NYC LOCAL: Wednesday 19 November 2008 Computers and Society: Andrew Rasiej on Democracy, Civic Action, and Politics in a Networked World

[secretary]

<blockquote
  what="official Computers and Society announcement from Evan Korth"
  edits="">

 Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:01:19 -0500 (EST)
 From: Evan Korth <korth@cs.nyu.edu>
 To: ACM chapter 
<acm@cs.nyu.edu>,Computers_and_society_announcements@cs.nyu.edu,discuss@isoc-ny.org,women-in-computing
 <winc@cs.nyu.edu>, colloq@cs.nyu.edu
 Subject: [Computers_and_society_announcements] Andrew Rasiej: Democracy, Civic 
Action, and Politics in a Networked World, Wednesday 3:30, room 109
 X-BeenThere: computers_and_society_announcements@cs.nyu.edu

 Andrew Rasiej will deliver the last in class guest lecture of the 
 Computers and Society series this semester on Wednesday at 3:30 in room 
 109.

 Andrew Rasiej is a social entrepreneur, Founder of Personal Democracy 
 Forum, and co-founder of techPresident. He has served as an adviser to 
 Senator Barack Obama, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle, 
 Congressman Dick Gephardt, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee 
 and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on the use of 
 Information Technology for campaign and policy purposes. Mr. Rasiej also 
 maintains the position of senior technology adviser for the Sunlight 
 Foundation.

 About the talk:

 The Internet and the phenomenon of social networking platforms like 
 Facebook, MySpace, plus the rich media tools like YouTube, have given the 
 average political proselytizer new powers of persuasion that are resetting 
 the political roadmap for not only the candidates and their parties, but 
 also for the main stream media which is trying to cover and report on 
 them.

 Just like we are seeing technology reshape the music and entertainment 
 industries, information technologies are empowering people to use the 
 massive networks that are being spawned to fundamentally change politics 
 and soon governance itself.

 Political opinion in our society is formed mostly through people talking 
 to each other. These conversations happen in all kinds of typical places, 
 like dining tables, water coolers, playgrounds, VFW halls, bars and coffee 
 shop counters, and even over the back fence. Like they have for 
 generations, those conversations are happened in the 2008 election cycle 
 too.

 However, this year we are saw a new powerful force of a networked public 
 sphere emerge that is taking many of those conversations and putting them 
 on steroids.

 Now that the 2008 election is over, this newly empowered citizenry will 
 start to demand a seat at the table of governance and will upend the 
 political power structures of the 20th century and challenge, unions, 
 lobbyists, and special interests that do not heed the power of the 
 technologies and the voices they link and amplify.

 Hope to see you there.

 e.

 PS One talk remains for the semester:

 Michel Bauwens     - Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 - 7:00pm
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</blockquote>


Distributed poC TINC:

Jay Sulzberger <secretary@lxny.org>
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org