so while technically it is possible to mine great innovative ideas out of the collective intelligence, the amount of skepticism that will be raised by the whole process will outweigh any benefits.

Submitted to Digg by shakyguy 7/11/2008
The title of the story as it appears on TechCrunch tells the story and asks the question that many people who heard this news were probably wondering:
“The GOP Launches Site (And Facebook App) To Solicit Po…

Will that happen. Nope. Outlook, dim.

That said, the Republican party’s brand is clearly tarnished so marketing research via social media can only help them. It’s also worth noting Republican Congressman John Culberson’s efforts to use Twitter and Qik to capture political events and to create a political conversation. In general this if good for America if we can have all politics become motivated by people’s voices. No guarantee that politicians will listen, but it’s a start.

The vision of our company is to utilize a network of distributed widgets, social media apps, and a member-based portal to develop an unprecedented, comprehensive picture of public opinion. Our applications are rooted in a simple notion: namely that the media has conditioned people to expect their political content in sound bytes…so why not enable them to participate in sound bytes as well? We administer very short polls, laden with brief questions. This approach not only encourages high response rates but allows us to engage the casual, latent voters who are otherwise ignored by the political process.

Our portal, meanwhile, is being designed as a tool for people to participate in democracy, at whatever level they deem comfortable, and then use sophisticated propensity scoring techniques and matching algorithms to map users relative to other users, to Members of Congress, to historical figures, and to their friends. Users will then be able to identify, connect, and mobilize with like-minded individuals, if they choose. We will do this with obsessive attention toward user privacy and anonymity.

I’m sure all of you will run to our site and tell us how dreadful and under-developed it is. Indeed, our portal is barely out of Alpha phase…so you won’t hurt our feelings by tearing it apart But, rest assured, we are very confident and very excited about where it’s heading.

This isn’t reserved for American Politics either. In Canada we always have these emergency meetings like the one for Dufar that do nothing but get some bobble head’s name in the paper.

Plus our population is aging and old people vote for whoever they voted for 20 years ago, thus us young folk are stuck with the prehistoric car salesmen they elect.

No wonder we simply do not care. You want to talk about how disechanted we are just look at the second Vietnam. We are so distracted with our video games, iphones and Facebooks, we stood still while a war was fought over oil. Even worse the very foundation, the reason for the War WMD was a complete and utter lie. Yet we did nothing except blindly believe the war war for human rights even though we have done nothing to stop the gencide in Dufar. No woodstock, no marches for peace..nothing.

We have become the indocrinated society presented in fahrenheit 451….that is our legacy.

DemocracyLab is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization building an interactive online think tank that uses participants’ posts and votes to build a dynamic map of political thought. The result will be an engaging public forum where the best thinking rises to the top, creating a community-driven alternative to traditional politics.

We’ll have a booth at the upcoming Open Source Convention (http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/content/home) in Portland July 21-25, and will have a working prototype up then.

How’s that for the start?!