How do you bridge the divide between reaching the energized core on the Internet and the masses through traditional voter contact? Don't expect Web 2.0 to do it on its own. You've got to build hooks between the new and the old, and a number of tools are emerging for doing that effectively. I call these technology hybrids.

What are some examples of technology hybrids? Something I did earlier today, sending my first TwitterGram, certainly qualifies. I recorded a voicemail previewing this post that was then instantaneously sent to my Twitter account. How useful is this? It probably isn't for me. Who wants to hear my voice? But if you're a candidate, it can be tons more authentic than "texting" in your message. Zack Exley has famously urged candidates to write their own emails, but even if they did, would people believe it was them? That's why candidates shouldn't Twitter; they should TwitterGram. They shouldn't blog; they should videoblog. That solves the authenticity dilemma of campaign websites -- we'll know for sure it's them, in video or voice, delivering a message many times more compelling than plain text.

This got me connecting the experience to some ongoing thoughts about the most effective uses of technology in campaigns. Twitter's API may have saved the product from laughingstock status, but it's nowhere close to mainstream yet. But the idea of connecting to supporters via voice rather than SMS and email is as old as the auto-dialer in politics. Imagine if a candidate could send a phone message to its entire supporter list through a simple Web-based interface, a sort of opt-in robocall. Then imagine it was free. That's exactly what SayNow is doing in the entertainment community; artists can sign up to send messages to their fan community. Fans can send voicemails to them. Fans can also be alerted via SMS when a new message comes in.

How would such an integrated campaign have worked in the fundraising quarter that just ended? Say the campaign sends an email appeal out to supporters. A few hours later, the campaign auto-dials its online supporter list with a personalized message from the candidate reminding them of the email (he or she will have recorded the 500 most common first names on the email list, to add that personal touch). At the end, it's Press 1 to be connected to an operator to donate, Press 2 to volunteer, and Press 3 to enter your cell number for SMS alerts. That's similar to what John Edwards did by connecting supporters to donate over the phone, except instead of SMS the initial delivery vehicle was email reinforced by a phone call -- mainstream technology that nearly all voters are comfortable with.

What are some other examples of cool technology retrofits candidates are trying in 2008 -- or should be?

• Mitt Romney's tele-townhalls in Iowa and South Carolina -- an effective way to reach your entire universe cheaply and get the candidate in front of thousands of voters at once.
• Obama's low-dollar donor "kickoffs" in major cities, and his requiring email to attend rallies. Some say this is the special sauce behind his fundraising numbers. At the end of the day this is not high-tech at all, just 10,000 pieces of paper -- turned into 10,000 email addresses. Simple -- and smart.
• Embeddable click-to-call (Jajah is an interesting product) -- good for online phone banks, potentially conducted via mobile.
• Along these lines, ONE did something very cool a few weeks back. Instead of facing the typical response rate dropoff of asking people to call into a conference, they called anyone who RSVP'd.
• Edwards sending 70,000 DVDs to Iowa voters. Imagine if these contained a slimmed down version of his site, with the ability to donate or volunteer. That could connect you with some older, less avid Web users.

If you’re like me, you’re probably saying to yourself, “I don’t live in New Hampshire. I don’t live in Iowa, South Carolina, Florida or Michigan either. By the time I get to vote in the Primary election, our nominee will likely be selected by people I don’t know and the mainstream media.”

In the modern, flat world of the Internet, it’s silly to think that our participation in democracy and Party politics is limited by the state we live in. But it is.

For some in those select states and the media, the process works well. After all, it’s easy to direct resources and attention to only a handful of states. But, is this system modern, appropriate and effective? Are we, as respective partisans, ensuring that our “best” nominee is in fact that nominee?

For me, a Republican, I know that I’m going to be spending a better part of 2008 doing everything in my power to ensure that a Republican wins the November election. That’s just the kind of Republican I am.

But what can I do now to ensure that my choice for that nominee counts? What can I do legally and without uprooting my life to another state to participate in my Party’s Primary process?

Find out after the jump...

We studied the candidates' websites and statements, hunting for signs that they understand the importance of the internet and new technology for America's future. The Republican field, with the exceptions of Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, barely escaped flunking.

Yesterday I wrote about getting Lost In Hillaryland while driving down to Philadelphia to volunteer for the Obama campaign. In that post at Kenneth Cole’s Awearness Blog, I write about how after the mini-adventure of the day, my oldest came to the same conclusion as Joe Trippi : that Obama was going to lose.

