social media versus politics

Going through Google+ and Twitter to find people I want to Follow has led to some interesting discussions in my head. For instance:

• Don't politicians have friends?
• They spend a lot of time shaking hands, but how many people do they know?
• If politicians are slow to adopt, does that imply that they are slow to adapt?
• Is that the kind of person I want representing me?
• What percentage of the American populace is actually geek?
• Shouldn't there be a similar percentage of early-adopting politicians?
• Can we reboot the system?
• Why does everyone fear 1984's all-powerful government but no one freaks over Jennifer Government's capitalist agenda?

From the corporate viewpoint, I've seen how difficult it is to stop production to make vital changes, no matter how important those fixes might be or even how much Return On Investment is expected. Can you imagine if instead of 80,000 people impacted by a 30 minute reboot for a 20 year-old system we tried to restructure the entire 200 year-old government structure? I shudder to think.

And no matter how well it is project-managed or planned, there is always that unknown Risk factor. And no matter how well-intentioned people are with developing a parallel system (like Esperanto), early adopters are no match for inertia.

If only there was a way. Oh wait, there is. That's the beauty of a democracy, isn't it? There's always hope.