connecting*the*dots

Jonathan Hutson, Talk To Action
The Purpose Driven Life Takers

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission — to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is “to conduct physical and spiritual warfare”; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

[…]

This game immerses children in present-day New York City — 500 square blocks, stretching from Wall Street to Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the United Nations headquarters, and Harlem. The game rewards children for how effectively they role play the killing of those who resist becoming a born again Christian. The game also offers players the opportunity to switch sides and fight for the army of the AntiChrist, releasing cloven-hoofed demons who feast on conservative Christians and their panicked proselytes (who taste a lot like Christian).

Is this paramilitary mission simulator for children anything other than prejudice and bigotry using religion as an organizing tool to get people in a violent frame of mind? The dialogue includes people saying, “Praise the Lord,” as they blow infidels away.

The designers intend this game to become the first dominionist warrior game to break through in the popular culture due to its violent scenarios and realistic graphics, lighting, and sound effects. Its creators expect it to earn a rating of T for Teen. How violent is that? That’s the rating shared by Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory, a top selling game in which high-tech gadgets and high-powered weapons - frag grenades, shotguns, assault rifles, and submachine guns — are used to terminate enemies with extreme prejudice.

Could such a violent, dominionist Christian video game really break through to the popular culture? Well, it is based on a series of books that have already set sales records - the blockbuster Left Behind series of 14 novels by writer Jerry B. Jenkins and his visionary collaborator, retired Southern Baptist minister Tim LaHaye. “We hope teenagers like the game,” Mr. LaHaye told the Los Angeles Times. “Our real goal is to have no one left behind.”

[…]

Freedom of speech and anti-censorship laws exist in this nation to protect our ability to hold civil discourse — even when it’s in the form of twisted, violent, crusading game narratives aimed at our children and marketed through the tenticles of the mega-church.

The redeeming factor behind the development of this specific game, is that the motive of the religous right is on display for the world to see. Too often their hatred becomes cloaked in motive numbing rhetoric — placating tales of Jesus’ love for all humanity as long as humanity devotes itself to Jesus. Over the past 20 years, such rhetoric has masked their intent, allowing them to gain a strong, political foothold in America — specifically with moderate Christians.

So when the religous right’s arrogance is responsible for removing their own metaphorical hoods, we need to gaze into their hateful, soulless eyes and take detailed notes.

The “Up In Arms” Crowd

It’s interesting to note that historically, church groups have been the most active in denouncing hip-hop music and video games for their violent content, arguing that they influence kids to become violent, misogynistic, or even worse, question authority.

Left Behind: Eternal Forces is scheduled to release in October 2006, just four months away. Where are these vocal groups now? Is “bling” and “bitch” rhetoric more deserving of protest than marketing to children a programmed, interactive virtual reality for cleansing non-Christian people from the face of the earth?

Hillary Clinton railed hard against the Hot Coffee mod, a locked, sex scene found in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (a scene that only a slight percentage of geeks even knew existed) in a move that smelled of pandering to the family values crowd. Where is her outrage?

It’ll be interesting to see how long Left Behind: Eternal Forces flies under the radar of both the church and Hillary Clinton.

It’ll actually be quite telling…

Just the other day I found myself on a 10 hour trip home from New Jersey. Normally, the drive kills me, but thankfully, I had hours upon hours of Echo Chamber Project podcasts sitting to my right. When I made it home at 3:00am (I missed the damn turn at 85-440), I plopped on the couch and fired off a note to Kent Bye, thanking him for the virtual company.

Well, Kent got back in touch the next day and asked if I’d like to chat over Skype. Here’s the result (part of the audio becomes scrambled for 30 seconds, twice).

Four months ago, in the midst of writing an essay about Web 2.0, I threw out an example of a potential service that reflected the best qualities of the movement. Well, it’s now a reality; Welcome coComment.

Man, I love this industry; a thought one day, a full-fledged service another. Now if I could only score an invite to use my dream service of discourse.

UPDATE: The folks over at coComment just sent me an invite. Thanks, guys!

After a ton of hard work by many people, the redesigned Media Matters for America site has launched.

OLD:

NEW:

Behavior Design knocked out the visual design, we shared the information design, I handled the tagging schema/information architecture and we all tag-teamed with the Media Matters crew.

Now that the site is live, I’ve a bunch of tagging and findability methods I’d like to discuss here, but not tonight. Tonight I digest my sushi dinner with friends in San Fran.

Terrance—over at The Republic of T—asks a simple, yet provocative question in preparation of the 2006 elections: What’s Your Platform?

