A MyDD regular who calls himself Upper Left has delivered an interesting piece expressing confusion over Barack Obama’s lack of thematic specificity. (For more on cyberethics, click here.)
What he’s missing, and what Obama may also be missing, as regular readers here know well, is the Internet Thesis.
Upper Left identifies four elements in Obama’s Presidential "story," which I have shortened below:
- Biography: Born black, Grew up white.
- Personal philosophy: Pragmatist centrism.
- Political positioning: Seeking consensus.
- Strategic necessity: Non-frightening.
Here’s how I would change it:
- Biography: Post baby boom, not involved in their trips.
- Personal Philosophy: Pragmatism, do what works.
- Political Positioning: Consensus, openness, transparency — the Internet values.
- Strategic necessity: Getting past the Nixon Thesis of Conflict by ignoring it.
Consensus, openness and transparency are the values which arise out of the Internet Myth.
- Consensus is the process through which change happens — standards don’t happen any other way.
- Openness means a free exchange of ideas in order to effect change together.
- Transparency is what we expect from businesses, government, and everyone else.
Getting rid of hidden agendas is what takes us away from the Nixon era.
By embracing Internet Values, Barack Obama embraces both the new
medium and the new generation, people who have grown up with and
through this medium, rather than through a television screen. It means
embracing change without the need for specificity, seeking the future
rather than getting bogged down in the past.
Upper Left believes that Obama is a tabula rasa, a man in search of
a governing Thesis. The Internet Thesis fills in the blanks, without
requiring anything on his part. It just gives what he’s been saying a name.
