Barack Obama’s change.org website is accepting requests for ideas and projects to be implemented during his term. Knowing that he’s all for technological innovation, and that several successful experiments with e-democracy were done inside Second Life®, let’s try to push for even more. Andabata Mandelbrot is proposing that we vote to create an international metaverse – the Internet equivalent of virtual worlds.
To get this implemented, we need 400 votes! And the deadline is… today at midnight, so we need to hurry…
Voting is simple, you just need to create an account on the change.org account and vote (you can even log in with your Facebook or MySpace account) by clicking on the icon. If you’re willing to promote this idea, you can, of course, do more — add widgets, push it to your social network, and so on. With a surprisingly open-minded approach, voting is not limited to US residents, but it’s totally open to international voters too. The change is for America, but its impact will be global. A nice touch!
Why should President-Elect Obama listen to this proposal? Well, we know that he has appointed two Second Life Innovators to his “Innovation Agenda” group. And his virtual presence in SL was serious, well-planned, and part of his campaign. He’s no stranger to using virtual worlds as a political — but also democratic — platform. So he might very well take notice of this proposal, specially if he can see the support it gathers.
It’s up to us to put democracy in practice — with the vote 🙂
Vote now and get your friends in SL to do the same!
[UPDATE: Prokofy Neva correctly points out that this site is not affiliated with Barack Obama’s office or future administration at all, but it’s just something from an independent company operating out of California. The President-Elect’s Official Site is at change.gov, not change.org.
In any case, the proposal failed to attract enough votes, and the timeline has gone anyway, so it’s pointless to discuss it any further, except as a good example on how simple proposals can become such a source of political dissention 😉 ]