Okay, I’m game. Here are my most imperative policy reforms, in no particular order.

1) 2.0 the hell out of government
Congress was only able to see "finished" intelligence before voting to give the Bush administration power to go to war (as a last resort). In my world, anything that the Executive branch sees, the Legislative branch sees. My voice is represented by my state officials, not the president. This one example of a non-transparent government directly led to the deaths of more than 30,000 human beings.

The most applicable 2.0 philosophy for reforming government is the philosophy of openness. From open source to open content, imagine the possibilities of employing a government that makes all de-classified government documents, congressional voting records, appointee resumes, etc. instantly available in a relational database with open APIs for public use. All of this information is available now, but it’s not prepped for accessibility and reuse. This is the future of accountability. Up communication and transparency, reduce the "Fuck You!" noise of the left vs. the right blogosphere to constructive collaboration… that is until government tries to pull something, and then we get back on them like white on rice.

2) Create a nominal tax to directly supplement teacher salaries
Great teachers are few and far between nowadays. Why? Well, you try dealing with kids, administrators and parents all day, adhere to and circumvent the red-tape and legalities of this age with the grace of a seasoned politician and pull in ~$45k per year.

I’m talking about, say, a .1% tax that goes directly towards teacher salaries. I gotta admit, I got the idea from Mini-Me when he appeared as a genius teacher on an episode of Boston Public a few years back. His thesis was that the degree to which students are prepared by their public school years directly impacts their earning potential, so reward their hometown education system with a nominal, flat tax return to impact teacher salaries. Tell ‘em. Verne!

3) Rip up the Patriot Act
As alluded to in the first part of my platform, transparency of government will lead to politicians being held accountable to create humane national and global policies. It’ll also foster the innovation of extremely real-time and smart communication user experiences, which can then be applied by government in the authenticated realm of classified material.

This edict of transparency cannot be applied to individuals. Our individual right of privacy is what has distinguished us from the rest of the world for centuries. The Patriot Act is legislation with language that allows for the control, intimidation and investigation of Americans through the guise of terrorism. It’s like the old censorship debate; who defines what is terrorism? The abuse of American rights have already begun.

4) Election reforms
First, all television campaigns are free. Each major candidate (there would have to be some way to determine "major," possibly something akin to the BSC polls/stats via past political progress made) is provided a set amount of credits to apply to the "purchase" of air time. This opens up the playing field to a diverse class of politicians who can focus on the issues, not their fund raising. I bet Tom Delay would even go for this.

Second, ensure that voting is both easy to access and secure. All voting systems could easily be tied together into one database, while creating alternative voting options, such as over the internet and by phone. We’ve been to the moon people…

5) National health care for everyone… Yes, you too
Riddle me this: Large corporations get major discounts on health care coverage due to the amount of employees they staff, right? Okay, then why not treat congressional districts as semantic equivalents of large pools of employees (citizen residents) by submitting them as huge groups into the bidding process?

C’mon, try to tell me why that doesn’t make any sense.

6) Incentivize industry to reduce our dependency on oil and clean up the environment
I know, the oil industry has major power claws dug deep into our political system, but this is my platform, so I’ll risk the blunt gas nozzle to the back of my head. This current administration gave tax breaks to manufacturers who create hybrid vehicles, but capped the production of cars to 60,000 that qualify for the break. Yeah.

First, we create California-like emmission standards and apply it nationally. Second, we apply money to develop alternative forms of fuel instead of planning a fucking trip to Mars or building that damn bridge to nowhere in Alaska. Third… well, I’m not that smart, but these people are.

Well, that’s my platform. God knows there are other extremely important issues (like getting out of Iraq, impeaching Bush, etc.), but that’s all the brainpower I have for tonight. I’m sure many of you want to label me as a liberal communist or some other "sticks and stones" nomenclature, and if I just described your take on me, my message to you is grow the fuck up. These are serious times, calling for serious people. The longer you avoid engaging in honest discussions along these lines, the easier it becomes to spot your agenda.

To the rest of you, let’s work together to get these bozos out of office in 2006.

President Bush has been pumping the "…you are either with us or against us…" rhetoric since his November 6th 2001 news conference regarding the then upcoming war against terrorism. At the time, most Americans felt he was speaking to countries that were either harboring terrorist training camps (Afghanistan) or on the fence in supporting our war planning (Turkey).

Following Bush’s recent Veterans Day speech, it’s apparent he’s speaking to American citizens as well.

