Harry’s right, I’m fickle.
But this is intriguing: Barack Obama intends to create a cabinet position for a Chief Technical Officer. This CTO “would ensure government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans.”
Obama has also called for open access to the wireless spectrum and for complete network neutrality.
Read more about his technology plan here.
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Check out this interview he did over at Techcrunch. Hands down the most knowledgeable candidate in tech/interweb related issues.
http://tinyurl.com/2py4qb
Would you really vote for a candidate based on that he’s the one who knows most about your hobby? As a European, I’m still waiting for way more profound political statements by Obama.
government accountability and free speech are a hobby? okay. that’s why you’re a european and not an american.
How free is speech on the internet really if China can make a major metacrawler disable searches for terms like “freedom”? I’m not saying that other media are not easily manipulted, but unless he’s a regular user of new media himself (in case of which he likely wouldn’t stress their use as he’d take them for granted), it sounds as “genuinely” convincing as my mother looks in clothes by BabyPhat (she loves the cat logo…). Several of my friends over here are university staff at an IT department, part of them have specialized in computer-visualization. It definitely doesn’t take too much knowledge and a few handy tools to alter “live” info on the web and still make it look genuine. Idealistically, I’ll agree with Obama on the possible benefits of the use of new media to make politics easier to grasp, but my experiences as a teacher tell me that people that are not interested in something won’t get interested in it either if the contents are being served on a silver platter. Just sayin’…
Yawn. How German of you.
You may not have noticed, living in Europe as you do, but the US is experiencing the highest youth turnout in electoral history, and from where I stand, politics is on the tips of everyone’s tongues. America hasn’t been this politically active and aware since the 1960s.
Websites like those supported by the Sunlight Foundation are growing ever more popular, and I believe were citizens given more direct access to the means of democratic participation that they would jump at the opportunity.
Case in point: Notice how the Bush administration is now attacking Congress for being influenced by bloggers. That’s us WINNING.
But thanks.
Oh, and what does China’s filtering have to do with US telecoms providing tiered bandwidth service that benefits major corporations over individuals, small non-profits and small businesses?
Easy thing, filtering can be installed without anybody noticing. It equals to that line, “The freedom of the press belongs to those that control the press.”
How German of me? Humph! But true, I haven’t been to Brooklyn in a while; should be there in four weeks though (provided I get my passport in time).
Parties as well as the government do a lot of youth work over here to encourage young voters to cast their votes; you may already vote for city councils from age 16 on. Still, there’s a large body of youths that’s seriously indifferent to anything outside their soap opera / casting show world, and you find those on both sides of the Big Pond. Just to give you an idea, because you obviously aren’t anything like those youths, a few months ago I taught a class on the distribution of wealth and population in the world in the context of a series of classes on development policies. To make things more interesting (I hoped), I had students split up into different corners of the classroom as they thought population was distributed throughout the world. They pretty much got it wrong, so I had to clue them in; in a class of 18 people, there’d be one student for each North and South America, one student for Africa, two students for Europe and the rest for Asia. Students were then asked to distribute 18 chairs as they thought wealth was distributed globally. (Results should have been six chairs for Europe, seven chairs for North America, the rest divided up among the other continents.) Afterwards I tried to have some “guided classroom communication” (i.e. you direct a conversation into a specific direction through asking certain questions), but pretty much anything I stated was replied to by silence or shrugging. That event is symptomatic of what I often experience with adolescents of a certain social background, and their very demographic is pretty widely spread. Those are youths that even when referred to won’t read or listen to any news on the internet; they ften come from families that have had a history of political indifference for three generations. As long as they are fed and clothed, they don’t care. The Ancient Romans already knew how to keep that demographic in check by providing “panem et circenses”.
here’s another great link by larry lessig about obama and technology, specifically the intarwebs.
also, sarah: don’t buy into the clinton smear that obama has no policy. check out the incredible policy-laden speech he gave about NOLA. also, his economics heavy speech in WI.
oh crap i forgot, here’s the link: http://blog.printf.net/article.....bama-video
IH, I don’t really buy into anybody’s campaign, but look at every candidate’s very own statements. Of course, my gauge ae the political campaigns I’m used to over here, and those generally are more substantial content-wise.
Oh, and we don’t have the confetti dopping here. No free chocolates or ice cream either. And no caucuses to begin with, the decision on a candidate is taken at a paty’s general convention; possible candidates lay out their policies beforehand - often including the cabinet they will appoint in case if - so it all boils down to a day’s vote to decide on who will run for the second-highest position in the state. (The highest position, nominally, is that of the federal president, whose tasks are representing Germany abroad, signing - thereby ratifying - or rejecting laws (for further revision), and being a high moral authority socially and politically.)
open government..broadcast meetings, the light of day in critical negotiations….. never happen.
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