Politics Online

Garrett Graff’s Washington Post op-ed published last December raises some very interesting issues regarding our presidential candidates and their technological literacy.  Garrett states that, “our economic future and security require that we have a higher standard for our leaders.”  And he goes on to pose the question, “Why is it that we blithely allow our leaders to be ignorant of the force that, probably more than any other, will drive and define the nation’s economic success and reshape its society over the next 20 years?”

In addition to many other Bush-isms, President Bush has referred to google as “the google” and the internet as the “internets” and thus dubbed (among other things) “Googler-in-Chief” by The Wall Street Journal.  Did you miss it?  Don’t worry, here’s a quick CNN clip that has it all:

In his op-ed piece, Garrett also mentions Senator Ted Steven’s description of the Internet as a “series of tubes” and Mitt Romney’s inability to distinguish the capabilities of YouTube from MySpace during a campaign trail question in early 2007.  Although we all get a good laugh out of this stuff, I have to agree with Garrett when he says that “technology shouldn’t be a laughing matter.”

It is my hope, too, that the 2008 presidential elections will reshape our standards of technological literacy for our leader.  In a Republican presidential debate in 2007, John McCain admitted his need to rely on the Vice President for up to date knowledge of our new technology.  The full transcript is available here, but this is what he said:

McCain: Look, I am going to give you some straight talk. This president came to office in a time of peace, and then we found ourselves in 2001.

And he did not have as much national security experience as I do. So he had to rely more on the vice president of the United States, and that’s obvious. I wouldn’t have to do that. I might have to rely on a vice president that I select on some other issues. He may have more expertise in telecommunications, on information technology, which is the future of this nation’s economy. He may have more expertise in a lot of areas.

Obama has publically stated that he intends to make technology literacy a priority in public schools and to use the “Internet as a tool to increase government accountability” according to alternet.org.

Only time will tell…

Wikipedia – What did we do before it?

I love Wikipedia.  Though it is not perfect, it is a truly brilliant way of sharing, collaborating on, and discovering information.

In Here Comes the Everybody, Clay Shirky describes this “unmanaged division of labor” as “spontaneous” and continues to write that “Wikipedia is able to aggregate individual and often tiny contributions, hundreds of millions of them annually, made by millions of contributors all performing different functions.”  Despite this “spontaneous division of labor,” I believe that we can trust Wikipedia as an beginning research tool.  By no means should we end there.  The amount of information that is available to us today through search (Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) is so large that we are able to look even further than Wikipedia.  Additionally, when compared to Britannica, Wikipedia is truly able to measure up.  And with costs of time and money factored in, Wikipedia wins hands down.

Part of the beauty of Wikipedia is that it is open to everyone — and I believe it should stay that way.  With the exception of a few articles that could be under heated debate, articles should be open to everyone and very rarely ‘locked.’  The entries in Wikipedia follow a power log distribution curve (where few people contribute a lot, and a lot of people contribute a little) which is similar logic to Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail. I believe that if Wikipedia closed itself down to the masses and allowed only verified ‘experts’ to create/edit articles, its popularity would quickly decline leading to an inevitable destruction of the site.  Prime example is Nupedia — the original intent of Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, until they stumbled upon what we now call Wikipedia.

I’m not sure how Wikipedia could be better set-up to better provide further accuracy.  Already, if an article is vandalized Wikipedians are quick to fix it, Wikipedia staff can put the subject matter on lock down or block a particular user, for repeat offenders, for a little over 1 day, which, they say, seems to work.

Lions, and Tigers, and GOOGLE, oh my!

What comes to mind when you hear the word Google?

Search, discovery, answers, questions, or even the colorful letters that makeup “Google” above the search box (which usually change daily according to the season/holiday, how cute!) — whatever may come to mind, it seems to be positive and beneficial.

So, you think, Google is great.  It allows the world to search its database about anything their heart desires, just one click, and we get it!  And their email is cool too – wow, it’s up to 6844 megabytes already?!  Thanks, Google, you’re the best.

Not so fast.  Remember when Mom told you if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is?  Well, it is.  All of this comes with a price: privacy.

“Don’t be Evil” is the corporate motto of Google.  John Battelle sums it up nicely in his book The Search by saying, “Don’t be Evil is a wonderful sentiment for describing the ethical boundaries of internal company dealings, but when your business is understood to be a global arbiter of human knowledge and commerce, sticking to such a principled stand can become extremely…tricky.”