To the Bush administration, any dissent—specifically, the pursuit of the potential lies which led us to war in the first place—is unpatriotic. Their perspective is that this “revisionist” talk during war time puts our troops in danger and jeopardizes the mission at hand. Terry Heaton provides a compelling argument against the foundation of this thesis.

With the politics at full rage, enter stage right Senator Chuck Hagel (R - Neb) to provide a level headed perspective:

“To question your government is not unpatriotic — to not question your government is unpatriotic,” Hagel said, arguing that 58,000 troops died in Vietnam because of silence by political leaders. “America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices.”

Hagel should have this perspective on war and dissent.

As a Vietnam War veteran, he put his life in danger for a corrupt cause, while watching his buddies fall and a nation respond with anti-war protests. Now, as a US Senator, he has the ability to balance those experiences with the responsibilities of national security and foreign policy.

My only issue with his perfectly lucid and spot on argument is the timing.

Where was Chuck Hagel the last few years on these topics of war planning, the freedom of speech and political discourse?

This response seems to fit into the age old process of grass roots representation of the people altering the perspective of corporate interests, which in turn affects Congressmen, as their constituency have already begun to turn the corner.

While the corrupt nature of this administration is an absolute disgrace and criminal in the least and most of the GOP is already jumping ship like rats on the Titanic, I think there’s something more to Hagel’s rhetoric.

As a prospective 2008 presidential candidate, Hagel could very easily be distancing himself from a lame duck and unpopular administration. The GOP is losing their grip on Washington as each day passes and the chance that a Republican candidate will return as president in 2008 is becoming extremely slim. So if you’re the Republican Party, what choice do you have other than vulturing the replaceable icon at the top of your own pyramid organization?

If I were running that show, I’d ensure that George Bush continued to “stay the course” with his verbal indiscretions, while setting up top Republican leaders to contradict his perspective.

Smoke and mirrors, folks.

I’m not so cynical to absolutely believe that Chuck Hagel doesn’t believe what he’s saying, but the proof is in the pudding. There’s more than enough free speech and web infrastructure legislation for him to champion. The question is will he step up and take a bi-partisan position, which will undoubtedly challenge the power structure of old school capitalism that prolongs conflicts such as the Iraq war, or will he just drop quotable comments into the ether.

Here’s your shot, Senator. Lead or get out of the way.

Indy films definitely hit a substantial delay in finding their way to my new home in Greensboro, NC, so after a month or so of waiting, I finally had a chance to see Good Night, And Good Luck this past weekend.

Classic.

Heading into the film, I had already regarded Edward R. Murrow a warrior for exposing the truth and championing the rights of the common man and woman, but if GNAGL enlightened me to anything it was to his absolute dedication to a pure journalistic method and a deeply, refined and realistic business acumen.

The Prototypical Newsman

With his classic, stoic, "just the facts ma’am" delivery, Murrow captivated his audience. He came across as an authority figure to the less media savvy audience of the 1950’s, but he also played the role of friend and confidant in the daily struggle to keep on keeping on. Murrow knew very well that if he didn’t consistently frame the paradoxes and contradictions of reality (in this case, Senator Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt), he’d be fair game for criticism and his career would head south quicker than a goose caught up in an October jet stream. That recognition of ethical behavior and accountability was too refreshing to view on film, because in our modern day, mass media world, those self-applied standards of journalistic integrity have all but flown the coop.

Understanding Power

If the film was even close to truly representing the relationship between Murrow and William Paley (the head of CBS), they provided an amazing service by exposing the foundation which drives decisions within the media ecosystem: advertising.

While Murrow bartered with Paley at every turn in order to continue exposing the world around him, Paley seemed forever caught between a rock and a hard place; he needed to keep Murrow happy with his role at CBS by providing the latitude necessary to fuel his journalistic passion while somehow balancing the finicky palette of his paid advertisers. The character development of Paley was rich and multidimensional, as I truly felt his angst in the midst of his paradoxical role within such a Darwinesque ecosystem.

And to see Edward R. Murrow, champion of the people, interviewing Liberace, well, it spoke volumes about the character of the man. He didn’t play the role of prima donna, refusing to lower his standards to run chatty interviews. He didn’t use an agent to threaten litigation. He recognized his role in adding value to the network by spreading his good name across programming that would return a dollar for Paley and the executive team. Though, the look on his face while he ran a fluff interview reminded me of a look and a feeling I’ve seen and heard hundreds of times over.

