GMG

page 13: “Ready or not, technology is here.”

page 13: “We are living in a time in which not even glaciers are moving at a glacial rate of change…”

page 15: The five most powerful tools of the new era of politics: cell phones, YouTube, social-networking sites, blogs, and online fundraising

page 34: “One might have considered the Democrats’ efforts during the 1990s as a form of benign neglect, except there was little benign about the neglect. Beyond the walls of politics, the world was changing faster than it ever had before, and increasingly politics wasn’t keeping pace and didn’t seem relevant or able to address what was happening.”

page 39: “Whereas a generation before, such a title (In an Uncertain World by Robert Rubin) might have come from the defense secretary or the secretary of state, by the end of the 1990s the uncertain world- the national unease- existed not in the stage of world diplomacy or national defense but in the economy… Even before 9/11 robbed Americans of their innocence, too many Americans seemed to have lost the sense of economic security that is critical for a successful middle class.”

page 45: “The power of a single individual to drive the national debate got its first real test in January 1998 when a gossip website called the Drudge Report first broke allegations of President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.”

page 48: “Lynn Reed sent a plea for the FEC to change its policy. By the time the FEC issued its verdict, Bradley had already raised $169,000 online. Gore, whose campaign didn’t accept online credit card donations but instead asked donors to print out a form and mail it in, had raised only $17,000.

page 53: The site’s (eBay) first item in 1995, posted by founder Pierre Omidyar, was a broken laser pointed that he had meant just to post as a test item, but to his astonishment it actually sold for $14.83. When Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to clarify that the laser pointer was broken, the buyer simply explained, “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.”

page 55: Out of all the mainstream press in attendance, only ABC News’s Marc Ambinder noted what came next: Lott said, apparently in reference to supporting Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist presidential bid, “I want to say this about my statE: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.” The press might not have noticed but bloggers certainly did… The New York post called Lott “the internet’s first scalp.” It surely wouldn’t be the last.