We're a big fan of Lawrence Lessig here. His idea of the internet as an 'innovation commons' - a open, robust structure that empowers its users to creativity and activism - has inspired me for years. (A 'ground of play', as The Play Ethic puts it). Lessig has likened the internet to a constitution - an 'architecture of value' that needs to be defended from those who fear its democratic power.
So after ten years of highly effective advocacy for an "open" net and digital creativity, it makes complete sense that Lessig would turn his attention directly to the health of American politics. His new project, Change Congress, is an attempt to address the issue of lobbying and corporate money in the US, by using the kind of viral social-media campaigning that Obama used so effectively in the last election. (It seems to me that they're even copying the Obama poster's font). As Lessig writes in this Huffington Post article:
Later this month, I and others will announce a large grassroots campaign aimed at channeling the amazing desire for change that Americans are feeling right now into tangible and fundamental reform of our political system. Together, we will demand that politicians pass a law removing the power to fund congressional elections from the hands of special interests and put this power into the hands of regular people.
It's a great sign that the Obama victory might unleash a wave of innovative social activism worthy of the hopes and dreams it invoked.
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