Just catching up on an event I went along to for a bit on Wednesday night - a debate called Politics and New Media: Where Next?, which was hosted by the New Statesman.
Attending were many of the great and good of the technology-politics world (a rarified breed, for sure) but there was some interesting discussion and it certainly wasn't all head-in-the-clouds nonsense. So: a quick precis of what took place before I scooted off, and a few thoughts.
Alan Connor, a Westminster wonk and blogger for the BBC, kicked off proceedings by talking about how he thought the political debate on the web should evolve - and why bloggers shouldn't just be out for political scalps, but should want to change the framework of the political debate. And why they should avoid the excesses of America's polarised net politics.
Jo Twist, another former BBC reporter who now works for the IPPR, spoke at length about the possibilities for political or social activism inside massively multiplayer online games. This generated some scepticism among the crowd, but I think they underestimated the social differences between gaming and existing in virtual worlds. You're never going to get someone to use the job centre in The Getaway (one of Jo's examples), but people are increasingly organising themselves inside worlds like Second Life. Only a fool would ignore them out of hand.
Lastly Tom Steinberg, director of MySociety, said why he thinks an online political revolution exists in building tools, not in the debate itself. Getting MPs to realise that they could communicate with their constituents is, he says, a lot easier and more successful than you'd think - although one observer seemed to suggest that parliamentarians were being bullied. Poor them.
(Actually I think the dissenter in question, Paul, has a point in that internet lobbies can distort the picture. But I think it's a necessary stage in development; after all, right now only those with money and time can successfully lobby governments. If MySociety and sister projects like TheyWorkForYou allow money to be taken out of the equation, so much the better. Lobbies can be horrible things, but they exist outside the internet in far more pernicious forms.)
All in all, it was very interesting. Sorry I didn't take any pictures, but there are other reports on the event from the likes of Guido, David Wilcox, ToryTrouble and Never Trust a Hippie.
