"None of us live in the same world. And yet, all of us live in the same world."
Yesterday at SXSW, Sean Parker and Al Gore discussed democracy, tech and social media. Gore borrowed a techy term by describing the effect of special interest money in politics as a "hack" on democracy and urged the innovators in the room to start an occupy democracy movement. Parker pointed to the internet rally against SOPA as a hint of the power of social media-- calling the uprising "Nerd Spring".
I was inspired by the powerful, united online opposition to Susan G. Komen for the Cure decision to drop its Planned Parenthood grant. Clearly, social media has a seat at the table, but it hasn't harnessed its full potential to become the dominant force for truth, accountability and reform in politics, transparency and social good. I'm always on Twitter when I watch political debates, interviews or speeches because I want to tap into the unbelievable community of people who provide instant fact checks and point out hypocrisy. We have Google+ town halls and YouTube debates, so why not instant fact checks? Blatantly lying, dodging questions and manipulating facts shouldn't be tolerated, but the information age should also encourage people to be more tolerant of compromise and changing one's opinion.
The politicians of my generation are going to have to defend Facebook photos, status updates, tweets and videos. Much of our lives is public so we are going to be forced to accept that people are flawed, people change their minds and learn how to judge people in more nuanced ways. To use a term from my psych 101 class-- we will have to learn to fight our deeply ingrained fundamental attribution error.
I hope that we are up to the task. Information is power, but there is the chance that with so much information people will become overwhelmed and cling to anyone who can simplify it for them (enter bumper sticker politics). It's the paradox of choice and information, but if democracy is about serving the interests of the people, then it needs to be the people's responsibility to develop their own convictions, thoughts and opinions.
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