Nine years ago today my sister, theologian and author Dr. Courtney Cowart, sat at her desk across the street from the towering buildings so many used to guide their way in lower Manhattan. My dear brother Robin Cowart was boarding a train with his music blaring determined to have a great day at work near the South Street Seaport. I had just walked into french class and it was the most remarkably beautiful day.

Within hours we would all be running. Not just me or my siblings, but all of us, every living being in this country would begin running from the frightening boundary of humanity that none of us could confront but were forced to in one morning.

Then it began happening. Random acts of human redemption. The homeless of New York converged on the Chapel at St. Pauls, a Chapel that stood without a single broken window just 30 or 40 feet from where the twin towers had stood only hours before, with their cups of change determined to give literally everything they had in the world to give. My dust covered and distraught sister, having just run for her life from a tumbling destruction none of us could understand, now walked uptown nearly seventy blocks and was continually stopped by complete strangers expressing what can only be called a natural love for each other by saying “thank God you are alive” and embracing this person they had never met.

That love was amazing in its power and it was everywhere. On the floor of my dormitory hall every door was open and every shoulder available as we all instinctively knew the only way forward was together. Indeed we had no one else. We were separated from everything we had ever known and were now cast into a remarkably changed world. There was a determination that day to prove the goodness of us all to watch over thy brothers and sisters without concern for the differences we might have or the distance that we normally attempt to maintain.

We all realized two things that day nine years ago and in the ages to come we should never forget it. The first thing we realized was that evil did indeed exist in the world, but the second and far more important lesson of that day however was not the evil that was present but the immense power of love and generosity within our human family.

I was forever changed knowing what good we are capable of when we are reminded how petty our differences really are. Today remember the good that can be and the actions required of us all to make this world a right and just place for every single one of us. Nine years later let us be reminded that our world is made of your actions and mine.

For months I avoided it. I knew it was coming, after all I am a complete addict for social media, but also knew that I might not emerge before my eyes went blind from screen-itis.

I joined the now ever-present Twitter a few months ago as an experiment. I had no idea what it was, why it was, or how it was and as a matter of fact the only thing I did know is that it was becoming somewhat obnoxiously wide spread. So, in search of my own ability to stay relevant I signed up (ok you can follow thinkingpress here) and ever so slowly I started to get it.

For those of you who might have been pulling an ostrich the last few months Twitter is a single action website for sharing things with other people. No, it doesn’t do anything else, and even on that task it limits you to 140 characters. So you may be asking yourself what on earth is the point of a sharing service that doesn’t let you share anything outside of a short sentence, WTF is the point is what I asked and I love my point of view enough to have a blog.

I had already missed the point, of course. Twitter is the inevitable current end point of the simplification of online communication to a remarkably simple and surprisingly effective task: sharing information. Be it an article, a thought, a picture, a video or an exclaimation people tend to want to share these days. This is important because the heart of any community is in what they share and while it used to be that, for the most part, that meant sharing a socio-economic standing and a geographical location today it means sharing information, sharing a point of view, sharing knowledge.

Sure, there are still so called “brick and mortar” communities and there always will be, but a larger more complex human community is being built every day at a rate that I don’t think we realize. I share ideas, information, pictures and conversation with people I will likely never meet or never need to meet however I have become inexplicably more connected to the world around me. Yesterday for instance, on a monitoring service for twitter called Twitscoop, I found out within 3 minutes of it occuring that there had been an earthquake in Los Angeles. Not a single news outlet covered the (low magnitude) quake, however I was clearly informed of it in enough time to call my brother in said city within 6 minutes of it happening.

Human networks are only just beginning to fruitfully use the internet as a medium, and even further behind on understanding it, but we are moving toward a world that creates clear and relevant connections between people of all races, faiths and geographical locales. We are more connected than we have ever been and the impact on our world has only barely begun to rise over our collective horizon. At my age my father remembers the first computer, an enormous punch card machine with maybe a few kilobytes of memory, where do you think we’ll be in 50 years at this rate?

The American democratic experiment continues to grow and change with the world around us, yet we are faced with some growing disparities on the trouble some groups face when asked to cast their ballot. Poor, uneducated, minority voters have the greatest trouble, waiting in line for hours to cast a ballot and being the subject of intense voter intimidation and “dirty” tricks. New media technology, and making the shift to a remote democracy, may be able to solve these problems. In effect, democratizing the infrastructure of democracy.

