Politicians to face the net!

The front page (yes, I do still read the newspaper) of yesterdays Financial Times presented a very interesting article about how politicians need to wake up and face the realities and the power of the internet and its users.

Google’s chairman and chief executive, Eric Schmidt (with an estimated wealth of $4.8 billion, so listen to him) says in this article that “Many of the politicians don’t actually understand the phenomenon of the internet very well.”

Schmidt also predicts that within the next couple of year’s truth predictable software will emerge. This kind of software would allow voters to check the probability of politicians ‘factual statements’ being correct, by comparing claims with historical data. This does not sound to far fetched and is a matter of converging and mashing-up data which is online anyways.

What also needs to be acknowledged are the political blogs out there. They are amongst the most popular blogs worldwide and could create a sense dependability as they voice an opinion from the average citizen and not from a sleazy politicians mouth. The American political blog, Daily Kos, for instance receives around 20 Millions hits a month, that’s a large audience one can influence. On a local level we have a variety of blogs, such as Politics.za and The Nervous Voter, who are probably rapidly gaining readership on a daily level, especially in the light of our chaotic political structure and our constantly trialled politicians.

Oh, and I actually did find an electronic copy of the article after reading it on the ancient scripts of print :P

Labels: blogs, eric schmidt, google, politics, south africa, truth predictable software