Meeting with Ethan
March 31st, 2004
..wonderful meeting with Ethan Zuckerman in my place west of Boston
yesterday–inspired me to want to wrestle even more deeply with how we
create a truly global, truly sustainable way of life..using what we
know of economic and business ecosystems,
biological ecosystems, as well as media and the net and what we are
starting to learn about human interaction on and off the net.
Ethan makes a major contribution in forcing our attention toward the
rest of the 6 plus billion people on the planet..in this US political
season we have gotten even more myopic and self-focused,
perhaps–though clearly our election has major implications for people
around the world…
Thanks Ethan!
RSS Video
March 28th, 2004
Bill Joy has said that the important thing most people forget about
standards is that they are essentially for machine-to-machine
interaction. The big advances in standards come when we find
simple scalable ways to tie together machines that matter into
vast interactive networks.
XML was a revolutionary development because it allowed different machines to talk to each other.
RSS is revolutionary because I can write this simple line of text, and
publish it into a world of machines that do important distribution and
display things with it–in a context of millions of machines.
Now we need a next generation of RSS–or perhaps just more clever use
of this version of RSS (I’m not qualified technically to debate this critical issue)–to tie millions of personal computers
into the next generation of video boxes, such as TIVO and Digeo and
Akimbo–and thus millions of televisions.
Oh yea, and perhaps we might think about hacking digital radio, too…
TV as the new game 2
March 28th, 2004
Hey, I know some of us are tired, but we need some more innovation–fast.
In my view the most basic use of the Internet in national politics has now become a
commodity. The most basic three elements–spin blogging, fundraising, and
candidate information are rapidly going from being a
differentiator to being an expected element of a decent campaign. To demonstrate my point, Google
around and you will find lots and lots of folks who will set up a
fundraising site almost overnight.
The challenge ahead, for those
who want to make a difference, now must somehow address more powerfully
the full TV-amplified circus of US and world personalities and
events. To my mind, no one has really cracked the code on this
one. The closest are perhaps those who are putting video into
emails–principally the RNC and the Bush campaign–to do video spin a
la the Bush 6 million person email trying to correct the disastrous
impression the president made in the Tim Russert TV interview.
Perhaps we could combine RSS enclosures and peoples’ local footage
shot, say, in the middle east (of the world) and the middle west swing
states (of the United States) to send around a more complete view of
our world. And Andrew Grumet and Armando Stettner: could we
hack TIVO boxes to play these videos?
TV as the new game
March 27th, 2004
MoveOn.org and Americans Coming Together
are now the central actors in the campaign. For better or worse, the
campaign is being fought on TV now. The good news is that
MoveOn.org and ACT have built the capabilty (platform) to creatively
and proactively counter each day Bush’s ads in swing states and crucial
cities. What is most interesting is how both organizations are
using realtime competitive intelligence about Bush media buys to target
their own ads. Ah, this is strategy! This election will
likely hinge on how sophisticated a campaign can use TV, a capability
that MoveOn.org, ACT, and the Kerry campaign are investing in heavily.
Note the Republican National Committee is threatening the managers of television stations
in order to get stations to refuse to run the ads. The RNC is
doing this by writing to stations claiming that what MoveOn.org
is doing is illegal–and that the stations risk penalties.
Here is an exerpt of the Republican National Committee letter
sent to 250 stations around the nation, from the above link,
“As a broadcaster licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, you
have a responsibility to the viewing public and to your licensing
agency to refrain from complicity in any illegal activity, specifically
in this case, violations of our nation’s Federal Election Laws. Since
this is a third party political advertisement and not a candidate
sponsored message, your station is under no obligation to broadcast
this advertisement.”
Station managers and owners understand that the FCC is in the executive
branch of the goverment, and thus under the direct influence of the
Bush whitehouse.
This letter, of course, also puts the station owners–many of whom are
Bush donors–on notice that the president is very very concerned about
these ads..and that station owners have a perfectly valid pretext for
pulling the offending ads off the air.
Jordan Pollack and the political memosphere
March 27th, 2004
I spoke yesterday in Jordan Pollack’s class on Internet and Society, at Brandeis University.
Jordan
is a deservedly famous computer scientist who works on robotics and
genetic algorithms–his robots design themselves. His other
major interest is technology and culture. We had a great time
with his bright, interested students, about two thirds computer science
majors, and the rest econ or poli sci.
Fun intellectual fireworks as Jordan and I threw ideas around with the
students. We considered the
Internet for insurgent campaigns, and using the Internet to challenge
the mainstream media (a Dave Winer specialty–I have to get these two guys together).
We explored what Jordan calls the “memosphere”–what
I call the “zeitgeist” or the global village–that arena of ideas and
images and language that we all share–and that is both sustained and
manimpulated by media. So much of the election here in the US, as
well as the spread of either cooperation or terrorism (to name to
extremes on a spectrum of social construction and destruction) depends
on the images we share, the ways we interpret events, and what we
conclude makes sense to do about it.
