Exciting, huge project: unlearning passivity
Take a look at 10Questions. This is a huge project to inject interactivity into the Presidential election here in the U.S.
The problem 10Questions is trying to solve: Presidential debates are frustrating. The candidates are busy trying to put across soundbites. The questions are either too narrow or too broad. Voters are stuck praying for a moment of clarity that will guide them. The time simultaneously crawls by and flies by - too much time spent debating too little/too random.
How 10Questions will (attempt to) solve the problem: Anyone can upload a video with a proposed question for the candidates tagged “10questions” to blip.tv or YouTube or any other platform. For the month after that, the rest of us can vote up or down on the question. (Yes, there’s a possibility of ballot-box stuffing, but 10Q will try to deal with that by allowing only one vote per IP address. Yes, that isn’t a perfect answer.) Then the candidates will have a month to answer the question - in video form. Viewers/voters will rate the candidates’ responses.
Why this is a good idea: The web makes it possible for candidates and voters to relate in new, visible ways. It should be lowering barriers of time, distance, inertia, and crowd psychology. None of the candidates, however, is using the web to share power. Their web sites often don’t make clear what their positions are. Sen. Edwards is somewhat schizophrenic in his approach to the web, but generally isn’t doing much that’s innovative. Sen. Clinton started off on a strong note with her video-parody of The Sopranos, but otherwise hasn’t embraced the internet. In March 2007, she proudly announced that she’d be doing some form of frequent online interactive webcast, saying “So let the conversation begin.” The conversation never began, and the webcast page hasn’t been updated since the announcement.
More generally, the candidates aren’t using online collaboration or self-organizing in new ways. They’re not giving any power (or even responding very directly) to those listening to their messages. Instead, they’re using the web as a bulletin board for their traditional campaign ploys: “Volunteer here, and we’ll tell you exactly what to do and what to say.” It’s as if they didn’t learn the lesson of the 2004 Dean campaign, which was the high-water mark for involvement of the public online by a candidate so far. Or maybe they learned too well the lesson that Dean lost.
The 10Questions experiment forces each candidate to do an online “fireside chat” in response to well-tailored, popular questions — a very slow, deliberate online chat session with all of us. This takes advantage of the potential of online video. It could be very interesting.
Open questions. How ingrained is American political passivity? Do people really want to talk to the candidates? Do candidates really want to be talked to? Will people actually upload questions? Will the candidates actually respond?
It’s a start. It’s led by Micah Sifry and Andrew Raseij, and backed by the NYT Editorial Board and MSNBC. (All sponsors listed here.) It’s huge, even if it doesn’t look like it today.
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