In Silicon Valley, books like the one titled "Only the paranoid survive", tell the tale. Technology advances quickly, and the computer industry is a multi-headed beast that evolves in sections indepedent of each other. This makes a complex recipe. Sharp changes occur; and those who do not adapt, DIE!! There is a supposed Bill Gates quote that said that at any given point, Microsoft is only two years away from bankruptcy! The dot-com bubble has burst over 10 years ago, which has caused investors to be more careful and/or conservative in their approach to create a new cyber-trend. Venture capitalists want solid, specific ideas that are hopefully rooted in vision with some bit of proof. It is easy for any hot shot with a sharp idea to claim to be the next Google! Venture Capitalists want an investment to be safe, or one that makes them feel safe.

This is Level II!!

The trick is to get OUT of your comfort zone! Because THEN you have to THINK!!!

When you are comfortable, you are complacent. Let's face it:

When you are NOT starving; you quit caring!!!

The trick here is NOT to stay in your comfort zone, BUT to have a good reason to be forced out of it!!!

Being forced out of your comfort zone for a good reason may imply that the old rules are NOT working! This is to be expected because in the computer world, the rules tend to change quickly and it is not just geeks that have influence. The business world and mainstream market has had its fair share of influence. Again, the computer industry is a multi-headed beast, in more ways than one! There is either new territory to be conquered OR new rules that arise in KEEPING OLD territory! Computers are a denominator in the business world but NOT in the political world! There are many reasons for this. Thus, the political world is new territory to be conquered. An example of keeping old territory may be having to learn new social media aspects and the use of contacts for the business world.

Mass information navigation and manipulation

I was told in the mid 1990s that the amount of information published doubles every 18 months. Because it is impossible to keep up with by using conventional means, it stands to reason that it can be done with unconventional means. One stab at this could be to say that a summary system is needed, since no one can read mountains of information daily. Organizing information by theme and concept instead of alphabetically, chronologically, or by a one-word topic, could produce a finite model that can express something infinite. This could be a template. Media runs out of space eventually, a template, such as this, would not.

Searching by theme and concept (ex: political information)

Currently, you can not type "Conservatives claiming political correctness getting out of hand to push big government" into a search engine and find what you want because there may be hundreds of articles that fall into this category that use none of the words in the search term. But if a human tags it as such, and you search for the tag in a database, you'll find only instances where people have tagged it. You can zero in on your target much easier that way. The next question is "Who is going to do all of the tagging?". Power hungry people will!

In politics, money is NOT the main denominator; power is!

This is very significant. Money is a MEANS to an end but not the goal. This means that people will do something in the political realm that will COST money and NOT make a profit! They do this on the risk of attaining power. So, to build a politically minded software application or website with mass information in mind, it needs to be founded on that premise. If you anger or offend someone over a political opinion, they will be more motivated than anything else to attack you, spending much time and resources.

The negative motivators are ALWAYS more efficient!!!

If you come up with the recipe for a forum that grows in complexity and is more dynamic the more that people use it, it can be a superb information medium, a debate engine, an activist engine, and a new form of search, unlike wikipedia that asks people for donations.

Politics is a scattered, confusing, tangled web of complexity and infinitely tedious arguments

Every issue that exists has dozens of organizations that are trying to BAN it or trying to PROMOTE it! Each issue has an endless number of legislative precedents, judicial precedents and countless statistics tied to it. Every issue is tied to countless others, and almost every issue is a grey area.

It stands to reason that an entire denominator of software needs to be born in order to match, or even be MORE complex than, the mess of which it is trying to make sense!!!

Today's political process is a sluggish one indeed!

Since the political system is power based, and not profit based as in the business world, the speeds vary. Both are known for being cutthroat, but more detail changes in the business world faster. Congress is not a teenage audience; it takes time to build resources and assets to have credentials to run for office. A power based structure is an "old dog" system. A Buddy Roemer quote in 1997 that he said was (paraphrased) "In the old days the big swallowed the small (big fish eats little fish); now the fast swallows the slow (piranha blazes around and takes nibbles from sluggish big fish)". There is a burning need to integrate the Internet into the political system. Massive auditing is needed, as well as a structure to polarize activity so things happen in 20 minutes instead of 18 months.

The weak spot: Find a significant political entity that will be able to understand the need for more speed, and has a need for it. When it gets tried, they will leave the competition in the dust and create a bandwagon.

There is a huge gap of relevance between bloggers and politicians!

"Grass roots" without the machine to take advantage of its true potential over the Internet is overrated AND misleading! In 1996, I thought that by now we'd all be debating politics in 3D Virtual Reality body gear, manipulating spacial 3D icons within a grid, collecting millions of yottabytes of crucial and meticulously processed information, making thought provoking points and spawning off a revolution!

Uh... It didn't happen!

First:

There was TONS of micro-evolving that needed to be done with the technology, and the political world differs from the virtual world in such a way that the lightning cyber speed of virtual politics is too fast for the offline, paper pushing, old dog, sluggish political process to adopt.

