(This is somewhat by way of a thank you to kos.)
Jeffrey Toobin (CNN), on election night, got it almost, but not quite, right:
It was a modern campaign in a way that we didn't think there could be a modern campaign. He took his community organizing ability and wedded it to the Internet. And did something that was so different from any other campaign that's ever been done. He also, by the way, has 3 million contributors in his database who are not simply going to go away, who will be a powerful lobbying force for his agenda. So that's the significant thing to remember looking forward.
I'm middle aged, but as a born nerd even I can see that there is something subtly but powerfully different going on here.
This was patently not a case of a candidate choosing to harness one of them newfangled intertubes as part of their 'buy' or their 'strategy.' Like, I have a message, and I'm going to put it on TV, and give interviews, and hold speeches, and get it on the internet.
I believe that in a very significant way, WE took OUR community organizing ability and wedded it to OUR CANDIDATE. In a very real way -- and not to take away from President-Elect Obama's candidacy or campaign in any way -- America created him, not the other way around. The internet model allows this, and it's why the internet should certainly be now understood as a game-changing engine of democracy, if it wasn't already.
The forums here and elsewhere allow this: community, affinity, action, exchange of ideas, growth of ideas, dynamism that spreads one-to-many, to many-to-many, and back to one again, amplified, focused, and imbued with global perspective and scaldingly local impact.
Especially action. But a key distinction in the internet model is that it is reality-based. Not that there isn't, or can't be, misinformation. Not that people can't be confused about what is fact and what is opinion. But that we all are, by definition, no longer merely consumers -- we are participants, and just as we know our individual truth has reality, our contributions to myriad communities of experience build social truth, social realities that are subject to critique, subject to participation, subject to evolution, subject to the will of all the participants.
Democratic communities of thought, incubators for values that spring from individual values, and that provide connections to and through real-life agencies of government, service, and change. It's been truly thrilling to 'be here at the creation.' Who knows where all this will lead in a generation?