Jordan thinks that Bush is not afraid of Kerry because Bush plans to
exploit the “big circus” opportunities of the world stage, and thus
dominate the memosphere despite Kerry’s ads and campaign. Jordan
figures (as I do) that the Pakistanis already have Bin Laden–and
that is the reason that we have been willing to give them special
status–last week–to buy arms from us in preference to other parties
such as, to use an interesting example, the Indians. And why we
have turned the other cheek at the pardon of the leader of their
state-enabled nuclear proliferation enterprise.
What should we do to counter this?
1. Talk about proven “big circus” plays of the past–e.g.
Reagan’s deal to have the Iranians hold the hostages until after he
could beat Carter.
2. Speculate publicly about Bush’s expected use of this tactic today.
3. Point out the human cost of these ploys–in, for example, the deaths of US soldiers sincerely “searching” for Bin Laden.
4. Raise questions about events that seem too coincidental not to be
orchestrated. Like the recent “imminent capture” of a high level
Queda leader in Pakastan–conveniently during Powell’s trip to Pakistan
to announce our new arms deal with that nation. By the way, do
you notice how this story has dropped off the news? When last we heard,
500 or so tribal fighters were surrounded by 5000 to 7000 Pakastani
troops. What happened? What we do know is that the other
day an audio tape from the supposed Queda leader was received and
played on Arab television, taunting us…and now the Pakistanis say “he
is on the run.” BTW the CIA says the tape, after analysis, is
“probably authentic.”
Hmmmm.
PS: I mentioned my speculation that Janet Jackson’s boob was
exposed to take brother Michael Jackson off the nightly news.
Jordan said, “yea, but who do you suppose both Jacksons were taking off
the news?” Oh yea, Paul O’Neil.
Receive/give ratio?
March 23rd, 2004
The candidates are taking a lot from the Internet this year, but not
discussing its issues. Perhaps this is ok, as long as Kerry wins
Candidates unclear on tech issues.
Follow the money
March 23rd, 2004
CNET reminds us of a nice tool for “following the money” FundRace shows neighbors’ political donations.
BusinessWeek on “Click The Vote”
March 22nd, 2004
Here in BusinessWeek this week is the most comprehensive special report on web politics in a mainstream magazine that I have seen recently–what I especially value is that it focuses heavily on Republicans and conservatives as well as liberals (like myself). The writers declare George Bush far ahead of the Democrats:
Still, President Bush holds a strong tech lead. The Republicans have a 3-to-1 edge in e-mail addresses and a finely tuned Web site aimed at organizing rather than fund-raising. In December, GeorgeWBush.com rolled out a service that rewards people with mugs and signed photos of Bush if they hit targets, such as signing up 10 volunteers or registering five voters. Over the past seven weeks, the number of volunteers has more than tripled, to 280,000. Such tactics have helped the campaign build an e-mail list bulging with 6 million names. Chuck DeFeo, Bush’s e-campaign manager, says the Net strategy is focused on getting people “to take action.”
(BusinessWeek, March 29, 2004, :”Click the Vote” special report)
Independent voters are key
March 17th, 2004
Why Nader will be a big problem if he stays in, and why Kerry must reach out to independent voters:
Pennsylvania is shaping up once again as a
critical state in the Presidential race as voters give 44 percent to
President George W. Bush, 40 percent to Democratic challenger John
Kerry and 7 percent to independent candidate Ralph Nader, according to
a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
In a head-to-head race, without Nader, Kerry gets 45 percent to
President Bush’s 44 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN
uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
In the two-candidate race, Republicans back Bush 77 to 14 percent, as
Democrats back Kerry 77 to 14 percent and independent voters go with
Kerry 48 to 36 percent.
With Nader in the race, independent voters shift to 38 percent for
Kerry, 34 percent for Bush and 15 percent for Nader. Republicans shift
from 14 percent for Kerry to 11 percent for Kerry and 4 percent for
Nader.
Deliberative democracy, meet Emergent democracy
March 17th, 2004
Over the weekend I met Tonya Gonzalez, the director of the Deliberative
Democracy Consortium. I enjoyed her insights very much. She just
emailed a link to the following information on what she and her
colleagues
are doing. I don’t know much about it yet, but enough to note
that their’s
seems to be a community that is engaged in practical learning about how
to make
democracy work–and that they appear to constitute a distinct community
from the bloggers like myself that make up the informal “emergent
democracy” ecosystem. I think that the two communities may be
able to learn from each other. So Tonya, check out Joi Ito
and his paper on “Emergent Democracy,” and Joi, Britt and others, check out
Tonya’s work:
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