Modern Day Murrows

The majority of present day citizen journalists—Murrow molded bloggers—have day jobs. We design websites, write code, run businesses, multi-task like madmen, etc. Do we all wish we could blog for a living? I’d venture to say that most of us would say yes, as long as we wouldn’t have a strict editorial edict with advertising pressures. You see, we’re a bit spoiled like that.

Murrow had to navigate closed, controlled environments with a high degree of grace in order to shed light through one window of opportunity, one night a week. Bloggers? Well, we’ve become accustom to firing from the hip, espousing our opinions, perspectives and, yes, researched journalism on a intra-day basis, with no editor or advertising revenues to be concerned with. Has this new paradigm created irresponsible reporting? No more than the closed venue of the mainstream media. The difference is that we’re now empowered to network common visions and dreams, driving the potential of a new day into an actual sunrise, and the power of that freedom is upsetting the status quo.

Corporate media and industries are absolutely petrified by the potential of ordinary people gaining broadcast reach. And as much as I plan on assisting corporate America through this transition into the fast track of iterative development and customer accountability, until they can recognize that everything has changed and that we, the people, are now empowered, I won’t lose one wink of sleep over their concerns.

Can There Be Flat Hierarchy?

It’s true that if it weren’t for the relentless corporate push to rapidly develop and monetize the web in the mid-90’s, blogging technology might not have come about as quickly. Just as true was that VC investment in the potential of the web greatly contributed to the explosion of the infrastructure of information retrieval — collaborative filtering, search algorithms and now folksonomies.

So yes, we are all in this together. The talent needs the funding, but not as much as the funding needs the talent. Remember the last time we danced to this tune: capitalist power players funded the development of the internet on the shoulders of false stickiness, returning large dividends of ad revenue while the innovators focused on innovation. Many of those same capitalists continued to overinvest by underwriting ridiculous IPO’s until the bubble burst. Was it coincidence that a majority of them could reinvest in the internet at a basement entry price, while the talent scrambled about just to retain paid gigs?

Now the power players are scrambling to monetize our blood, sweat and tears at every turn, on every feed, on every page, while we continue to blaze paths two steps ahead of them with our eyes focused on the greater good. We’ll keep doing our thing, they’ll keep doing theirs.

In the end, what else can we say to them but “Good Night, and Good Luck?”

I’ve wanted to put this compilation together for a while now. If you have any favorite moments that you think should be in the Top Ten, let me know. And without further ado…

#10 - Oh, The Hitler Comparisons
Disagree with someone? Think they have an agenda? I know what you’re thinking. They must be a Nazi. Heck, they’re practically acting like Hitler. Um, no… they’re not.
(via Jewish World Review)

#9 - Shrub Speaks To The Iraqi People
Hello, I’m George W. Bush. We’re currently busy tearing out your infrastructure, removing your delicate balance of religious participation in government and replacing your torturous regime… with another torturous regime… led by independent contractors.
(via On Lisa Rein’s Radar)

#8 - Drunken, Belligerent Donald Rumsfeld
What do you do in the middle of a war when you see neighbors acting suspiciously? You challenge them to war! Yee hah! Come and get some! We’ll Shock and Awe you too!
(via On Lisa Rein’s Radar)

#7 - FCC Media Ownership Vote
All we want is one, big, happy family in America. So let’s combine all of those pesky media conglomerates into one so Daddy Warbucks can control our every though with his programming and advertising.
(via On Lisa Rein’s Radar)

#6 - Libby Indictment
Who is this Patrick Fitzgerald shape shifter? Let me try to explain through an analogy… And oh yeah, by the way, this indictment is a good thing for America! Woo hoo! Indictments for all!
(via The Brad Blog)

#5 - Closed Senate… How A Law Is Made
Bill Frist is mad. Harry Reid slapped him and America in the face. Those are some long arms, eh? Jon gets caught in the crossfire.
(via onegoodmove)

#4 - Jon Stewart At The Emmys
Just sit back and enjoy. Classic Stewart.

#3 - Bush vs Bush
Jon manages the coup of all coups—a debate between Governor Bush and President Bush. This exercise  proves that open discourse between politicians can illuminate their differences on key issues. Ugh.
(via On Lisa Rein’s Radar)

#2 - On Jeff Gannon And Bloggers
Just who is that bald guy asking all of those obviously right-wing slanted questions to President Bush? Oh, he’s a right-wing hack/gay web site entrepreneur. And Colbert, I mean, Hitler, exposes the truth behind the blogging revolution.
(via onegoodmove)

#1 - Crossfire Gets Fired
Crossfire was canceled soon after this appearance. Coincidence or…? There has to be a way to get Jon into President Bush’s next cabinet meeting… and if he has any strength left, onto "Survivor."
(via Media Matters for America)

Al Gore is not fucking around.

