The Internet….and the next presidential election. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. When it comes to the role the Internet will play in the 2008 election…all you have to do is look at the importance the candidates are attaching to it. The campaigns have hired Internet directors….and some have used their Web sites to make the announcements that they're running. Beyond that, in some ways it's a different Internet than existed four or eight years ago. Author and New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman says ..

"It's obvious that the Internet empowers more people to create their own content, which is to say create their own political blog, reaction to candidates, promotion of candidates, denunciation of candidates. And I can't help but believe that in a world where more people can upload their own opinions and content and more people can search other people's words and content that that will have a political impact. What it will be, I can't tell you, but I can't believe it will be zero."

At the Pew Research Center, Internet project director Lee Rainie says increasing numbers of people are relying on the Internet as their primary sources of political news. And those sources can be anyone…anywhere…

"Everybody's a media creator, at least has that potential. The barriers to entry to making media are very small now. It's close to zero if you want to be a publisher. You just have to give it time and you just have to care about it."

You can find more information at personaldemocracy.com. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.