I've worked on and written a lot about the Open Source movement, and how collaborative, online and open movements have transformed our politics—and our country—over the past decade. It was the Dean campaign's restless legion of hackers, programmers, and supporters that got the ball rolling, opening up our politics in a way that has permanence beyond any election or cycle. And, before that, it was Linux and the rest of the Open Source movement that hadn't found their impact on politics yet, but certainly understood the power and potential of online collaboration.
As I've said over and over, this technology-driven, bottom-up transformation has completely changed the way elections operate – from recruiting new supporters, to raising money, to pushing new ideas (and rejecting bad ones). And it changed how communities form and ordinary citizens communicate across the board — from political organizing to parenting advice.
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