The online mini-rising to protest Barack Obama's support for the Congressional compromise to renew the FISA legislation has been getting a lot of attention, with much being made (by us and plenty of others, including Ari Melber in the Nation, The New York Times, et al) that activists are using Obama's own social networking platform, my.BarackObama.com, to organize and channel their efforts to get him to alter his stand. Indeed, as of today the Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right group has swelled to more than 14,000 members, which makes it the single largest self-organized group on the whole platform, which reportedly has close to a million registered members.

This is certainly a good example of what thinkers like Clay Shirky and Mark Pesce have been talking about, when it comes to "ridiculously easy group formation" (qua Shirky) and how "Hyperconnectivity begets hypermimesis begets hyperempowerment" (qua Pesce). But right now the main reason this development is important is NOT because the group itself is that powerful; it's because attention-amplifiers in the blogosphere and the MSM are covering the story and thus threatening some of Obama's hard-won image as a change agent, which could conceivably weaken his vaunted fundraising and organizing machine. So while the Obama campaign is keeping a poker face about the importance of some of its members using the master's tools to challenge his position, it is no doubt paying attention, too.

The fact is, we're all entering completely new territory here. There have always been efforts to influence political candidates to take or change positions during a campaign (or afterward), but we've never before had a national campaign create an open platform for mobilizing supporters AND THEN seen a salient chunk of those supporters openly use that platform to challenge the candidate on a policy position. Indeed, while the net is inherently a two-way, many-to-many medium, no politician has yet used it to listen to his supporters as a group. Yes, the Obama campaign has asked its supporters to share their stories about their health care woes, and some of those anecdotes have made it into the campaign's blog or policy papers. But we have no norms for a collective, public discussion--even though we now have the capacity for one.

Our cousins across the pond continue to show that "government 2.0" isn't just something that we have to do "to" government, but it's something government can do "with" us. The Power of Information Task Force has just launched a contest called "Show Us a Better Way" that is calling for "ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated." They've put up 20,000 pounds for the winning idea, which is something like a gazillion dollars (these days). This is really kewl.

The first videos of plenary sessions from "Personal Democracy Forum 2008: Rebooting the System" are now available on our Blip.tv channel at pdf.blip.tv. Now playing: Elizabeth (and John) Edwards, Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain and Mark Pesce

Every few years, network theorist Valdis Krebs creates a fascinating map of the relationships among the top political books currently selling on Amazon. In past years, he notes, "we saw a divided nation in our book buying data. We saw then a distinct red cluster and a distinct blue cluster with very little holding them together in terms of cross-links or books in common." But now, he's found something different going on.

Here's the clip of Andrew Rasiej interviewing Elizabeth Edwards at home via Skype video Monday at PdF2008, when John Edwards happens to drop in. They discuss the impact of the Internet on politics 2008. Edwards says it's the only reason Barack Obama isn't taking public financing," noting that it's given him a huge fundraising advantage "over Bush"--a slip quickly corrected by Elizabeth, who you can hear chortling in the background. Andrew tells John that the "internet community really loves your wife," to which he responds, "I know, so do I!" And then Elizabeth comes back on to say goodbye, noting, "PdF is enormously important in building this community--thinking about how we can use it [the net] is enormously important."

Mark Pesce, who closed out the second morning of plenary talks at PdF2008, has posted the text of his talk on "Hyperpolitics (American Sytle)." Dig in!

Yesterday, things got a bit heated on the plenary session with the presidential campaign internet staffers. Mark Soohoo, the deputy internet director of the John McCain, was defending his boss for not personally understanding how to use a computer. Tracy Russo, Soohoo's counterpart on the John Edwards campaign (where she was deputy director of online communication), took issue with Soohoo, and then the fireworks started. Video after the jump...

Here's the archive of live feed from Robert Scoble's Nokia N95 that he is using during the PdF2008 panel on "Making and Building the World Live Web."

A few weeks back, I wrote a long post asking whether Obama's networked movement was going to do more than just work to elect him president. Well, it looks like the battle to hold him accountable to his promises has already begun, over his support for the FISA bill, and especially over a provision giving the telecom companies retroactive immunity for breaking the law when they gave the Bush Administration access to Americans phone records without judicial authorization.

I'll be going live to the web from time-to-time during the next two-and-a-half days as Twitter (my handle is @mlsif), and every time I'm actually streaming live, Qik--the fabulous live video streaming service we're using--will send a tweet letting you know.