A certain part of big business, going all the way back to Bill Gates in the ’90s, has been enthusing about “flattening hierarchies” and the networked organization, and all the rest of it. That doesn’t alter the fact that some of these people, like Gates, are also the most authoritarian Copyright Nazis and enemies of p2p/foss around.

Likewise, Obama has been extremely innovative in making use of the organizing potential of social networking sites and the Internet in general. But he’s also reached a new high of authoritarianism and control-freakishness, if you look at his policy for vetting White House staff (if you’ve ever had a blog or a Facebook page, you can dump your resume in the can on the way out).

Given the Democratic Party’s close ties to Bill Gates, the late Jack Valenti, etc., I expect Obama will be friendly to network organization precisely to the extent it can be domesticated for the service of hierarchy.

While I’m still getting spammed by Plouffe, btw, the communication only seems to run one way.