We live in the Age of the Individual. It started August 23 1999 when Pyra Labs released Blogger (argue argue) and every single person on the planet connected to the Internet could have their own blog. This means that today, Jan. 07 2011, for example, if I search for an answer to a particular social question: “should abortion be legal?” I could theoretically get 2.1bn opinions ( by these estimates http://bit.ly/f6cKbw ).

What does that mean? It means that the idea of organizations moving through the world, expressing ideas and taking actions somehow independent of the people who make them up is dead and not coming back. The “banks” did this, “Wall Street” responded this way, “the Senate” voted this way, a spokesperson for the AMA said on behalf of the organization … no. In ye olde days those short-hand codes were necessary -- there wasn’t enough voter confidence in the individual reporting mechanisms to bring individual voices out into the sun.
 

Now there is or should be. I don’t want to know what Ms. X or Mr. Y as spokesperson  for the board of whatever said. I want to know what each individual board member thinks on that topic in an opinion on a web-site. I don’t want to know what the Republican Party position on a topic is. I want to know what each member of the Senate thinks on a particular topic. Just put a position statement on each bill before the Senate on your website, for goodness sake.