The broadband-enabled Internet is an essential tool for solving some of today’s most pressing societal challenges – health care, education, the environment, public safety, and more. But what can the Internet do for politics?  Attendees of the Personal Democracy Forum (both in real life and online) enjoyed a series of expert keynotes to address that exact question.

Here is the concept that each speaker resolved to address the question:

Clay Johnson of Sunlight Foundation
Use technology, not email lists, to solve problems.

Deanna Zandt author of Share This!
The Internet won’t fix politics, but the people who use the Internet will.

Anil Dash of ExpertLabs.org
Crowdsourcing information provides you with your own virtual think tank.

Eli Pariser of Moveon.org
As we increasingly embrace social networks and Google, beware of the “filter bubble” of only seeing like information.

Newt Gingrich former Speaker of the House
Put government online.

Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake
Both parties need to break the cycle of politics by using the Internet to change the dialogue and terms of the debate.

Michael Malbin of the Campaign Finance Institute
Need to move from a model of restrictions in campaign finance to a model of empowerment, particularly for small donors.

Scott Heiferman of Meetup.com
Just having fans and followers doesn’t make a movement; you need to connect and enable them.

John Perry Barlow of Electronic Frontier Foundation
We can’t run the country from the center; we need to run from the edges – the cities.

The unspoken bottom line of all these speakers is broadband.  The Internet is a tool that we will increasingly rely on to improve politics and we need people across the country to adopt broadband in order to participate in the democratic process.

Inspired?  Good!  Tell us how you would use broadband and the Internet to improve politics.

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