What does “Don’t be Evil” really mean?  Play fair? Have morals? Google fails on both accounts.

1. Play fair.

Google currently controls about 59.3% of the search market, and about half of all online advertising revenue online.  It’s biggest competitor, Yahoo, owns only a measly 16.9% of the market.  According to The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch,

Microsoft made an ultimately unsuccessful bid to acquire Yahoo earlier this year in an effort to build a formidable opponent for Google in the online search market. Yahoo opted instead to sign a search advertising partnership with Google.

If you think that this sounds fishy, you’re not alone.  Some are calling their practices anti-competitive.

The New York Times published an article called Relax, Bill Gates; It’s Google’s Turn as the Villain.  In this article, Brian Lent, the president of Medio Systems, is quoted,

Google is the new evil empire, because they’re in such a powerful position in terms of control. They have potential monopolistic control over access to information…I like and respect the Google guys, but let’s just say that their ultimate aim seems to me to be, ‘One Google under Google, for which it stands.’

Reid Hoffman, the founder of two Internet ventures, including LinkedIn, agrees,

Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did….It’s largely that they’re hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they’re working on so many different things. It’s harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now.

According to Wikipeida, anti-competitive practices are practices that prevent and/or reduce competition in a market. These practices can lead to a monopoly.  Google seems pretty darn close to me.

2.  Have morals.

Think your emails are private?  What about your searches, or clickstreams?  Do you believe Google provides us with a comprehensive, unbiased, and free access search?  Think again.

Did you know that Google can review your personal information whenever it wants to?  John Battelle reiterates Google’s company policy:

We may share [private] information…[if] we conclude that we are required by law or have a good faith belief that access, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public.

REASONABLY NECESSARY?  Who determines this?  Mr. Lent had certainly had it right, “One Google under Google, for which it stands.”  How far will Google take this?  Who do they think they are?  And, why are we so trusting of them?

A portion of Google’s mission statement states:

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  And proudly boasts that after using Google you will understand “why others say, ‘Google is the closest thing the Web has to an ultimate answer machine.’

China would not agree with this.

In fall 2002, due to strict government regulations, the Chinese government filtered out Google among other search engines.  After two weeks, Google was restored back to Chinese citizens – but, when one would click on a link that posed problems with Chinese government, they were redirected to a government approved site.  Soon after, Google announced,”…in order to create the best possible search experience for our mainland China users we will not include site whose content is not accessible.”  I agree with John Battelle when he points out that,

Clearly Google was taking out all evidence of the banned site because that’s what the Chinese government wanted it to do…by working with China to omit certain sites, Google had seemingly become an accessory to evil.

Exactly.  This was a precedent set by Google.  Who else will be given the authority to tell Google what should and should not be on their search?  Who else will be blocked?  How far will this go?

Google is [currently the major] one of many ways to search the database of intentions that John Battelle talks about in his book, The Search.  The Database of Intentions is the aggregate results of every search, and paths taken from there.  It represents “a placeholder for the intentions of humankind – a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes” for all to know, or discover.  Pretty intense.  This has already had a huge impact on today’s society, and there is still more to come.

Who Else Wants to Easily Find What You Want at the Price You Want?

As noted in his book The Long Tail, Chris Anderson’s three forces of the Long Tail include democratizing the tools of production, cutting costs of consumption by democratizing distribution, and connecting supply and demand — or, more simply, as the start of the chapter states, “make it, get it out there, and help me find it.” By reducing the costs of reaching niches, our culture is able to move away from the head of the demand curve (the hits) and towards the tail (the niches).  We’ve been given more options, more variety!  Anderson says, “For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing…popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.”  Sounds good to me.

I really enjoyed this book, and started googling “long tail” and other combinations online just to read more about it.  I came across an article that interested me particularly because I love the performing arts world, as well as the movie-making industry.  In this article, major movie-makers from Hollywood admit that shooting digitally changes acting, directing, and the editing process drastically.  Now that we are in the digital age, it seems to me that film is being used less and less.

Digital video cameras are a Long Tail toolmaker, and aid in democratizing production (the first force of the Long Tail as I mentioned above). Now that we are in the digital age, it seems to me that film is being used less and less.  The everyday use of the digital still-camera is an example of this.  Who really carries around a non-digital camera when digital cameras provide us with so much more and at a reasonable price? The accessibility and overall costs (not only of initial purchase, but also including costs of function, maintenance, and printing) associated with the two make digital cameras a winner.  What is the repercussion of this?  I, personally, take many more photos than I ever have.  Additionally, after uploading them to my computer, I spend lots of time adjusting the saturation, sharpness, brightness, and red eye.  I’ve been given more power over my photos, and in turn, they are better for it.