Gore’s latest venture has him stepping up to the plate with an innovative approach to changing the stagnant nature of civil discourse in America… and he’s doing it by swinging for the fences and at the establishment. Here are a few quotes from his keynote address at The Media Center’s We Media Conference:

"I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America’s fabled ‘marketplace of ideas’ now functions."
…

"The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the World Wide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.

We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy’s future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom."

Did Al "My Wife Wants To Censor Hip-Hop" Gore just come within a few words of quoting Malcolm X, not to mention one of the most revered hip-hop albums of all-time? Take a few moments and dig through his speech. It’s completely laced with philosophical principles espoused by Noam Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent, the propaganda model, etc.). Good old Noam can’t get even get on public access in America. With his political power behind him, Al Gore is coming correct.

What’s going on? Well, Current TV (Gore’s new venture) is going to try to change the way people watch TV; they’re going to make them get off the couch. Take this quote from the Newsweek article, "Do-It-Yourself News" as a glimpse at their approach:

"The network’s broadcasting approach takes heavy cues from the emerging world of Internet news, eschewing traditional half-hour broadcasts in favor of two- to seven-minute "pods"—short-subject features submitted, in many cases, by Current’s own viewers through a screening process on the network’s Web site. Programmers maintain that the jarring subject jumps—from street violence in California one moment to street performers in Colombia the next—allow the network to cover the broad scope of world news. Interspersed amid these features are brief headline roundups from Google News."

Web 2.0 begins to describe the concept, but you have to throw in some Convergence 2.0 for good measure. This goes way beyond my call for Google and Yahoo! News to index blogs alongside traditional news publishers (even though I still think that is an imperative next version).

While the majority of Americans will probably surf this channel like any other, a concentrated group of early adopters will dive into this interaction model and extend the concept even further. Of course, only 20M people have access to the channel and I’m not one of them.

Did I say something about looking at a skyline from afar?

(Gore speech via Hip Hop Blogs)

This post was meant to see the light of day a few days ago, but in the process of researching, I became completely caught up in some of the ideas surrounding shared data and a micro/macro analysis by using flickr’s blog interface. The damn thing sucked me in and I ended up with another Web 2.0 thread all together.

In this post, I’m going to pull back a bit to refocus on some of the meanings behind the term Web 2.0, touching upon aspects of the meme that have driven it to a certain tipping point within the web development community. And no, that doesn’t mean everyone is on board — as dedicated professionals are either embracing the moniker or slapping it down as a marketing gimmick — but one can’t deny the lexicon has begun to reach the mainstream business world.

The Way We Were

Each year, over the past 10 years or so, the internet has progressively behaved less like a mass of disparate domains — hooked into each other via simple hyperlinks — and more like a functioning network. If you can’t remember 10 years back, 1996 was practically the McCarthy era of the web. There was a good chance you’d be sued if your web site linked to a corporate site without permission. Seriously.

The behavior of the web as a macro entity wasn’t very smart as well. It essentially stagnated as an enabler for people (including developers) to interact (publish, reuse, etc.) with individual sites. The two-way web was there on paper, but an infrastructure forged across a critical mass of domains had yet to be accomplished.

Then along came Amazon, blowing the roof off of e-commerce by implementing collaborative filtering. Skip over a few other ingenious domains and Google completely changed the definition of information retrieval within both its own domain and others. The IQ of the web jumped as its big players became smarter, but across a majority of domains, the web was still more of a parking garage for individual vehicles, with individual owners and drivers. Carpooling hadn’t begun yet.

The Definition Of A Smart Web

Take my home office network as an example. Each day I easily share data between three machines in order to accomplish a multitude of different goals and a subset of numerous tasks. If I’m using my PC and want to alter an image found on my PowerBook, I simply use Photoshop on my PC to grab the data from across the network, manipulate the image and save it back to its original location. I perform similar operations when marking up HTML and CSS on my PowerBook, then hopping on a browser on my PC to view the data in a rendered form.

This is my personal realm of shared data; a collaborative, transparent, usable space called a network. It stitches together my various personal computers, allowing my software to access data openly and freely. The label isn’t fancy, because the concept is finite and comprehensible. I own everything, from the hardware to the software to the authentications allowing access throughout. I am the network.

