WWW Talk,

Greetings. In a 2010 Scientific American article, Tim Berners-Lee indicated 
some concerns about social networking websites. Concerns were expressed about 
social networking websites which were described as "walled gardens". Concerns 
indicated included that social networking websites were "walling off 
information posted by their users from the rest of the Web" and he warned 
Americans that, if Facebook and others proceeded unchecked, "the Web could be 
broken into fragmented islands" and "we could lose the freedom to connect with 
whichever Web sites we want."

In January of this year, parties, including Politico, purchased bulk social 
networking data of a political nature from Facebook. "Social media has forever 
changed the way candidates campaign for the presidency," said John F. Harris, 
editor in chief of Politico. "Facebook has been instrumental in expanding the 
political dialogue among voters and we couldn’t be more excited about the 
opportunity to offer our readers a look inside this very telling conversation."

Amidst privacy, civil liberty, and other societal concerns, resultant concerns 
include a need for a new reasoning, possibly new legislation, with regard to 
some political processes in the information age such as reapportionment, 
redistricting, or gerrymandering. In 1994, Ted Harrington, political science 
chair at the University of North Carolina indicated "there is no issue that is 
more sensitive to politicians of all colors and ideological persuasions than 
redistricting. It will determine who wins and loses for eight years."

Voters should have easy access to the platform and campaign information of 
federal, state and local candidates. Even with the expansive potential of 
web-based news, we can observe that national news and election news have 
continued to eclipse state and local news and election news. It could be that 
insufficient menu systems on news websites, such as Google News, have 
contributed to the perpetuation of partisan politics, some coattail effects, 
and the status quo.

The United States' two-party system more resembles those of formerly British 
island nations (e.g. Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Figi, Grenada, 
Jamaica, Malta, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the 
Grenadines, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago) or island British 
territories (e.g. Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, 
Turks and Caicos Islands) than the multi-party political systems of some larger 
and populous nations with historical ties to the British Empire (e.g. 
Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Jordon, New Zealand, Pakistan, and Great 
Britain).

As we approach two years since the aforementioned Scientific American article, 
a broad and comprehensive list of concerns can be compiled from the various 
opinions of many scientists and technologists.

A socialization industry is a cause for concern with regard to democratic 
elections.

It occurs that computer technology, P2P technology, can facilitate 
decentralized socialization scenarios on the Internet. So too can results of 
research into networking protocols for distributed social networking 
applications, e.g. HTTP 2.0 based, XML-based technologies, as well as developer 
libraries.



Kind regards,
Adam Sobieski                                     

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