The Innovation Invitation
I have always been fascinated by innovation. It is what America was built on, has helped keep America strong, and I believe is where our strength in the future lies. I’ve always been an early adopter of technology and seek to add my own innovations.
For me, and I believe for many others, that was one of the things that made the 2004 Presidential cycle so exciting. There were great innovations in the use of the Internet. What was most important about those innovations is that everyone was invited to help innovate.
At the 2006 Personal Democracy Forum, one of the great, unanswered questions was, what will be the breakthrough technological innovation of the 2008 Presidential cycle. No one had a compelling answer. At the Media in Transition conference as well as at Personal Democracy Forum this year, I found myself talking with many people about the 2008 Presidential cycle. There was a sense of disappointment that isn’t any great innovation going on.
Instead, people are building their blogs, social networks and email lists. They are repeating what was innovative and successful in 2004 but no longer is innovative. They are adding videos, which were hot in 2006, but are not all that innovative anymore. More significantly, there isn’t that sense of being invited in, the way we were in 2004. The ask for help at the end of a pitch has reverted back to an ask for cash. New ideas on how we can change politics isn’t be asked for anymore.
At Personal Democracy Forum, Tom Friedman repeated an important line, “Whatever can be done, will be done, and the question is, will it be done by you, or to you.”
So, it is time to rally the grassroots innovators. We need to get involved and work on changing politics in our country. We need to ask the campaigns, will you issue an innovation invitation? Do you want us to do it with you, or to you?
permalink | Aldon Hynes | Democracy, Empowerment, Politics, Technology
The Innovation Invitation…
I have always been fascinated by innovation. It is what America was built on, has helped keep America strong, and I believe is where our strength in the future lies. I’ve always been an early adopter of technology and seek to add my own innovations…
Aldon,
I recommend the NY Times Magazine article on Al Gore to you.
Al Gore Has Big Plans
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/magazine/20wwln-gore-t.html
Gore want to change politics. Big Time.
“But the core of everything is the three-year program of mass persuasion to be conducted under the aegis of the Alliance for Climate Protection. The alliance will not lobby or even propose specific solutions to global warming; rather, it will seek to break the climate crisis out of the crunchy confines of environmentalism. Global warming is going to have a giant product rollout. Gore talks constantly about the need to move public opinion; he is convinced that what now seem like forbidding political and technical obstacles to drastically reducing carbon emissions will give way once we marshal the will to act. And Gore says he believes that once people understand the science, they’ll share his sense of urgency. Thanks to Hurricane Katrina, and balmy winters, and animals evacuating their habitats, and all those terrifying pictures of melting glaciers, that sense may already be taking hold. According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 78 percent of Americans believe that global warming requires action “right away.”
I recommend reading the whole article. Hopfully it is one step closer to inventing a politics of resilience that recognizes the imperative of integrating the private sector with the public sector into somethng greater than the sum of the parts.
Jock
Inovation when it is new is very exciting. We have not yet learned how to fully exploit the technology of the internet. And this is a process that may not so exciting to some. The reason that I found this site this morning is as the result of a search on ‘Vision and Democracy’ that displayed a post of Aldon Hynes from July 2004. This excited me for he prospect of continueing a discusion over such a period. But, alas, there was no longer any one at the other end of that conversation and I ended here. The upside of this technology is the opportunity to be able to connect with others of a like mind. This is important when one doesn’t know many of those around them. The downside is just the shear volume of information that exists and how does one filter to just what interesting at the moment.
At any rate, I think there is much to be done yet and that is what is exciting to me.
weg
I’ve been quite enjoying http://worldchanging.com - which has been highlighting positive innovations.