I think the same is true for the movie-making industry in this case.  If not now, then over time we will see a better quality of movie surface due to this change.  Actors have less pressure on them to “get it right the first time” and are given more opportunities to repeat a scene.  Directors have more power than ever: a good and bad thing.  But, after reading the comments on this article, I think Mike Walsh is on to something when comparing the transition of silent movies to talkies with the article’s mention of a director over-working the star actor unnecessarily:

…Right now we are dealing with unintended fallout from digital “filming”, such as overly long takes or murky colors. The upside is that the cost savings, while unimportant in big budget movies, are important in smaller, character driven productions. Just as the painter’s choice of medium (ie watercolors vs. oils) change the kind of painting they create, eventually a consensus will be reached on how the new systems are used.

Well put.

PODCASTS

Additionally, I’ve been asked to blog about my experience with podcasts and I just have to say that I can’t believe I didn’t get into these sooner.  I’ve had iTunes for at least 3 or more years now, and each time I would accidentally click on the ‘podcast’ option, I would quickly exit out and not return.  I was missing out on a lot!  And it’s FREE (? which still confuses me a bit!)

I listened to a handful of podcasts, but found The Economist’s Democracy in America segment, “John McWhorter on Hip-Hop Politics” posted June 12, 2008 (can I link to podcasts?) to be particularly interesting.  McWhorter believes that hip-hop doesn’t make anyone do anything. From acting on a violent theme that it endorses to going to the polls to vote, hip-hop has proven to not be an effective medium. He goes on to praise Barack Obama’s campaign strategies of reaching out to the young vote in ways that have never been done.  Other things come into play when it comes to getting people to vote, mainly, effort (such as the Get Out the Vote campaign).

Reading Response: “We the Media” by Dan Gillmor

After reading, We the Media by Dan Gillmor, I have been asked:  What is the most important point, and why?

Gillmor makes two major points.  First, the Internet has given us the ability to exchange information and converse openly, freely, and very easily, which in turn, has and will continue to forever change traditional public relations, journalism, politics, and Big Media as we know it.  We the Media.  Anyone can be a reporter, photographer, critic, and the like.  Additionally, Gillmor stresses that it is vital that we fully embrace this change and allow ourselves to be part of it, not to ignore it, in order to succeed.

Up until very recently, traditional media was all we had.  Whether we received it via TV, radio, newspapers, or books, we were only consumers of news.  Today, with Internet websites like OhMyNews and Kuro5hin, participatory journalism has blossomed.  And, rightfully so!  Two heads are better than one. And, collectively, the audience knows more than the experienced member of the press.  Gillmor outlines this very well, and goes on to mention that participatory journalism is also helpful in unique niches, which I agree.  Gillmor says, “My main focus in this book is on what happens when people at the edges participate in the news-gathering and dissemination processes…The news is what we make of it, in more ways than one.”

In order to succeed in PR, journalism, politics, and business in the 21st century, we must understand and participate in this conversation.  We must recognize its value and importance and follow suit.  In Chapter 6, Dan Gillmor goes on to discuss traditional media’s opportunity, in which he criticizes the choice some organizations make to not include reporters’ or editors’ email addresses at the end of stories, and The Washington Post’s webchats as not enough interactivity with the audience.   I think he’s gone a bit too far and I have to disagree.

Depending on the organization, providing an email address at the end of an article is not always necessary.  Any person with a valid question or comment can discover contact information, whether it be on the “Contact Us” link, or choose to call the main number, or use the generic email address provided.  I believe that perhaps by making it “too” accessible, the writer/editor would be bombarded with bogus emails cluttering their inbox, making it a waste of time – already short on time with numerous deadlines.  I believe The Washington Post’s attempt at community discussions and conversations via their webchat is a good idea.  Additionally, they have links to blogs, past and current discussions, and podcasts.  Instead, I wish Dan Gillmor provided constructive criticism on what exactly the site is lacking – because to me, it seems well done.  Realistically, what more could they have done to increase interactivity in this case?

We the Media was informative and interesting.  With the exception of a few comments, I agree with Dan Gillmor and enjoyed his book.