Yesterday we conducted our first interview in Austin, Texas, with Jon Lebkowky, editor of the new book, Extreme Democracy, which examines the way technology is changing politics. The book is rooted in the online activism that surfaced during Howard Dean's run for the U.S. Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2004.

Extreme Democracy contains essays on such topics as emergent democracy, weblogging, eVoting, and open source government. One of the pieces, by Technorati's Joichi Ito, was itself created through the processes of weblogging and wiki. Other contributors include co-editor Mitch Radcliffe (longtime MacWEEK contributor and editor of Digital Media magazine), James F. Moore (author of The Death of Competition, HarperBusiness 1996), and Clay Shirky (adjunct professor at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program) -- and 11 other authors.

Jon Lebkowsky is a dangerous combination of writer and geek. He has the intellect to understand the technology behind networked computers, and the grace to explain it quite fluently to even complete novices. His biting sense of humor added a gleeful element to his writing for such publications as FringeWare Review and bOING bOING. He is the CEO of Polycot, an Internet technology consulting company headquartered here in Austin.

Jon has a passion for politics that is unusual in the self-absorbed world of high-tech. He is particularly fascinated with the application of technology to democracy. Much like his colleague and friend, Howard Rheingold, Lebkowsky has studied and written at length about virtual communities, online social networks, computer-mediated communications and online community. He blogs regularly at Rheingold's SmartMobs.com site, at WorldChanging.com, and at his own blog, Weblogsky.com.

Jon was a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "alpha chapter" in Austin, Texas, and still serves as president. He is co-founder of the Open Source Business Alliance, the Social Software Alliance, and the Austin Wireless City Project. He is an advisor to Austin's famous South by Southwest Interactive conference, and managed the year-long Wireless Future project for the University of Texas.

During our interview, Jon talked about how technology is changing democracy and how it will likely continue to change the way decisions are reached, not only in politics but also in private corporations and non-governmental organizations. AuthorViews' editors are working hard to get a clip of this interview for you to see soon. The book, Extreme Democracy, is available only at LuLu.com.