From HeckleBot to Twitterverse: Net-Centric Democracy Goes Global Tonight

Joi Ito's HeckleBot is going global tonight. That is, assuming Twitter doesn't crash. And if Twitter holds up under the traffic of most of its estimated three million users all chattering at once, we're all going to be participating in the birth of something new. You can call it the Global Brain or the Hive Mind, but the Machine that is Us/Using Us (to use Michael Wesch's brilliant phrase) is going up a level tonight, and media and democracy in America will never be the same.

Let me explain. In early 2004, I was in San Diego for the "Digital Democracy Teach-In," a one-day event preceding the annual ETech confab, put on by internet publisher Tim O'Reilly (who was soon to coin the term "web 2.0"). On stage, Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi was being interviewed by Ed Cone, an industry journalist who had done some indepth pieces on the campaign. But while that was going on, at least half the audience had their laptops open during the talk. But they weren't taking notes: they were typing messages to each other, participating in a live chat-room using the conference's free wifi service. And their
"back-channel" conversation—which was full of pithy and funny riffs on Trippi and Cone's talk, useful links amplifying points they were making, along with side-jokes and questions about where to go out for lunch—was being projected on a a big LED monitor called the HeckleBot, alongside the stage, for all to read.

It was a disconcerting and exhilarating moment, because it showed me exactly how the internet could give everyone a voice in a public conversation, and how the lateral networking between tech-empowered individuals could open up a top-down form like a conference keynote.

The HeckleBot was built after Ito, one of the net's pioneering forces, posted a comment on his blog that read: "People should be able to heckle the speakers at a conference from IRC via a bot that talks to an LED display facing the speakers. If people help me build this, I will take it to conferences with me."

Ito's goal, by the way, was to take a conversation that was already a private back-channel and turn it into something that everyone could benefit from. (He was already the host of a long-running Internet Relay Chat channel called #joiito, and thus well-versed in the salutary and entertaining effects of getting a bunch of interesting people together to share their reactions to whatever was going on.)

The HeckleBot made it possible for everyone in the audience to hear from each other, not only from speakers--so if someone had something smart to say, you didn't have to wait to hear them say it from the podium or be lucky enough to be sitting next to them as they whispered it to you. And it also made it possible for the audience--or rather, the people who used to be called the audience--to give feedback to the speakers. Once I saw it in action, I knew we were entering a new age of lateral networked communication.

Now, we're on the verge of a national (or international) test of what is in effect, the Twitter Hecklebot. The machine is already up and running over at Election.Twitter.com (if you want the full blast of the fire hose), or, if you're a Twitter user already, you've got a more selective stream to track of friends or people you find interesting to follow. Most of us will be online tonight, and whatever is going on in the presidential debate between Obama and McCain will rapidly ricochet through the Twitterverse as we watch together. (You can already see this taking shape in advance as many people play with the hashtag #mccainshot and #obamashot, spreading terms that they suggest people including in debate-watching drinking games. To wit, "Drinking rules for tonight: #obamashot for every time Obama says 'change' and #mccainshot every time McCain says 'my friends.'")

Now, it's true that the candidates themselves will not have any idea of what we're saying to each other. Nor will the moderator, Jim Lehrer. We're not (yet) at that level of a networked conversation. But the mainstream media will be watching, and using the stream to help it gauge public reactions to the debate, probably in the same way that it uses focus groups and instant polls. And we'll be watching them watch us.

Slowly, we're collectively building a more networked democracy out of self-organizing experiments like these. Each time a crowd gets together on the world live web, new connections are made, new tastes are formed, and these networks and tastes will grow. The old tricks of the political game--lies, spin, talking out of both sides of your mouth--are working less and less, because this networked public sphere keeps getting better at exposing them to public view. People like being connected to each other, and having a voice in the conversation--and they love rewarding each other with attention when someone points to something smart or funny or useful. That used to be the job only of the broadcast media--and the old gatekeepers kept the conversation tightly under control. That control is disappearing rapidly; tonight may be the night that we all start to realize just how much power we have.