I Am Not The Web… Yet

A transition to a user-centered web will only occur once we, the web development community, take the well established premise of a finite network and extrapolate its underlying philosophies of connectivity, transparency and usefulness across a potentially unlimited amount of “networked” domains — each with varying business objectives and often at best, a subjective understanding of user goals and tasks.

In doing so, the rationale for the 2.0 label will start to become clear, as we’re dealing with an enormous number of variables in a potentially limitless value equation.

We’re living in an entrepreneur’s dream world.

Web 2.0 is a useful moniker to latch onto. Without a set of guiding principles, progressive domains that eat, sleep and breath collaborative, transparent and useful user experiences might end up functioning within a bubble, as opposed to influencing the adoption of industry-wide hooks of shared data by less insightful domains.

As Amazon and Google previously raised the bar in the late 90’s and challenged their competition to innovate or fold, this philosophical approach is a rallying cry for the entire industry.

The Micro/Macro Example

I’m going to stick with my current favorite example from around the web. A subset of interface features on flickr reads like this:

• the ability to share images
• the ability to tag images with (potentially) common identifiers
• the ability to view other people’s images through contextual navigation of tags
• the ability to comment on anyone’s image
• the ability to save a shared set of favorites
• the ability to leave notes on images themselves
• the ability to quickly create a blog post of an image

Each of these features within the flickr domain could be studied to find analogous patterns from the macro arena around the web (e.g. posting images is the equivalent to publishing a podcast), but by focusing on one feature, user commenting, we can blow out the possibilities for usefulness across a Web 2.0 environment.

While commenting isn’t unique per se, flickr does provide a commenting feature that is very useful. In order to help a user keep up with discourse surrounding their posts, flickr provides a “Recent Activity” screen, which not only presents user comments in context to the images, but notifies you when your image was added as someone else’s favorite. There’s also an elegantly designed page which documents the history of comments that you’ve made across the domain. flickr makes this so easy to track, they even provide an RSS feed for peripheral awareness.

Now take this concept from the micro space of flickr and extrapolate it across the macro space of the web and you have the means to track numerous conversations you’ve either started or joined over n period of time. Blogpulse has a similar interface with its Conversation Tracker, but that relates more to trackbacks and the movement of a topical conversation across posts. Interesting, but not personally interesting.

The captivating aspect of the localized, recent activity screen from flickr is through the exposure of an involved conversation, not an uninvolved and evolving perspective.

The image above is a quick sketch of how I perceive the web around me as I open my browser. There are applications that I use to stay connected and informed, a small, somewhat rotating, network of sites that I consider to be daily reads and an infinite universe of daily new finds.

I add to the discourse of the latter two types of sites on a somewhat daily basis. When flickr was without the recent activity feature, I was never able to remember what images I previously commented on, so in turn, my participation level was much less. With the feature, I comment much more often, as the connection between me and other people’s information objects is now tangible.

Now, apply that same concept to the web. What would a recent activity interface centered on your comments from around the web do for your continued contribution to public discourse?

This is only one idea for how the concepts behind the Web 2.0 meme can change the way we look at the web, moving from a centralized group of branded domains to a functional network of decentralized, shared data, information and applications.

What are some of your ideas?

As an American, I fully understand the definition of hypocrisy.

Whether you’re a devout Catholic or an agnostic who reads between the lines, it’s easy to see the hypocrisy that runs rampant in modern day America.

And while it’s absolutely true that degrees of hypocrisy can be found in the actions of all inhabitants of this earth, only the most despicable human beings will fine tune and harness their hypocrisies in order to move into greater positions of power and wealth to the detriment of others.

Large corporations have perfected this systemic practice of monetary advancement through the guise of competition and the free market and people who understand how to harness the operating levers of these machinations have the ability to freelance in similar fashion.

In this age of readily made available information, one can document patterns of hypocrisy quite easily, as they are in abundance. Take this example set forth by Sean Hannity, which is covered in detail within the documentary, “This Divided State,” shot just before the presidential election of 2004.

From the logs of Jesus’ General, it appears that Michael Moore charged a $40,000 appearance fee to speak to a crowd at Utah Valley Community College. Now, appearance fees, even of the $40,000 variety, are standard practice from celebrity types, whether they’re former government officials, top corporate executives, All-Pro athletes or even overweight filmmakers. The speaker’s political affiliation doesn’t play a part in the fee either, as both sides of the aisle cash in on these opportunities. So how does Sean Hannity expose himself as a hypocrite? In an effort to subterfuge Moore’s appearance, Hannity schedules a pre-emptive lecture at the same college and charges a, get this, zero appearance fee.

