This Isn't The West Wing. It's Real Life.

When I was a little girl I wrote stories that I kept neatly organized in a pink 3-ring binder. I hid them in my closet beneath piles of shoes and clothes so that no one knew where they were or could access my secret stash of Pulitzer-worthy unicorn tales. This trait of mine has, unfortunately, carried on into adulthood. It is perhaps a quality that I developed as a result of my upbringing in a rather large family, a quality spurred from a total lack of privacy or feelings of ownership -- a selfishness born from a desire to have a secret or two that belong to only me. But as I have matured, this tendency to guard my writing has also become less a need for privacy and more a realization of the value of the written word -- that it is a powerful medium for expression and that there is surely something to be said for carefully considering what we make, produce, or distribute for the world to consume. In all honestly, I'm incredibly uncomfortable writing on this blog. I'm doing it because I was told to for class, but every bit of me is resisting. I'm sure that everything I post I'll want to immediately withdraw. I care deeply about the thoughts and ideas I distribute to the world. I have no desire to hazardously post a thought that I may very well wish to rescind in the days, weeks, or months to come.

This, however, is my own perspective regarding the blogosphere. And as a result, I am forced to remind myself that it should not govern my overall opinion about the benefits to be gained by society as a whole from new mediums of communication, or, to the other end, the possible negative effects of such mediums. If I gained any insight from Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody, it's that there are positives to be weighed against the negatives, but that the most important realization regarding Internet communications is the following: Love them or hate them -- they're here to stay.

I found the book to be well-argued and convincing of certain possibilities of Internet advocacy, and I certainly appreciated his effort to address the qualms of Internet-skeptics such as myself. There were a few arguments I took issue with, however, and I suppose here is the place to address them.

The first portion of the book discussed how the Internet is re-shaping journalism as a profession and as an industry. Shirky addresses the possible downsides of this (polarization of readers, lack of a gatekeeper to provide quality assurance), but ultimately argues that increased access to news and other positive results of this transition tend to outweigh the negatives. When the public is able to influence its own agenda and highlight its own new stories, we are not subject to control by any news agent backed by those with certain interests (be they monetary or political or both). I can agree with this to a certain extent. Shirky discusses the idea of filtering news/commentary before it is published (traditional journalism) vs. filtering of news after it is published (by readers in the Internet-age). Certainly both have their pros and cons when considering their ability to contribute to any democratic state. But honestly I just don't feel like getting into all that, and this is MY blog so I'm going to get to what really got me in a mood.

My greatest amount of skepticism stems from ideas about the potential to organize without organizations via online social media and other mediums made possible because of the Internet. Shirky writes "now that it is possible to achieve large-scaled coordination at low cost, a third category has emerged: serious, complex work, taken on without institutional direction." My beef here comes with the various definitions of "cost" that might be applied to this theory of organization. Certainly there are multiple "costs" to participating in online campaigns, though not necessarily organizational or monetary. Any individual wishing to access the abundance of commentary made available on the web and then utilize that gained knowledge to participate in advocacy for a given issue needs three things: time to access information on the web, an ability to understand web content, and time to participate in Internet advocacy. While these factors are accessible to a good number of Americans, the honest truth is that there are plenty of us who don't have those things.

I think this is what I was getting at in class the other day. Though I certainly understand the potential for the Internet to open up means by which the average citizen can access information and opportunities to advocate on their own behalf, I am more convinced of this possibility on a local or state level than on a national level. D.C. is historically exclusive, and I don't see social media as being the means by which to transform this problem. Especially given Shirky's own assertion that the Internet favors reactive behavior rather than proactive behavior. It's easier to convince the masses to get angry about any given injustice after it happens, it's less simple to convince the masses to care about a problem before it's shoved in their face. Therefore, what you're left with is the ability to possibly mobilize people when and if a catastrophe arises, leaving the D.C. policy elite to mess around for the rest of year doing "business as usual," as Obama is so fond of saying.

The power for the Internet to transform federal policy won't come as a result of influence over officials because of pressure via Facebook or Twitter, but as a result of access to information about previously-hidden government workings. In order to promote access to Washington, we need to de-celebritize this city. Government insider-ness shouldn't be sexy. It just shouldn't be. Shirky makes this point:

"The surprise held out by social tools like weblogs is that scale alone, even in a medium that allows for two-way connections, is enough to create and sustain the imbalance of fame. The mere technological possible of reply isn't enough to overcome the human limits on attention...Egalitarianism is possible only in small social systems." (Shirky, 94)

In light of this, I recommend that real believers in Internet advocacy get out there and promote the following:

1. Education and literacy among the public (b/c do you know how many people in this country have no idea what the f*@! Mattt Yglesias is talking about?)
2. The promotion of government officials and legislators as public servants, not celebrities. Working in government needs to be less about remaking the world in your own image, a narcissistic endeavor pawned off as social servitude, and more about promoting the public good as a regulator of systems that effect the everyday lives of citizens.
3. A movement away from this crap. You're a Harvard grad- stop fetching David Alexrod's coffee. And if you must, that's fine. But can the Times please stop glorifying it? This isn't The West Wing. It's real life. Thx.