the potential for real actvism into little more than a celebrity-based money-raising machine Its now all about the elections, all about the media and superficialities, all about tweaking the political process to their preferred party’s advantage. Meanwhile the substantive issues – bigotry, greed, poverty, ignorance and now climate change – are undermining society from within and continue unchallenged.
No-one, least of all the blogger writing on his bosses’s time, with a mortgage and a car and quite a nice life really, really wants to overturn the current political system; it’s the way things are that got them where they are, why would they really want to change it, other than to get rid of a few annoying assholes?
No, they just want it to be more Democrat-friendly so they and their peers can get better jobs and everything will be nice and comfy again. The aim is to make the system work their way, not overturn it.
The trouble is, the planet is on the edge of such momentous climatic, economic and political change in the coming decade that the insular little world of beltway media and frontline liberal blogging will be forced to accept there are other worlds than theirs. When New York is flooded or there’s a million-strong river of refugees headed to DC from Florida, the rickety political structures they’re so desperately trying to shore up will inevitably give way. What then?
For all their vaunted internationalism I’m not really sure that many liberal bloggers even realise there’s is another world out there at all except in theory. Even Iraq seems to be comprehended as a semi-fictional place off in some tv-land somewhere, and it only pops into existence when they choose to look at it. As for the other worlds within the domestic borders, they don’t get any air time at all so they exist even less. (And who wants to be reminded of the fate that awaits should one’s standard of living slip?)
No doubt all this (if anyone reads it) will dismissed as the bleatings of a lower-tier, also-ran blogger. Let me just say for the record that I’ve never blogged for any other reason that when things are wrong, someone should say so. I’m not pursuing a career, we don’t do ads, this is not a money-making exercise. In any case I’ll be dead in a few years so I have no compunction about speaking my mind now. What have I got to lose?
My feeling about blogging is that if an injustice exists, it should be put on the record somewhere, even if it’s only on a lower-tier also-ran blog. It would still please me no end if only one person read this blog. That’s one other person who knows, and who’ll tell someone else who’ll tell someone else. And there are millions more out there all over the world who feel just like me. THAT is the real strength of blogging. It’s all about getting it on the record and making unheard voices heard. For the first time in history anybody has the chance to talk to anybody in the world in real time: that’s a dangerous thing to those in government and in power so e’d better make the most of it while we still can.
Progressive Gold » Blog Archive » “Whither Progressive Blogging?”
May 14, 2007 at 4:43 am[…] This seems to be the main theme of the blogospheric zeitgeist this morning and as I just spent best part of an hour composing this response to Donna’s comment on the ‘e-democracy’ conference, I thought screw it, it’s a post. […]
bjacques
May 15, 2007 at 7:43 amGreat post! In the few years I’ve been here in Amsterdam, I’ve seen the transformation of Dutch “cyberspace” into Kewl Kidz Klubz for web design and net.theory, to name two scenes that grew out of it.
(The Digital City (De Digitale Stad), started in the mid-90s, was a public initiative, sort of proto-Web 2.0, a graphic representation for people dialling in and communicating with each other. When its subsidy term finally expired, its director tried to go public with it. Unfortunately for him, his timing was lousy. It was right when Nina Brink’s WorldOnline IPO crapped out because she’d sold her shares in advance and the buyers dumped theirs on opening day–all legal, but catastrophic for the local dotcom boom (but also shock therapy for tulipomaniacs).
The web design people went for the big expensive design conferences, mitigated a little by inexpensive open days for the public, while the net.theorists, if a bit elitist and prone to junketing, at least organized affordable and meaningful events for hoi polloi. And still do, at de Balie. Next Five Minutes, Tulipomania (1999) Media Archaeology (2004), and INFOWARROOM (periodically).
So it’s already happened before.
The left blogsphere is great at treating MSM news as the data malfunction and then routing around it. It can do the same for showboating bloggers. Audiences are fickle; blogstars have to be able to keep them, or watch them melt away. Personal style might keep the audience a little longer, but not much.
Web 2.0 is as public a space as the town square of Celebration USA or the food court of your local shopping mall, so it’s subject to mall cop law, regardless of national or international rights of free expression.
But until the Web 2.0 rentacops stage a massive takedown of thhe blogsphere in the name of civility or copyright protection (and then enforce a permanent regime), there’ll always be alternatives to bloggers who start believing their own press.
Donna
May 15, 2007 at 4:45 pmLOL I was just going to say, that should be a post on it’s own! And I see you have already done it. Well, so far you have two who have read it. I think alot of us don’t want to see what is happening, don’t want to believe it, but I do think big changes and upheavals are coming and it’s better to talk about it and do as much preparation as possible. Too many with their heads in the clouds hoping to shore it all up and not do anything to stop it.
Palau
May 16, 2007 at 5:39 amDonna: I think Bjaques has hit the nail on the head: “The left blogsphere is great at treating MSM news as the data malfunction and then routing around it.”
I think we may be in the process of routing around the kool kidz too..
Palau
May 16, 2007 at 6:09 amBjaques: I totally agree with you that the dot com boom and bust was a temporary death knell for public access, as web 2.0 is now. But being quite aged for a geek I’ve been involved with computers and computer culture for thirty-odd years as particpant and detached observer and I think that again, it’s only temporary.
One of the unexpected outcomes of today’s digital world is tha fact that now, because everything can be resolved to a pattern of information, every component of that pattern has a real-world value as well as an informational one. There is nothing, however intangible, that can not be traded or sold, even something as ephemeral and essentially insubstantial as your DNA information or a blog-readership like Atrios’ (I’m not implying he’s selling out or selling up, I have no idea, he’s just an example)
It’s information that is the real currency now, so it’s both a commodity and a means of exchange at the same time, The aim of the free marketeers is to own the golden goose that produces the information and that means you and me. It’s as capitalist as capitalist gets.
That means anyone who’s giving information away for free is committing a revolutionary act. That’s why they must be co-opted, or failing that, quashed in some way.
But never underestimate the ingenuity of geeks and then there’s that cliched but nevertheless true tendency for information to want to be free. Every new innovation that enables communication between individual citizens quickly seems to be bought by rapacious corporations but equally quickly something new pops up.
Like you say it’s all about routing around obstacles. There’s a lot of clever, decent people in the world still. Look at Brazil and Africa and the way they’re innovating despite some bloody horrendous obstacles. I’m hopeful still. Let a million geeky flowers bloom:)
Anonymous
June 12, 2007 at 7:04 amMaybe it’s time to burn down the system and start over?
http://www.RonPaul2008.com
Or take a look on YouTube for “Ron Paul”.
Palau
June 12, 2007 at 10:50 amNaughty naughty, election spammers.
That won’t get you the presidency.