Wait a second… That’s not hypocritical. Student fees stay in student pockets for Hannity, yet Michael Moore, the liberal of all liberals, charges out the wazoo to come hear him preach. Before tackling this particular charge of hypocrisy, let’s think about how this no fee/fee dichotomy of actors play in the mind of students attending this school? What about the people that live in the community or the ones who came out to hear Hannity speak? What about the average tax-paying citizen hearing this news around the country?

The lasting image left in the minds of these hard-working Americans is “Sean Hannity cares enough to speak with us on his dime, while Michael Moore charges a big fee to support the creation of another one of his anti-American propaganda films.”

This prevailing message is so black and white due to Hannity’s uncanny ability to leverage his hypocritical nature throughout his career. The fact of the matter is that Sean Hannity charged this small college more than $48,000 in travel accommodations, specifically for traveling by private jet.

In the end, both Hannity and Moore charged upwards of $60,000 for their individual visits, but the way that Hannity structured the line items in his invoice allowed him to present a “no appearance fee” visit.

Sneaky, eh?

So why does this matter?

Michael Moore followed Hannity’s visit a week later. The pre-emptive disinformation by Hannity was designed to create a election time clusterfuck for Moore’s lecture the following week. While both men ended up selling out their respective lectures, Hannity pulled in $13,500 more in donations, which added up to a noteworthy difference in net school expenditures of ~$17,000. That’s an important number, for the next time this school is looking for a speaker with a fixed budget, they might shy away from Moore or someone similar in shape and size.

I wasn’t at either of the lectures, and I’m waiting for the DVD to become available, so I can’t say for certain why one group of people donated so much more than the other, but I’ll venture into the realm of speculation in this instance.

I’ve followed Hannity’s shtick since his days on talk radio in New York City. The man knows how the rile up a crowd, pushing button after button to get the flock moving in his direction. In the provided clip, Hannity drops lines such as:

“…Michael Moore isn’t worth one red cent of student funds, by the way…”

After measuring the crowd reaction to such an opinion (heavy cheers), he moves onto calling out to the liberals in the lecture hall to stand up and identify themselves, with a condescending chant of:

“…here little liberals, here liberals, liberals, liberals…”

With the background framed by a huge American flag draped onstage, Hannity follows up by putting a face to the opposition in the minds of the still-seated crowd by stating:

“…ladies and gentlemen, here is the surest sign that our educational system is failing.”

As the crowd cheers, all is well in Mulberry now that Hannity is here.

Now, forget the politics of the still-seated people for a moment; they could’ve represented a mixed political pot, ranging from liberals who refused to stand (or as I like to call them: Democrats) to the extreme right-wing conservatives (or as I like to call them: the Minority).

The people that remained seated are simply looking for something to believe in, which in today’s day and age, is completely understandable. But the sick thing about Hannity and his ilk is that they understand this audience inside and out and will capitalize on their fears without thinking twice.

So when the crowd disperses from a Sean Hannity lecture, you can bet that people are reaching for their
wallets to keep them feeling pumped up and proud to be an American. How could anyone, including Michael Moore, compete with a pre-emptive, "no appearance fee" grandstand such as that? (unless they were hell bent to use similar hypocritical, manipulative and deceiving tactics).

Again, I’ve yet to see the film and have only seen the clip from the Hannity presentation, but I’d bet that Moore’s audience included a greater opposition to his platform due to the Hannity circus that rolled out of town just a week prior; "anti-American" targets remain fresh in ones mind, especially when they’re coming directly to ones neighborhood.

So you might be asking yourself, how does all of this relate to blogging and Web 2.0? It relates on a multitude of levels:

• If you’re reading this, you’re already participating in the blogosphere, legitimizing it that much more as an alternative form of media and/or press.
• If you make a comment to this post or subsequently post elsewhere, you’ll serve to expand the
  discourse around Sean Hannity and the power of misinformation
• If you trackback to this post, you’re working towards creating a semantic perspective around Sean Hannity and the power of misinformation

Active participation in the blogosphere , such as the above, supports one of the primary pillars of the Web
2.0 meme; to make opaque information transparent. You might not have come across this instance of hypocrisy and misinformation if you weren’t reading this blog. Ten years ago, that statement would have been an absolute as personal publishing had yet to hit the market. So while people, like you, are expanding the reach and discourse of the blogosphere, intuitive interfaces—from Rojo to Blogpulse to Technorati—are being designed to help people connect the dots of information and data, aggregating far ranging contextual topics across the web.

