CommentIsLinked@LDV: Lynne Featherstone – Politics and the internet

Over at the New Statesman, Lynne Featherstone, recently-appointed Chair of the Lib Dems’ New Technology Board, reveals her attitude to politics on the web. You can read it in full here, but here’s an excerpt:

I’m quite taken at the moment with a quote from the American writer Clay Shirky, which makes this last point in a slightly different way: “The revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools. It happens when society adopts new behaviours.”

In a way, it’s an explanation of why my website and blog (finally about to get a much needed overhaul) haven’t been changed much from a technical point in the last few years. Because what matters far more with the blog is my attitude towards blogging, my style in providing and sharing information, my willingness to engage in online debate or not – than whether I should have really moved off Google’s Blogger platform by now or not. Of course I’m looking forward to the benefits WordPress will bring – but what really matters is what goes on in my head and at my keyboard rather than in the lines of blogger software code.

This will be key in my new role heading up the Liberal Democrats’ Technology Board. There is work that needs to be done to continue improving and expanding the party’s use of technology, and in particular the internet, which falls into the category of getting more and better tools.