At sixteen I believed the moonlight
could change me if it would.
I moved my head
on the pillow, even moved my bed
as the moon slowly
crossed the open lattice.

—Denise Levertov

Change is happening, and though we're weeks from the Inaugural, we're years into the change on the Internet. From web-based political action committees through web-driven campaigns to web-centered efforts at political rebranding, the web has redefined our politics. And it's still changing.

Hello, Mr. President-Elect

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

—Maya Angelou, Inaugural Poem, 1993

It strikes me as rather astonishing to see our President-Elect speaking to us directly not on television but on YouTube.

No, it's not much. 90 seconds of broad-brush statements of policy intentions. But it's a weekly address. And it's direct to us, featured on the home page of Change.gov.

When the Barack Obama Presidential Transition Team launched Change.gov, we saw for the first time what could be an entirely new political site — one that establishes a conversation between the White House and the voters.

Change.gov is an official website, not a campaign site.

This site is for the Office of the President-elect and Office of the Vice President-elect, as recognized by the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, as amended (3 USC 102 note). The Presidential Transition Act specifically authorizes the Administrator of GSA to provide services and support to the Office of the President-elect beginning the day after the election until 30 days after the inauguration to support the orderly transfer of executive power after a general election.

"Hallelujah," writes Kate Lear in the Huffington Post.

One of the many challenges facing this presidency is how to retain and grow the spirit of good will and activism that was ignited during the campaign. Building on the singular success of BarackObama.com, this new website has the ability to engage the American people as never before and become a hallmark of Obama's presidency....

...A major reason why millions of Americans became involved in the Obama campaign was because it was so easy to do -- BarackObama.com was a brilliantly efficient website. Change.gov seems to be just as user-friendly and flexible and as such has the potential to engage all Americans, not just Obama supporters. In the best of all worlds, it could be a depository of information about the issues, activities and goals of the new administration. But, more importantly, it could be used as a call-to-action and a hub of ideas about ways that we can help our country during this difficult time.

BlogHer Liz Henry writes on her blog:

This could mean real participation in government. Activism - real activism but built into our government - mobilization of people who have the most time and energy, not through churches and charities but through an organized infrastructure for nationwide civil service.

Walking the walk (one way, anyway)

you get yours
and i'll get mine
if i learn
to sit and wait
you got yours
i want mine
and i'm gonna get it
cause i gotta get it
cause i need to get it
if i learn how

—Nikki Giovanni

On the Save the Internet blog, Megan Tady writes:

His very first two points marked a commitment to preserving Net Neutrality and promoting diversity in the media.

The plan says an Obama administration will:

• Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.
• Encourage Diversity in Media Ownership: Barack Obama believes that the nation’s rules ensuring diversity of media ownership are critical to the public interest. Unfortunately, over the past several years, the Federal Communications Commission has promoted the concept of consolidation over diversity. As president, Obama will encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation’s spectrum.

It certainly sounds promising. Beth Dunn is less sanguine.

So far, what I have seen is a certain amount of pulling back on the Obama team’s part. During the campaign there was a visible give-and-take between the campaign’s foot soldiers and the top leadership team, and the MyBarackObama.com website allowed for real participation and user contribution, through blogs, messaging, and events that brought the online world into Real Life (like the coordination of neighborhood rallies and events).

Now, however, the new Change.gov website is considerably more one-way. The only blog on the site is the one from the Obama transition team, and comments are not enabled. There’s a place for visitors to “Share Your Story” and “Share Your Vision,” but this, too, is a one-way conversation.

She adds that this "has the unfortunate effect of putting the brakes on the momentum, and stifling the part of what they were doing that really engaged with individuals, with communities." Instead of embracing social media and community building features of what has come to be called "Web 2.0," Change.gov so far lives in the "Web 1.0" world of the olden days of the Internet, when websites were not conversations but rather announcements.

Change.gov is not social media software, it is brochureware.

It's still early enough to take Barack Obama at his word, so when he said in his victory speech [interactive video + transcript] that the election "has never been about me; it's about you," maybe it's not audacious to hope for more of an inclusive website.

(Personally, I really like that Obama has a Crackberry habit. It tells me that he's not being totally "handled.")

Moving on from MoveOn.org

For if I do not hear thy foot,
The frozen river is as mute,
The flowers have dried down to the root:
And why, since these be changed since May,
Shouldst thou change less than they.

-Elizabeth Barret Browning

This whole politics-on-the-Internet thing first really flourished in progressive/liberal circles, where there are many voices. Perhaps the most notorious online community in this realm has been Daily Kos, a loud, bare-knuckle community founded by Markos Moulitsas that grew out of a general opposition to the Iraq war at a time when such criticism was scarcely heard in the mainstream media. Daily Kos has had its share of internal conflicts, with a no-holds-barred front page of polling analyses and scathing attacks on the opposition by select "diarists."

