WASHINGTON – There's been a lot of heavy talk lately about how the Internet is changing politics. Forget it. The Web remains an afterthought for candidates, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon.
The reasons are simple: The Net just doesn't have the centralized viewership, and any presidential hopeful's ambitions are better served by an appearance on Nightline instead of a clunky Web broadcast.
Modern politics relies heavily on message-shaping and top-down delivery, both of which are polar opposites of the non-hierarchical Internet. Plus, people remain simply more interested in entertainment, music, and investing than politics – whether they're online or off.
This year is marked by more malaise than most. During the Iowa caucuses this week, only about 150,000 people participated. That's a lot lower than the 230,000 who took part in 1988, the last comparable year. And it's a tiny percent of the 2.1 million Iowans who could participate if they chose.
Technology plays an even smaller role in Iowa than most other states. A caucus is simply a gathering of neighbors who meet to elect delegates who eventually choose – through a reasonably arcane process – who will represent Iowa during the national conventions this summer. The actual meetings are usually held in traditional community centers like schools, churches, and libraries, in a process that hasn't changed in decades.
So it should come as no surprise that few Americans care more about the Nasdaq index than political Web sites, at least so far. One new site called netelection.org hopes to change that, in part by providing a place for pols to find out more about the Net in campaigns. It's a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
A kickoff column by Penn professor W. Russell Neuman offers advice for struggling candidates: Get a clue.
"Online voters know their medium well and are easily offended when content is simply shoveled over from other media. The Web, after all is a fundamentally two-way medium. Web-savvy citizens want the capacity to search and navigate a Web site to find those issues and ideas of special interest. They want to be in the driver's seat, not in the audience," he writes.
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Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-New Jersey) wants to regulate Web sites' privacy practices. In a letter sent to colleagues, he said his forthcoming bill will require firms to ask for permission – the catch phrase is "opt in" – before they release info to third parties. The measure also will require sites to notify folks when cookies are being used, something that seems somewhat ridiculous, not to mention redundant, since browsers are already perfectly capable of doing precisely that.
Virginia Governor James Gilmore doesn't like Net taxes. The Republican stalwart has made his views amply clear during meetings of a congressional advisory panel he chairs, and he reiterated them this week.
In a letter to President Clinton, Gilmore asked the administration to oppose taxes that single out online transactions. "New technologies, new medical cures, new products and business opportunities, and new economic bounties await the people of America – but government at all levels must stay out of the way," he wrote.
Left unsaid was Gilmore's own dogged, not to mention hypocritical, attempt at Net regulation. His attorney general currently is defending a lawsuit brought by the tech industry saying a state anti-erotica law censors the Net.
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Bartlett Cleland, a former Americans for Tax Reform tech staffer, has a new job. He'll be in charge of starting the Center for Technology Freedom at the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas.
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Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) has proposed a law that would increase your monthly phone bill. She said this week that she wants to "extend" the so-called e-rate program with additional money. The federal project to wire libraries to the Net is paid for by fees levied on telecom companies.
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Boston Globe tech columnist Simson Garfinkel is coming to DC next Thursday for a book party hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Garfinkel, an unusually tech-savvy author, has written Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century.
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With Clinton's talk of the "digital divide" in his State of the Union address, it's no surprise that everyone is hoping to say something on the topic – whether it's interesting or not. A conference next Tuesday organized by the nonprofit Athena Alliance promises to answer the question this raises: "As America moves into the information age, how can we foster inclusion in all aspects of the information society?"
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The Federal Communications Commission is backing away from a decision that would have placed additional restrictions on religious broadcasting.
In response to criticism from conservative groups and congressional opposition, the agency said it would ask the public what it thought of the plan before proceeding further.
In an earlier report, we incorrectly said it applies to radio stations. It does not. The ruling – that is, if the FCC continues with it – will apply to television stations.