An Argument for growing the role of Web Technology in the Voting Process

In 2008 a little over 30% of American voters cast votes on electronic touch screen machines, I was among them. A few weeks later I was able to log into the Georgia Secretary of States Office and check the status of my vote, and though I was not able to see a copy of the electronic ballot I cast, I was able to see my ballot was recieved and counted.

If we were to take this concept a few steps further:

- Imagine that the voting machine you placed your vote on this year produced a PDF (a secured, electronic portable document format) print out of your completed ballot which was then stored, along with the electronic information for tabulating votes as they are currently maintained, on highly secured databases that could be maintained separately for further enhanced security. This creates redundancy with two separate methods of maintaining the information, one (the PDF) that is more difficult to change in large numbers, and another that is quickly able to be tabulated.

- Two separate groups, perhaps one governmental agency (Federal Election Commission) and perhaps a non partisan third party voter verification agency of some sort, could maintain these files while vote tabulation and verification occurs for independent verification of the vote.

- You could instate redundancy standards in electronic ballot management to insure that software failure in one instance can not swing an entire election, creating separate facilities to oversee counting of tabulated data from the voting machines as well as a separate system to scan each PDF ballot returning results in the latter case from a file the voters themselves are able to verify.

- Each PDF ballot, stored in a nationwide database as a backup for any possible recount and removes the need for the mechanical problems caused by a “paper trail”, is stored in an online database which is accessible by the individual voter for verification of that ballot.

One step further…

- Paper ballots, which are still in use in 70% of American precincts, could be scanned into this electronic system as well. This would allow voter verification of the vote being passed, and with some creative problem solving, could allow a voter to dispute an incorrectly counted ballot. Kind of like an individual recount.

- Eventually, this online voter management system, could be used to place those ballots in a secure environment free of manipulation or intimidation of any kind as well as immediately solving the problem of enormous lines.

- If online voting was effectively put in place, it would reduce the cost of running elections enormously, especially as the technology gained the trust of the voting public over time, hence the enormous need for vote verification standards to further underlie that trust.

Why would we do this?

Since 2000, and the raucus legal dispute over counting and recounting votes that occurred that year, there has been an enormous scar on our electoral system that persisted through the 2008 election. It is the very nature of the question: Was my vote counted?

If we are, as the London Times calls us, A Masterclass in Democracy than we have the enormous burden of preserving the brilliant concept of clean and clear democratic elections as an example to the world of how that must be done. The standard must be that every legal vote be counted, and counted correctly, and the only question then becomes how do you adapt the technology of our age to the task of ensuring that standard.

Before the advent of easily transmitting and storing enormous amounts of data this standard was far more challenging to ensure as it would have been impossible to have individual verification of each ballot. Today, however, we are able to institute such a system and could do so with relative ease.

The advent of that technology, and the very real possibility of no verification standards at all for our most sacred individual act of governance, could very well lead to an erosion in the quality of our electoral system and our ideal. With computers that produce no hard evidence of a vote placed upon it you are placing an enormous amount of power in the hands of corporate hardware and software developers who, in every case, have legal protections (see Trade Secrets) that disallows independent oversight of the vote counting software. If we do not pursue rigorous verification standards we leave ourselve open to a level of vote curruption never before so easily manufactured.

Our democracy will inevitably move toward electronic data and away from paper for clear logistical reasons, and it will likely do so within my lifetime, so the question becomes how do we plan to do so in a way that preserves the American promise of representation in government. This country was founded not as some have suggested in a tax revolt but in a revolution driven by a need for representation in government. “No Taxation without Representation” was the early call of the revolutionary war which led to the declaration of independence which laid out those sacred “inalienable Rights.”

The right to vote is among those inalienable rights and it is imperative we protect it as the soul of this country’s continued growth and prosperity, and preserve our example to the world.

One of the most interesting facets of the 2008 Presidential election is the enormous explosion of technology, along with the new voters that are utilizing them, could fundamentally change the landscape of American politics and the process of seeking office. Here is how.