But when it comes to politics in the mainstream media, the more well-known -- and more notorious an object of derision by the right-wing partisans -- internet-based group has been MoveOn.org. Though named in fact after its website, this 501(c)(4) organization is recognizable by most Americans by its in-your-face commercials. (Remember "General Betray Us".)

Today I suppose it's only natural that this "netroots" organization takes a moment for a little gloating. Their homepage currently touts their success in the election. "Together we did it!" shouts the headline. The page includes some stats -- 428,133 volunteers for Obama, for example -- and select videos they produced for the campaign. The page is very blue, very clean and polished in look, with sans-serif typeface and lots of whitespace.

An interactive map is featured "above the fold". Click on a state and the page re-loads with the same content, this time filtered and focused on that state. ("24,790 MoveOn members volunteered for Obama".)

If you've read "The Audacity of Hope," you'll know that Barack Obama holds little credence to the idea that liberals must meet fire with fire, mud with mud, when it comes to "debate" with conservative organizations that have not hesitated to sling either. We'll see how this site continues under an Obama Administration.

Lipstick on a pig?

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.

—Maya Angelou, Inaugural Poem, 1993

Meanwhile, on the "conservative" side, while a lot of internal re-evaluation of the Republican Party and its core message is supposedly taking place, the home page of Republican For A Reason, a site by and for the Republican National Committee, puts a happy face of optimism on the Republican "grassroots." It does not, however, seem to reflect much of any kind of real change of the Republican message.

The design tries hard to appear to be non-Establishment, employing a mix of wood textures, paper and envelope images and a hand-scrawled elephant icon. I suppose this is intended to give the site a kind of handcrafty look to distance the GOP "brand" from the image of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. And maybe it's supposed to appeal to younger voters ... or maybe pre-voters?

Links in a handwriting font (no, not comic sans) invite you to "NAVIGATE" and "CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT" and "EXPURE EXPLORE THE ISSUES" [yeah, it looks like it says "expure"].

There's video that thankfully doesn't just start playing on its own (as is the wont of many commercial websites that always have me scrambling for the speaker mute on my keyboard), so there's one point in their favor.

However, I wonder if this generally flat site holds much appeal to anyone not already sold on its message. As a registered independent, when I look at their platform, I see a Republican Party that bears little resemblance to the party of my youth. (Could Barry Goldwater win a Republican nomination for anything in this day and age?)

Certainly without the momentum of the day, it seems this endeavor is bound to languish in general obscurity.

But how will we engage in the political discourse now, after this sea-change election? Will the Obama Administration successfully reach out to the electorate by tapping into the social media tools that are engaging millions of people?

Changing Change?

in life
one is always
balancing
like we juggle our mothers
against our fathers
or one teacher
against another
(only to balance our grade average)
3 grains of salt
to one ounce truth

—from "Balances" by Nikki Giovanni

On Change.gov, there is a form where we can submit our "stories" to the new administration. But the real power of social media is not when we can talk back to you, Mr. President-Elect, but when we can talk to each other at the same time. Engage us in conversation. Hire a social media staff to engage us all in dialogue, a staff who can speak with some authority regarding policy decisions being weighed and who can bring the conversation — our conversation — to you.

Because the Obama campaign has shown a degree of social media savvy, my hope is that his nascent administration is in the midst of developing a new website that will afford a fully engaged citizen experience.

Alexandra Samuel has a fascinating post full of advice for how Obama can build upon the Internet and social media to enhance and empower his Administration. Some examples:

Use blogging and rich media to talk directly to citizens frequently and in real time.

...

Be prepared for citizens -- especially young ones -- to use your own organizing toolkit as a platform for holding you accountable.

...

Support open source tools -- after all, they are intimately connected to your bottom-up philosophy.

One suggestion kind of stands out for me as perhaps a point of concern:

Win congressional support for your agenda by using social networks to mobilize grassroots support and apply pressure on Congress.

Could Change.gov end up just being a proxy for the Obama re-election campaign of 2012? Or a partisan tool to be wielded during legislative battles? I see that as something that could potentially backfire. Kate Lear doesn't like the notion.

The Washington Post reported this week that Obama's email database of 10 million campaign volunteers and donors may be used to "to support legislation, to offer feedback on initiatives and to enlist in administration-supported causes in local communities." This is worrisome.

Change.gov is one thing if nothing else: A paradigm shift in how our leaders will communicate with us, the citizens. 48 years after President John F. Kennedy changed the White House press routine by holding regular televised press conferences, our President Barack Hussein Obama will be embracing the new medium of our age — the Internet. Whether this results in a net gain in terms of government transparency and responsiveness to citizens' needs, only time will tell.

But now that we know that Obama will be also holding regular "fireside chats" on YouTube, it seems that new technology and social media are changing not only how our politicians run for office, but also how they govern.

Good Morning

Haven't we been here before?

BlogHer Tech & Web Contributing Editor Laura Scott is a web developer who blogs at rare pattern. Follow Laura!