Vote.com: How Big-Money Lobbyists are Losing Influence, and the Internet is Giving Power to the People

Politics as usual - isn't anymore. Tear up what you know or think you know about politics. It's all changing. For thirty years the print and broadcast media - the Fourth Estate - dominated politics. Journalists and pundits shaped the way we perceived and thought about issues and politicians. But today, information, opinion, and raw data abound on the Internet, unfiltered and unvarnished by press secretaries, reporters or spin doctors. The Fifth Estate is the amalgam of Internet technology and the voters who use it; every day, 22 million Americans log on to the Internet looking for news. This combination of average citizens with easy access to information and a direct link to their representatives heralds a new dawning of democracy, putting political power back into the hands of the people. The Internet is about to send the information revolution into reverse, letting us talk back to our political leaders, and the result will be a cultural revolution.