net offered enormous upside, but campaigns still spun a tight orbit around old world politics.
Fast forward to 2008 and the emergence of Web 2.0. “This was the first mass-participation election in the nation’s history,” observes Micah L. Sifry, co-founder and executive editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, a news site that examines how technology is changing politics. “Today’s technologies are becoming as commonplace and mainstream as the telephone was to past generations,” he explains. “It is fundamentally changing how candidates and the public interact.” Blogs, wikis, social networking sites, and more sophisticated analytics tools have made it possible to mobilize support and money in ways that were unimaginable only a few years ago.
Sifry believes that Web 2.0 tools have already empowered citizens and armed them with a powerful force for affecting change in campaigns and government. More than 200 video-sharing sites exist, and independent groups on Facebook and MySpace now back or attack candidates without the support of the campaigns themselves. The largest independent group in the 2008 election cycle was a Facebook group, Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary Clinton), and many smaller groups sprung up, including those focused on independent fundraisers and house parties.
Turning opportunity into action required more than just sophisticated servers and advanced databases, however. From the beginning, the Obama team understood the power of the technology and how it could be harnessed for political gain, says Deniece Peterson, principal analyst at INPUT, a Reston, VA, gov-ernment-focused market research and consulting firm. “They knew how to use the technology to operate at a more grass-roots level and engage in a more individual and personal outreach,” she notes.
The campaign used Facebook to communicate online (it had 1. 7 million supporters at the site), and tapped into microblogging site Twitter to deliver a constant stream of news as well as volunteer opportunities. For example, on election day, the Obama campaign used Twitter to post toll-free numbers and texting strings for finding polling locations, connecting to volunteer opportunities, and making contributions.
Other social networking sites also entered the picture, including My-Space, You Tube, Flickr, Digg, Eventful, Linked-In, BlackPlanet, FaithBase, Eons, GLEE, MiGente, My Batanga, AsianAve and DNC PartyBuilder. Meanwhile, Barack- Obama.com amassed more than two million registered users. In the end, the 13-million-person database represented about 10% of the total number of voters in the presidential election. Moreover, “these are people who also have a lot of impact offline,” Trippi points out.
In the end, Obama received donations from more than four million persons—nearly triple the number that George W. Bush tallied in 2004. In fact, the final financial tally exceeded $750 million, with the average donation being less than $100. A steady stream of email solicitations made contributing as easy as buying a book on Amazon. com. “This approach is putting PACs [political action committees] and lob-bies on notice that we’ve entered a new and far more democratic era,” Trippi observes. “It’s no longer only about the fat cats running the campaign and contributing to it. It’s all about the average person.”
Beyond the Bully Pulpit It should come as no surprise that databases, social networking tools, and IT systems are likely to play a central role in the Obama administration. While new media has enormous power to help a candidate get elected, it also wields influence as a tool for operating a more efficient and transparent government— and advancing a political agenda. Obama’s chief strategist, David Axel-
industry veteran and
convey computer
cofounder Steven
Wallach was awarded
the Seymour cray
computer Science and
engineering award at Sc08 in
austin, tX, for his “contribution
to high-performance computing
through design of innovative
vector and parallel computing
systems, notably the convex
mini-supercomputer series, a
distinguished industrial career
and acts of public service.” in a
statement, Wallach said, “this
is one of our industry’s greatest
honors and i am deeply
honored. at convex computer
corp., and now at convey we are
showing that you can have a
highly productive software
environment coupled with high
performance computing. i have
always believed that the
machine that is simplest to
program will ultimately win.”
also honored at Sc08
was University of illinois
computer science professor
William gropp, who won
the Sidney fernbach award,
which honors innovative
uses of high-performance
computing in problem solving.
gropp played a major role in
creating MPi, the standard
interprocessor communication
interface for large-scale
parallel computers. gropp is
also co-author of MPich, one
of the most influential MPi
implementations to date, and
co-wrote two books on MPi.
Microsoft presented its
first Jim gray eScience award
to carole goble, a professor
of computer science at the
University of Manchester in the
United Kingdom.
as director of the U. K.’s
mygrid project, goble helped
create taverna, open source
software that enables scientists
to quickly analyze complex data
sets with a regular computer.
With taverna, extensive
database research that used to
take several days can now be
completed in several hours.
tony hey, a vice president
of Microsoft external Research,
said goble was chosen because
her research helped scientists
conduct data-intensive science.
“She’s a data person,” said hey,
“and i think that would have
pleased Jim.”
feBRuaRY 2009 | vol. 52 | No. 2 | CommunICatIons of the aCm
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