This land is your land

Thursday, January 22, 2009 by Dave Winer.

"This land was made for you and me." -- Woodie Guthrie. 

"This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." -- Abraham Lincoln. 

"We the People of the United States..." -- The Constitution. 

Our new President has said repeatedly, and correctly -- we can't wait for someone else to do the job, we must do it ourselves. That is so totally consistent with the philosophy of the country, and perhaps not unremarkably -- the web too.  

Go back to the beginning, the web was created in that spirit, and whenever it runs out of juice we go back to the well, draw another bucket of irreverence and gumption, and create something new. 

It's not the nature of the US to wait for someone else to do the job, and it's not the nature of the web.  

When I looked at the Clinton whitehouse.gov, I felt no urge to get involved, these were the people who promoted the Communication Decency Act, which failed to extend First Amendment to the web. (And that's being generous.) They were the enemy of freedom, their website was not something I wanted to help.  

Same with the Bush whitehouse.gov, although I gotta say, the people who claim the Obama whitehouse.gov is so innovative must not have looked at the Bush website. They had all the technical innovation of the Obama one.  

As I said clearly, I supported Obama. So quickly people forget. But that website, until I give up, is mine and yours as much as it is the webmaster's. If they construct it in such a way that that's not true, then they have failed to live up to the promise of the United States and the promise of the web. And since the web is the hub for idea exchange, it means that everything else they try will be crippled, the attempt to restart the economy, to create a spirit of volunteerism, to get health care and education working, to promote our revolution of individual freedom to the rest of the world.  

A lot of people who use the web these days don't know how to create a web, they know how to use what was created. In some ways, some times change must come incrementally, and patience is the right course of action. But sometimes, and this is one of those times, it must come in one big discontinuous spurt and then we figure out what happened in subsequent years.  

The people who tell themselves and others that they run the world are placeholders, if they urge caution and safety. These are not safe times. Those people are going to be swept away by the change that's on its way. This is not a time for caution, it's a time for courage, intelligence and creativity.  

Update: The Washington Post says the Obama team found a White House in the technological dark ages when they arrived on Tuesday.