In a truly post-partisan era the input of 300million citizens will no longer be arbitrated by a money based competition managed by lobbyists. The input of 300 million citizens will be aggregated and refined by a series of networked applications that facilitate massive and direct participation in  national planning. This will ultimately come down to the collaborative crafting of agenda statements, which are then provided as guidance to local and national elected leaders and representatives.

The technology tools to create such a system already exist. The availability of these tools also happens to be coinciding nicely with the last-straw level of national impatience the American people seem to have reached. Both political parties have so thoroughly discredited themselves in such rapid succession, they’ve finally succeeded in making a lasting impression on our notoriously short national attention span. Americans caught on this time, and the most seasoned politicians and party officials already know what’s coming. Hence the sudden popularity of post partisanship.

Something is creeping up behind the broken down ineffecient machine in Washington. The machine with its bureaucracy, too easily manipulated by players acting outside of their legitimate boundaries, is about to be replaced.

When this happens the current set of power players on Capital Hill and in local governments will no longer hold the reigns. Capital Hill will simply react and respond - finally as it should be - to the influence of a new mechanism of power.

This new mechanism of power will be a form of direct democracy, but unlike most of the visions of direct democracy concieved to date.

This mechanism will be different because it will not simply impose a continuous stream of massive referendums. It will allocate power across at least three categories of interactions:

1. A series of pivotal points in the economy,

2. The aggregate decisions made by businesses and groups,

and most importantly:

3. A new kind of networked, peer-to-peer, grassroots media. This networked media will be the central organizing principle and control panel for 1 and 2 listed above.

This networked media will not focus solely on blogging or rehashing headlines, but will instead (and is already shifting to) focus on collaboratively planning the future. It will be staffed primarily by individual citizens of the democracy - just as it should have been all along.

It will be powered by something more than a broadcasting network: a framework of network-centric applications and processors. This networked media is will no longer be about broadcasting. It will be about participation and collective intelligence. It will be the processor that facilitates collaborative national planning. It will not just transmit information. It will process data and perform tasks.

Tasks like:

- Structuring national agenda documents, collaboratively developed by citizens
- Aggregating and organizing massive amounts of input from participants
- Tracking the performance of various players - economic and political - against previously set standards and metrics
- Monitor events related to the economy, social and political issues.

With this new power structure comes the emergence of a truly post-partisan era of politics. Partisanship will be over because it simply will no longer be effective. It will be a very different kind of politics - and it could be more positive more proactive than anything we’ve ever had.

Americans should think of this as inevitable and be very diligent to learn how to manage this new mechanism of power. And we should urge our elected representatives to move in this direction as well.

Politicians who are interested in thriving in the coming post-partisan age should focus on learning about social computing and networked applications in general. They should experiment with wiki’s and/or collaborative documents (like Google docs) that allow a group of people to collectively author an agenda document.

Software developers can help speed the process along by creating plugins and applications that allow people to collaboratively create list-like agendas (just as a starting point). The tools already exist for creating a framework of Internet and mobile applications that leverages our collective intelligence and awareness, and facilitates collaborative national planning.