How Election '08 made me love Current, Twitter, and my iPhone
This is an open love letter to the 2008 US presidential election, and also an open love letter to my cell phone.
But what's to love? Politics is nasty business. The two-party system has never been more clearly cut, and the nation never so lividly polarized. The election cycle has uncovered latent racism, sexism, xenophobia, and mob mentality on both sides. Then, of course, there is the weirdness of political celebrity and cults of personality. Has Dave Letterman ever been more relevant? This election is awful.
But this election is so different in other, positive ways, maybe because everyone has so much more to lose, but probably because technology itself has changed so much since 2004. Effects: my friends have completely stopped twittering about what they're eating for lunch, instead posting URLs to election coverage. Friends who had never heard of Current nonetheless tweeted for 'Hack the Debate.' We follow world news and hit Wikipedia to bone up on foreign policy. Some of my friends registered to vote on their Xboxes.
One friend kills time by clicking around on an election map. "You do realize you're basically doing Fantasy Football," I told him. I don't have a right to tease him: I installed Slate.com's Poll Tracker iPhone app so I can follow electoral votes during smoke breaks. Obama's campaign has an iPhone app, too, with a nested menu of "issues" and the ticket's stance on each. My workday, too, has changed: I will open a streaming video and leave it on in the background as I work on my laptop. It reminds me of the way a friend of mine listens to baseball games at his office. We are having fun with election news the way we might have fun with sports. Politics are still important, still a little scary. But then there is this: they are finally totally fun.
Today I realized that I am not only more interested in politics than I was in 2004, but that I feel participative. The political process is, even in a twisted and angry way, something that makes me happy. Am I just older, wiser? Angrier? Or does it have something to do with accessibility, with open dialogue?
I decided to search the internet using the terms "technology" and "politics." A ton of news stories appeared. Many of them used the word REVOLUTION in their opening paragraphs.
"Rather than creating the perfect ten second sound bite, candidates must let go and have a real conversation," writes Sharon Housley. Housley isn't a political commentator -- rather, she works in marketing for a blogging software company. "Maybe as candidates are forced back to earth and voters gain a stake in the process, America will become the voice of the unschooled as well as the educated, the poor as well as the rich, men and women of all ages and every race. After all, isn't that what democracy is supposed to be?"
In a 2005 article titled "People, not technology, drive politics," Andy Ho of the Straits Times warned against misunderstanding -- but not underestimating -- the new trend. "One problem in politics is that people with a common interest generally don't organise and fight for it," Ho wrote three years ago. He also wrote, "Is online campaigning the thing to watch now? Probably not. Yet." How quickly times change.
"Ordinary people ... are now influencing and changing the political process, both in the way we elect people, and in the future, the way we do actual governance," Craiglist founder Craig Newmark told CNN in June. "This is as big a change as what we had in 1776."
So ends my love letter to my laptop, to my iPhone, and to all the people who are also sitting at their laptops. Tell me this rings a bell. How has technology changed the way you follow domestic and world politics? How has it opened dialogue? How do you use your cell phone?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/26/technology.election/index.html#cnnSTCText
http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/Article/Technology-and-Politics/83132
http://www.tamilnation.org/digital/politics.htm
But what's to love? Politics is nasty business. The two-party system has never been more clearly cut, and the nation never so lividly polarized. The election cycle has uncovered latent racism, sexism, xenophobia, and mob mentality on both sides. Then, of course, there is the weirdness of political celebrity and cults of personality. Has Dave Letterman ever been more relevant? This election is awful.
But this election is so different in other, positive ways, maybe because everyone has so much more to lose, but probably because technology itself has changed so much since 2004. Effects: my friends have completely stopped twittering about what they're eating for lunch, instead posting URLs to election coverage. Friends who had never heard of Current nonetheless tweeted for 'Hack the Debate.' We follow world news and hit Wikipedia to bone up on foreign policy. Some of my friends registered to vote on their Xboxes.
One friend kills time by clicking around on an election map. "You do realize you're basically doing Fantasy Football," I told him. I don't have a right to tease him: I installed Slate.com's Poll Tracker iPhone app so I can follow electoral votes during smoke breaks. Obama's campaign has an iPhone app, too, with a nested menu of "issues" and the ticket's stance on each. My workday, too, has changed: I will open a streaming video and leave it on in the background as I work on my laptop. It reminds me of the way a friend of mine listens to baseball games at his office. We are having fun with election news the way we might have fun with sports. Politics are still important, still a little scary. But then there is this: they are finally totally fun.
Today I realized that I am not only more interested in politics than I was in 2004, but that I feel participative. The political process is, even in a twisted and angry way, something that makes me happy. Am I just older, wiser? Angrier? Or does it have something to do with accessibility, with open dialogue?
I decided to search the internet using the terms "technology" and "politics." A ton of news stories appeared. Many of them used the word REVOLUTION in their opening paragraphs.
"Rather than creating the perfect ten second sound bite, candidates must let go and have a real conversation," writes Sharon Housley. Housley isn't a political commentator -- rather, she works in marketing for a blogging software company. "Maybe as candidates are forced back to earth and voters gain a stake in the process, America will become the voice of the unschooled as well as the educated, the poor as well as the rich, men and women of all ages and every race. After all, isn't that what democracy is supposed to be?"
In a 2005 article titled "People, not technology, drive politics," Andy Ho of the Straits Times warned against misunderstanding -- but not underestimating -- the new trend. "One problem in politics is that people with a common interest generally don't organise and fight for it," Ho wrote three years ago. He also wrote, "Is online campaigning the thing to watch now? Probably not. Yet." How quickly times change.
"Ordinary people ... are now influencing and changing the political process, both in the way we elect people, and in the future, the way we do actual governance," Craiglist founder Craig Newmark told CNN in June. "This is as big a change as what we had in 1776."
So ends my love letter to my laptop, to my iPhone, and to all the people who are also sitting at their laptops. Tell me this rings a bell. How has technology changed the way you follow domestic and world politics? How has it opened dialogue? How do you use your cell phone?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/26/technology.election/index.html#cnnSTCText
http://www.abcarticledirectory.com/Article/Technology-and-Politics/83132
http://www.tamilnation.org/digital/politics.htm
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- groups:
- Tech, Twitter, CNN, Hack the Debate
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- credits:
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- jennatar wrote this
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