My son’s observation was the most interesting part of the whole trip because it lent credit to my recent thinking of “politics as interface”.

John McCain isn't ready to acquiesce the tech vote, claiming in an interview that he understands technology because he has young children, but that just isn't enough.

We ask the question that has been bumping around ever since Republican presidential candidate John McCain described himself as computer "illiterate" -- In 2008, does a U.S. need to personally understand how to use email, search engines, and other basic online tools and platforms on order to be an effective leader? Take the poll and then let's hash it out in the comments.

Fenty and CTO Vivek Kundra created an integrated strategy combining transparent operations, so the public and watchdogs can analyze District operations, plus new tools to help DC workers become more efficient and, the icing on the cake, a wildly-successful program directly involving the public in generating low-cost ideas for services.

The key to all 3 is making available to the public and employees (frequently on a real-time basis!) previously hard-to-access governmental data plus Web 2.0 tools to interpret those numbers.

Yesterday was challenging for the new Obama administration as two key individuals nominated for appointments removed their names from consideration. I was at the White House asking questions about the plans for the CTO and White House technology. Witnessing the heated afternoon press briefing, there was definitely some pressure being put on the administration to respond about whether they were perhaps moving too quickly on these cabinet and senior appointments.

I asked Nick Shapiro, White House spokesman on technology related topics, whether what we've been hearing about a possibly diminished role of the CTO was true. Essentially the answer is no.

Since it's Friday, let's touch on something slightly different from our usual topics: World War II. Or more specifically, radar. More, more specifically, how the untested and unproven and -- let's face it -- very weird and possibly demonic technology of detecting objects using only invisible radio beams flying through the air came to be accepted as part of the British Empire's strategic bulwark against Nazism. The journal Nature has just posted an excerpt from Charles Percy Snow's 1961 book Science and Government. In it, Snow fleshes out his strikingly controversial (for the time) argument that literary intellectuals and scientists each exist in one of "two cultures," unable to break the bounds of those cultures to communicate with one another; think of it as Liberal Arts Majors Are from Mars, Geeks Are From Venus. Snow tells the tale of how creative thinkers of the era were able to break through their respective bubbles to make convincing cases for the government taking a risk on this groundbreaking technology in their fight against Hitler. Some of that cross-cultural negotiation had to happen inside what Snow calls "closed government." Some of it played out out in the open. And a big factor, to which Snow devotes much attention, was the competing egos and personality quirks of the relevant players.

Lucky for us, our leaders are without ego or quirk. Still, Snow's story about the intersection of technology and politics is illuminating as we consider how we get the United States circa 2009 back on the cutting edge of technological innovation. And the fact that World War II turned out as it did is a point in favor of making the attempt. (Photo by Dave Pearson)

Last year over on the Washington Monthly, Kevin Carey told the story of how Virginia Tech is attempting to address the pervasive educational problem of resources going in one direction (as in, down) while demand goes the other. (Via an Ezra Klein link) The solution for VaTech? Technology. As in a "Math Emporium" computer room housed in the atrium of a Blacksburg, Virginia shopping mall that has seen better days. To describe the space, Carey makes use of all the adjectives you might expect: gray, windowless, "used to house a five-and-dime." (The emporium's official site does a better job finding the silver lining of conducting higher education in a shopping mall, boasting of "plenty of free parking.") But the commercial space is a cheap way for a math and science based institution to use technology to train undergraduates on the basics before they're sent to real human professors for polishing.

As interesting as it is to use technology to solve the problem of an industry where financial advisors recommend that students and parents budget with the expectation that tuition will increase at twice the rate of inflation, it does raise a question: Do I really want to go to college in a mall? Or, more to the point, what do I tell a potential employer when it comes up that I took freshman calculus from a computer while seated next to a Cinnabon? What happens when our cultural expectations and, yes, biases lag behind what technology makes possible? Those sorts of questions are the kind of ones that will be facing the new U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra as he aims to figure out how to use what we know about technology to build a better, stronger, smarter America. Thankfully, Chopra himself has already started asking those questions. As Virginia's Secretary of Technology, Chopra saw MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative as a model for the power of technology to fix the inefficiencies and inequalities of higher education. But Chopra admitted, "We don't know as a society how HR departments will value that you've taken 30 hours of MIT coursework." To be a successful CTO, Chopra will have to find answers on how society will value what technology makes possible. (Photo by ȠĬGEL)