SOPA Is So Going Down

Image via WikipediaAnd now the White House is against it. And looks like the bill is nowhere close to hitting the floor of the House. The authors and proponents of the bill have been caught flat-footed. They obviously did not see this coming. Ever since the advent of the internet I have not seen the tech honchos getting this political. Everyone and their competition is up in arms.

I mean, can you imagine Google and Facebook and Twitter all going offline, even if only for an hour, to protest this well-intentioned piece of legislation? That would end up the biggest media event globally.

The often told story is that the old media people who have the politicians in their back pockets got those mercenary politicians to bring forth this awful, awful bill. That is only part of the story. The real story is that the Internet stands to challenge the nation-state itself. Those politicians on Capitol Hill spend much time thinking they are the center of the universe. The Internet is barking at them saying the universe has no center. Everywhere you stand is the center of the universe. And so there is this major culture clash.

The Censorship Bill Is About The Nation State
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The Internet will win. The nation state will fundamentally transform itself, or it will lose.

White House: Obama Administration Responds to We the People Petitions on SOPA and Online Piracy
Ars Technica: Obama administration joins the ranks of SOPA skeptics
TechDirt: SOPA Delayed; Cantor Promises It Won't Be Brought To The Floor Until ‘Issues Are Addressed’
GigaOm: Tim O'Reilly: Why I'm fighting SOPA
Ars Technica: Under voter pressure, members of Congress backpedal (hard) on SOPA
CNet: Wikipedia considering joining SOPA blackout protest

John Battelle's Search Hangover

I think this interview of Mark Zuckerberg by primarily John Battelle is on the lame side. It is out and out hostile. And there is a reason for that.

Web 2.0 Summit 2010

Web 2.0 Expo NY 09

Tim O'Reilly Mentions Scott Heiferman On TechCrunch

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Meetup

via CrunchBase

Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0
Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds

I just met Scott Tuesday evening: NY Tech MeetUp: Gravitas.

And now I read this gushing mention of him by Tim O'Reilly in TechCrunch: Gov 2.0: It’s All About The Platform. Makes me feel good. Scott started what I call a 5.0 company, one about face time. (Netizen: Web 5.0: Face Time) And he has executed well. And he has a sound business model. He charges organizers, organizers charge those who show up: everyone is happy. Wishing the guy all the best.

It’s important for the idea of “government as platform” to reach well beyond the world of IT. It was Scott Heiferman, the founder of meetup.com who hammered this point home to me. Meetup is a platform for people to do whatever they want with. A lot of them are using it for citizen engagement: cleaning up parks, beaches, and roads; identifying and fixing local problems.

In this regard, there’s a CNN story from last April that I like to tell: a

Image via CrunchBase

road into a state park in Kauai was washed out, and the state government said it didn’t have the money to fix it. The park would be closed. Understanding the impact on the local economy, a group of businesses chipped in, organized a group of volunteers, and fixed the road themselves. I called this DIY on a civic scale. Scott Heiferman corrected me: “It’s DIO: Not ‘Do it Yourself’ but ‘Do it Ourselves.’”

Image by

Tim O’Reilly / Flickr

via CrunchBase

Imagine if the state government were to reimagine itself not as a vending machine but an organizing engine for civic action. Might DIO help us tackle other problems that bedevil us? Can we imagine a new compact between government and the public, in which government puts in place mechanisms for services that are delivered not by government, but by private citizens? In other words, can government become a platform?

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