In the four years since the last presidential election, Bush Vs. Kerry 2004, we have seen an enormous growth in what are called social media. You likely know many of these media as they have changed the way particularly young Americans interact with our society. Such devices as online social networks and SMS text messaging have transformed the world, through a series of network building tools, from a sea of disconnected causes and interests into large and geographically diverse groups reinforced and brought together by modern technology, social media. Allison Fine, who authored a study for the Case Foundation on the concept of the Millennial generations “Social Citizens,” has made a particularly strong argument that social and civic participation has changed for the 18-29 year old generation that first grew up with AOL. That engagement can not be measured by the traditional metrics, she argues, largely because engagement means something entirely different for this generation.

But how has it manifested itself in the 2008 Presidential election? There are many signs that it has not only had an impact but may very well decide the outcome of the election less than one month from today. We have all heard, numerous times this political season, about the fickle nature of the “Youth Vote” and how dependence upon it would be a clear losing strategy. However, today’s youthful population is loaded with new tools that fundamentally change the barriers to entry for civic engagement that typically affect this age group.

It has been partially due, and one could argue totally due, to this shift that has, to the great surprise of many old school political hands, delivered Senator Barack Obama some of his most astounding victories. The victory in caucuses in the state of Iowa earlier this year at the start of the Democratic Primary season provides a powerful insight on how potentially game changing this largely unforeseen advantage may be. With tools such as SMS text messaging, social network organizing, and a web portal unlike anything in the history of American politics it is becoming clear that the Obama team is vying to be the first web 2.0 induced Presidency.

It would, of course, be foolish to argue that the success of a campaign is due to this technology because in the end a computer or cable internet connection does not vote. What this technology provides is an unbelievable means for capitalizing on grassroots political organizing energy. It has revolutionized the efficiency with which a campaign can take advantage of volunteer energy with tools ranging from Iphone apps to neighbor to neighbor home canvassing operations. In two particular areas, voter education and get out the vote efforts, these new media platforms have provided a boom of politically informed and active constituents that are no longer required to deal directly with their local campaign office to run a sophisticated campaign operation. In effect, it has the power to redistribute the workload to a far broader group of supporters and reduces time investment to do so.

While the McCain campaign, and the Hillary Clinton campaign before it, have to some extent stepped up to the bat on these tools the comprehension of its affect on the message environment has clearly been behind the ball in comparison. Sen. Obamas team early on invested heavily in web based and other new technology tools that proved to be an understanding of a changing communications environment and in the end provided a key strategic advantage to their campaign. Their campaign dominates on just about every front, from MySpace and Facebook supporters, to the number of videos on Youtube, to the MyBO (my.barackobama.com) accounts and online fundraising numbers it has proven to be fertile ground for network development.

What impact this clear structural shift will have on the outcome of this election is not clear at this point, and there are many converging forces that in the end are driving the powerful Democratic campaign this season, but have no doubt that its impact will be a matter of study for decades to come and likely be realized to be a paradigm shift in the structure and process of electoral politics.

The most interesting question, however, is: Will this change how the office of the President governs?

It’s a strongly held belief of mine that new media technology will change the face of the world at a pace far too fast for any oppressive regime to stop. Our ability to communicate perspectives and ideas in today’s world is bringing out many voices that have never been heard and sending them far across the globe to a growing number of groups and activists that apparently might even care.

Read the full article from Techcrunch.com here “Blogging is not a Crime”

Blogging is just one new technology that is allowing for civil disobedience in the oppressive regimes across the world but is a great example of the power of individuals to change their world or at the very least inform it. There are countless stories of courageous Chinese citizens that are pushing the boundaries through this medium and have opened up that society in ways only today’s technology could force due to sheer volume. An army of individual bloggers is far harder to control than a single media outlet and the pathways to broad recognition for these individuals grows wider and more diverse by the day.

As this army of informers grow we will continue to see more people jailed by these regimes but there is hope that this is a futile pursuit because you can not rid the world of a point of view simply by jailing one that believes it. It is our responsibility to continue paying attention to these voices and protecting the media that makes it possible for the individual voice through network neutrality and recognition of the universal right to free speech.

The arrest of bloggers is of course against these values and in that perspective is not a positive sign of growth however it does suggest that the oppressed world is aggressively pursuing this medium as a pathway to social change. Imagine a printing press that was available to anyone with a computer and you begin to catch my drift.