Politics of the Future - How the Internet is Changing and Will Change Politics Forever

In June of 1989, former president Ronald Reagan stated, “Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders, the Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip” When President Reagan made this statement, the internet was in its mere infancy, the World Wide Web did not yet exist. In that time, advanced users had just begun to have discussions through bulletin board systems and newsgroups. Seventeen years later, the internet has evolved to an unstoppable force of nature. The world uses the internet to learn, to be entertained, to communicate, to conduct business, and to perform a seemingly infinite number of other tasks. American politics is no exception. Users are more informed than ever, being able to take in a multitude of sources and deciding what they believe for themselves. Internet supporters are propelling campaigns, which would have otherwise died in their infancy. Web logs are firing up various political bases and the world is uncovering corruption at a rate never seen before. The internet is revolutionizing the political process.

Perhaps the internet’s most notable effect on the political process is the use of the web blog, or as most internet users now call them, “blogs”. A blog is simply a web-based journal about a person’s life or a topic that the author has a particular interest in. Blogs have existed since the inception of the internet, but it was not until 1999 when Peter Merholz first coined the term “blog. The exact number of blogs on the internet is unknown, one rough calculation by the Blog Herald in April of 2005 estimated that there are over fifty million blogs in existence; however that number may be overstated, as many of the authors of these blogs are not actively posting on their web logs and should be considered inactive.