Back to work for me.

The plural of Waxman would be Waxmans, sans apostrophe.  

It's a pet peeve for me, like when people call Obama progressive.

Matt,

Gushing is not analysis.  How do you think technology is going to change the legislative process?

By the force of public comments?  On what?  At what point in the process?  How will people know?

I think you are mistaken.

I believe in the role of public comment, and I believe in internet debate, but it will not be effective unless it is organized by Congress.  At the moment, very, very little timely information is released from Congress.  You should investigate why.  There are practical reasons.

We need political parties to sponsor and organize the debate.  As I have suggested before.

"Technologies like this one, LGBD..."

I think someone confused LGDB and LGBT and made some sort of hideous hybrid out of them.  I picture a server with a feather boa.  I wonder if this is one of those hybrids Bush warned about in his address...

MacLuhan's makes a basic point in The Medium is the Message that seems to undermine what you're arguing here:

Let us return to the electric light.  Whether the light is being used for brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of inidifference.  It could be argued that these activities are in some way the "content" of the electric light, since they could not exist without the electric ligh.  This fact merely underlines the point that "the medium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of  human association and action...indeed, it is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium.

So the connections between politics and technology that you mention would be the conent in this case.  But the medium would be the full range of possibilities that emerge through the mere existence of the given technology--possibilities that we don't even really see or think about.  And so I side with MacLuhan in concluding that this makes the technology by itself important.

And so we send email, sure.   But the fact that we even think of politics in terms of the possibility of communicating with millions  of people instantly--this is a product of the medium which shapes and controls how we think about politics even before we conceive of something concrete.

Great stuff, MacLuhan.  Worth a second look.

> How do you think technology is going to change the legislative process?

In 2004 and 2006, we were beginning to get better at using technology to get people elected, but I think you'll see far more interesting projects develop - e.g. software for tracking legislation, and for more effective polling and consensus-building. I think we'll also see more and better support for group-forming and group relationship management.

If our technology shows us what's moving through the legislative process at any point in time, and gives us effective ways to aggregate information, form positions, and respond, I think that's the beginning of a change in the legislative process. "Extreme democracy," as we were calling it. (See http://extremedemocracy.com).

I just checked out the LGDB site and was very impressed with the capabilities (and the seemingly affordable cost).  It speaks to Matt's point about "people powered governance" and "empowering...the middle" of "professional techies and assorted citizens."

And because LGDB focuses on state legislation, it also speaks to the point made by various bloggers regarding the importance of more localized blogging tied to more localized political action.

In fact, my initial scan of LGDB made me wonder if it might be directly applicable to sites like MyDD, dkos, etc....and to issues like net neutrality and other Internet-related issues (e.g., muni-broadband, video franchising, etc.) that are seeing some activity at the state level (healthcare and electoral reform are other examples where states are taking important initiatives that could be relevant to other states and to national policy debates).

As someone who occasionally has to dig around to find current legislation in multiple states for my work and also for unpaid "citizen research" projects, LGDB seems like a very useful tool that could help focus and integrate the efforts of citizens knowledgeable and interested in key issues that are being addressed in multiple states.

MyDD is a good example of a blog site that seems to attract a high percentage of people with some level of expertise about the issues they comment on.  That makes me think that a tool like LGDB could help MyDD become a more potent vehicle for influencing the course of legislation, by enabling its participants to more efficiently leverage and pool their knowledge and ideas.  If I read the LGDB site correctly, it might be possible for the entire MyDD community to have access to the service for a single fee.

As someone who does research and analysis for a living, but has very little free time for political activism, I see potential value in tools like LGDB that can help people like me find ways to focus the little time we do have to good use, in terms of finding relevant information, and contributing back some useful information, perspective, ideas, actions, etc.

In think the theme of "citizen powered governance" that Matt and others have discussed in this and other posts is a major component of the evolution now underway.  And it's related to "citizen powered media" (including video), which has already shown itself to be a powerful political tool and will become even more so in the future.  

The LGDB site included one element of this that we haven't seen much in the political space (where talking heads, campaign-related videos and political humor have predominated).  The site includes some simple but very helpful video "walk-throughs" of the site's functionality.  In some respects it reminded me of some of the video tutorials I've seen on the Current TV site, which are designed to provide basic tips for learning how to shoot and edit good quality video.  Both are online educational tools that help people learn how to use other empowerment tools.

This reminds me of something I've talked about with a friend who has some expertise in the use of graphics for educational purposes.  He sees lots of potential for "political education/persuasion" videos that use simple, clear and engaging graphical tools to explain political and policy issues and news (a recent pro-NN video cited in the NYT is a decent example of this "simple and clear graphical" style of video communication).  I think this is another family of tools that can and should be part of the evolution Matt's talking about.

Anyway...fascinating post Matt.  I encourage you to stay with this "citizen powered governance" theme and for you, Jerome and others to keep posting about web-based tools and technology that can be applied to the next phases of the netroots' evolution.  And I agree with the NetPulse newsletter comment cited by Jerome that "the `speed to market' [of these tools and technologies] was compressed into one two year election cycle [and that] "this trend will only accelerate."  And I think MyDD is one logical focal point for discussions and mobilizations designed to further that acceleration and to leverage it for political action.

I'm Scott Yates, the guy who started LgDb. We've had a pile of blogs report about us in the last day or two, but you all have not only had the best discussion, you seem to understand the DNA of LgDb the best.

(I've known a lot of reasons the name needs work, but hadn't though about the GLBT connection. Not that there's anything wrong with that! For the record, we were hoping for a name that would be like IMDb or CDDb, sites that have everything in their field.)

There's been a lot of discussion about Web 2.0. I think what you are getting at is my view of Web 2.0, which is the web really finding it's true nature. TV was just glorified radio until the Kennedy-Nixon debates. The web was just faster newspapers and much better letter-to-the-editor pages until sites like Thomas, and -- I humbly submit -- LgDb came along.

We have a long way to go, especially to get all the data in, but we'll be honored to be used by users of your site.

When people ask me what the political ramifications of LgDb might be, I tell them that I don't know, but my hope is that it helps people on all parts of the spectrum as long as they have positions that are helped by more facts, not fewer.

Please feel free to contact me using the contact form on the LgDb site with any comments, etc.

Thanks!