Chapter 28. Rocking the Vote
Rock the Vote uses music, popular culture and new technologies to engage and incite young people to register and vote in every election... and take action on the issues that affect their lives, and leverage their power in the political process.
The rules are changing in politics, and what's driving that change is the demographic. Let's recap just a little of the Internet history we examined back in Chapter 2:
It was just 40 years ago, in 1969, when Leonard Kleinrock developed the concept of Arpanet, which was the idea to connect computers over phone lines.
By 1981, Arpanet had 213 hosts, with a new host added every 20 days. The following year, the term Internet was first used to describe these interconnections among hosts.
By 1995, the Internet was in entirely commercial hands with 6.5 million hosts and 100,000 "www" sites.
By 2008, there were 1.5 billion users of the Internet.
So, if you were born in 1969 or later, your entire life has evolved with the network. And that line in the sand is moving each and every year. If you are a politician, this means that your constituency "gets it" and is using it more and more with each passing year.
Creating a Facebook page or a Twitter account is becoming part and parcel of the political process. Progressive politicians get it and are using the network to create connections to constituents, ...
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