Second:

Blogging, many times, degenerates into personal fights and/or "bumper sticker yelling" because rants are easier to put out, and FASTER. Today, research for a book to be published may take years, as opposed to a huge giant rant posted online. Some older geeks (chanting "I was online before online was cool" with their FTP, telnet and newsgroups) have complained that the intellectual content of the Internet has decreased dramatically since it became more mainstream.

Third:

There is no immediate profit to be made! I've never seen anyone say this but Microsoft is the beast that it is today for having started with a BASE! This base was the business world. Also, computers in general have been arguably pushed in growth during World War II when the need for extreme number crunching arose to crack German codes (I think...). To delete a file using a Commodore 64 in the 1980s, you had to type: OPEN 15,8,15,"S:FILE":CLOSE 15. That was not going to appeal to as many people as just clicking on an icon with a mouse, and getting a drop down menu to delete it. This is an interesting point because any computer company needs to start off with the people who ARE going to have a burning need for the complex stuff and THEN grow so that you can develop a newer prototype with convenience to cater to a wider base! Do this a few times and you have become mainstream!

A footnote to this is that a few years ago in an Eweek article, it was cited that Microsoft was losing money in every arena except for the Operating System and Office Suite (two heavily needed things for business and number crunching, that produce an immediate profit).

Back to the original point...

Bridging the gap between bloggers and politicians!

This is what I'll call LEVEL II! There is money in politics (believe me!) BUT it is not as linear as business. The guy from politics.com around the year 2001 responded to me saying that he spent 4 million dollars on the site and didn't see a PENNY in return! As I mention below in my September 3rd 2011 post, activist sites are either an offline group with an online presence (whose only content is DONATE or RECENT NEWS) or they are strictly online which is nothing more that a pet project with no offline relevance (like mine!). This is a recipe for failure. The trick is to TRULY integrate lightning fast computer technology into the political process, which is now still in the dark ages!!!!

The business world is PROFIT driven while the political world is POWER driven!

When the political process degenerates, it is power based with no ideology!

On activist sites, there is not enough background material. The hardcore activists know a lot, and think that links on a webpage such as GET INVOLVED or DONATE is enough. It is not. There is no effort that I have seen to truly educate and sway people deeply. This would take tons of research and work! Also, this is long term and in the political world, the power based structure is SHORT TERM!

They need to realize that it is not checkers; it's chess!!

The 20th century media leans horribly in this direction (Playing it like checkers instead of chess). The focus seems to be viral videos and hot button topics, and don't seem to focus on the long term problems that got us all in this position. Again, that isn't what sells papers and TV ads. The case needs to be made for the abstract and comprehensive view of the raw ideology in order to sway people genuinely, as opposed to trying to spoon feed them. My attempt at this is to approach OFFLINE political entities (that may or may not have an online presence) and to gear a website that bridges the gaps between a common blogger and politician in office. The goal is to build a debate engine for hypermedia activism.

My remedy to create a cyber-political world:

Find ANY entity that will listen to me and can appreciate the need for more speed in the process, and work with them so THEY become that cyber-political entity and leave the competition behind in the DUST, to make others want us as well!!!

It was said on C-SPAN that years ago Congressional candidates who ignore the Internet will have a hard time winning, and later the ones who ignore the Internet will be guaranteed to LOSE!

It has been said that the online community watches less TV, and that politicians are having to spend 2 and 3 times more money to reach the same amount of people as before. This is a good sign because it shows that poorer candidates will have more of a chance to reach more people systematically online than with the 20th century methods of phone banking, mail, TV, radio, newsprint and 800 numbers, although they may play a role in the 21st century as well, just having taken a back seat.

Today, one can use the internet to gain as much information as possible on candidates, groups and issues almost to the point of any desire. The net is far more interactive than TV, radio or print. You can have a debate with someone in another state or country. There is still much in the offline world that influences politics, but it is changing; maybe not fast enough but it is changing. The ideal situation would be that any candidate would have 100% opportunity to respond to any and all questions and accusations hurled toward them. Also, it would mean that being rich would not guarantee that you have an advantage by default.

The political sites of today:

The active blog:

These are good but tend to have only current information on them, which can be a disadvantage if you want to convert and orient people. Sometimes, historical and background information is needed to show what you truly stand for and to let "newbies" know where you are coming from. This was done by Right Side of the Web and Turn Left (the 1996 leading conservative and liberal sites) and seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur.

Organization sites

Same as above. They have an online presence BUT tend to cater to people that are already converted. "How to get involved" and "How to donate" seem to be the biggest options. I have seen from time to time, that when submitting a question or answering a poll, they automatically subscribe me to their mailing list, which is very annoying.

Political Hub sites (like Ultrafaction)

I am no exception here! We can bore our viewers easily with not too much to say and not a lot of orientation material, which we try to have on this site.

The commitment for all of this is overwhelming! To amass links is to be trying to compete with Google, which is hopeless. To sub-cateogirze them is equally hopeless because Yahoo! did that in 1995. So it seems impossible! What I am trying to do is keep in mind a few rules:

Cater to a relevant base that will produce growth/results.

Give the viewers what they need, which may include what they are NOT looking for!

Do something that no one else is doing.

Define a demand/problem and meet/solve it!

Be more aggressive than anyone else.

All of this is easier said than done, which is why there is no definitive political site out there yet.

The premise: