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…

Second Life

In less than 20 minutes upon arrival, I found myself running around in a strange place with angel wings attached to my back and a beer bottle in hand.  No, I’m not talking about my Halloween experience last year.  I’m talking about my avatar, Rosie Osterham.

Second life is a virtual world video game on the internet in which you can choose your own character (called an avatar) as well as what it does.  The possibilities to this are endless.  Your avatar doesn’t even have to be human — some are even animals (or so I’m told…I’m still a novice so I haven’t seen one just yet).  As I started to fiddle around with my avatar’s appearance, I was given the option to have a double chin or not! (By the way, who would WANT a double chin?)

I’m still not entirely sure how I came across the wings (I think I found them in a box labeled “Free Stuff”), but I was able to use them to my advantage.  Not only did it give me the option to fly, but a very nice man named Eugene started a conversation with me which began, “Nice wings.”  Turns out he wanted a pair too.  So I just did a click-and-drag from my inventory box to him (still having no idea if that would even work), and he got them!  He was very happy about it.  In fact, he decided to give me a box of women’s clothing in return.  This was a great surprise to me because I was still in the generic dress that comes with the standard avatar.  I didn’t know how popular my avatar was until I arrived at “Orientation Island” and found about 8 other girls with brown hair and a pink dress roaming the island.  Although, I did stand out slightly since I had angel wings.

I probably spent a total of 4 hours exploring Second Life.  I barely scratched the surface.  There is so much to do, so much to see, so many people to talk to, so much to buy, SO MANY OPTIONS!  It is so open-ended, I was a bit overwhelmed with the magnitude of this game.  If Second Life has a point or message to get across to its users, I think I have a good idea of what it is:  Anything you can do in the real world, you can do here.  Anything you can’t do in the real world, you can also do here.

Second Life uses “Linden dollars” as its currency.  But make no mistake, this isn’t monopoly money.  It’s real.  That’s right, real.  People are actually paying for things that exist only in the virtual world.  Ailin Graef (avatar name: Anshe Chung) and her husband Guntram Graef created Anshe Chung Studios in Second Life.  CNET News reported that their company’s total holdings, mostly virtual land, were worth more than a million real-life dollars.  Wow.

Before you cry Emperor’s New Clothes on me, just think about this a little deeper.  REAL money is being exchanged in a FAKE world.  But is this world really fake?  I think we need to be careful with this one.  It’s virtual, not fake.  Although I can’t feel it, smell it, or taste it, I can see it and hear it.  That’s 2 out of 5 senses.  Having money factor into this virtual world makes it a virtual economy, which I think is a Pandora’s box just waiting to be opened.

Also pretty interesting is that some people participating in Second Life have gone so far as to attempt to perform Euripides’ The Bacchae.  Here is a clip of their rehearsals where they work out techinical difficulties with skin changes, etc.

Here Comes Everybody!

Clay Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody:  The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,  eloquently describes how the Internet revolution’s social tools have given us the ability to form groups with ease we’ve never experienced before, causing major changes in social interactions, politics, and the economy. He compares this change with the invention of the printing press – scribes were put out of business, but the  society as a whole was able to benefit greatly (the increase in supply of books, increased literacy and knowledge, and therefore, increased employment).  With social tools available to us today, many-to-many communications are made easy and allow for a “shared awareness” to spread among people and groups.  Having a shared awareness among people in a group is key for action to take place.

Having lived in Boston during the devastating and shocking news of the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, it was eye opening to read in Mr. Shirky’s book that it was the formation of the group VOTF (Voice of the Faithful) which led to Bernard Law’s resignation.  VOTF grew from just 30 people to 25,000 in half a year including international members, says Shirky.  VOTF used the Internet to get the word around.  Shirky writes:

What we are witnessing today is a difference in the degree of sharing so large it becomes a difference in kind…What technology did do was alter the spread, force, and especially duration of the reaction, by removing two old obstacles — locality of information and barriers to group reaction…No significant challenge to the hierarchy has ever come directly from the laity — until now.

Additionally, Shirky describes how the power law distribution also applies to social interactions.  I found this particularly interesting because a few weeks ago we read Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail in which he uses the same pattern to describe how online stores like Amazon, Netflix, and iTunes sell a large amount of popular items while the unique and less popular items are sold in small quantities individually, but as a whole, prove to be a large percentage of revenue.  Anderson’s power law distribution looks like this.  When looking at the power law for blogs, Shirky shows us that it looks like this.

Interesting stuff.