Easy access to reliable information? Community and political discourse? Could it possibly be that we’re in the midst of rebuilding a Democratic Republic from the ground, or network, up?

Social networks exist in the reality of our lives. On-line, services such as flickr , Yahoo! 360 and LinkedIn are popping up all over the place, and while each of these social networks are focused on specific interests and needs of people via a particular branded domain, with hooks into other data sources from around the web, they still only serve as a microcosm of the semantic potential of Web 2.0 and beyond.

What would happen if brands truly opened up and worked together to share the greater possibilities of profit? How much more connected would our lives become in the process of such innovation? How could optimized information object search and retrieval, mixed into these applications, change the dynamics of wealthy, resourceful individuals using the media as a lie and spin zone?

I’d be a hypocrite if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the day…

Newsweek and Technorati are in bed together and I’m really hoping it isn’t a monogamous relationship.

I’m not sure when this started, but Newsweek is now citing "Blog Talk," creating a contextual column from the Newsweek article page (first image, click for larger image) that links to a full Blog Talk page (second image) which presents the last 10 blogs posts that have linked to the Newsweek article. This is being done automatically, sans any editorial review.

I’m currently working on a project for which I presented this exact context scenario for our blogger design persona. I couldn’t believe the serendipity. So to ensure the API and execution would support our needs, I ran a quick test and posted a response to the "I’m So Sorry" article, linking back to the story URL. Within 10 minutes of pinging Technorati, my post appeared on the Newsweek page. Okay, that’s very progressive. Sure, it’s only a glorified trackback system, but the underlying philosophy has huge implications.

We’re quickly moving to a sustainable model for presenting the individual perspective on the same level as mainstream media’s editorial-driven journalism. It’s a win-win; a site like Newsweek gets an increased blogger readership and bloggers have the opportunity to share their perspectives with people that tend to stay away from the scattered blogosphere.

From my perspective, this is the first step to truly legitimizing the blogosphere. What’s next? Well, if Google, Yahoo! and other mainstream news aggregators began to index blogs for their search queries, we’d be one step closer to breaking through the mainstream media stranglehold on information for the average American that receives their news on-line. All of this is what the promise of Community TV was supposed to provide twenty years ago, but ran into the obvious production challenges.

This is really good. It’s good for business, good for bloggers, and most importantly, good for bubbling the truth of a story to the surface. This is discourse.

A few months back, I finally stepped out of my dead bolted existence within Ameritrade and began to digest the current state of this Web 2.0 explosion, and as soon as I did, the Semantic Web seemed so much closer to fruition than it did just a few years prior.

Much of the renewed push and entrepreneurial spirit that has driven this industry-wide rebirth seems to have been driven simply by our economic recovery from the dot-com crash. On the surface, that answer is sufficient, but something deeper is at at play. So, with my newly created free-time, I headed down a 2.0 rabbit hole to take me on a journey for clarity.

What I’ve come to realize isn’t anything particularly shocking (unless you’ve been a corporate slave for the past three years).

We’re living in tumultuous times. The air we breathe is being compromised more and more every day. Poverty around the world is increasing exponentially. Our country is knee deep in another Vietnam, another occupation, another struggle for gaining natural resources at any cost. People are becoming polarized by important and moral, personal and social issues, seemingly on a daily basis. All of this is occurring during the reign of an administration that has even the staunchest of conservatives questioning whether we, the people, are living within the midst of a dictatorial democracy, rather than a thriving Republic, built on the principles of political discourse, government checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, the separation of church and state and the power of the individual voter.

So where does this leave us as a people?

Personally speaking, I’ve decided to refocus my effort to publish my views, opinions, perspectives, experiences, etc., in an effort to make even the slightest dent in the discourse surrounding our roles as American citizens.

What motivates me? Pick your poison: the War on Terror; the Rove/Plame/Wilson scandal; the Bolton push-through appointment; the Cindy Sheehan vigil. It seems that every day a new flow of bullshit only fuels the righteous indignation I’ve come to hold regarding this administration.

Is it even possible to imagine a more visceral description of an Aristocracy at play?

For me, the complete disregard of the intelligence and voice of the American citizen begins to explain the groundswell of blogging that has occurred over the past four years, specifically the political blogs and mainstream media watchdog sites.

Sure, the potential for capital gains plays a large role in the motivation to advance technology or any other industry. The web, though, is a bit different due to it’s low cost of entry, so I believe that moral conviction plays a role in both driving the evolution of technology and the passion to leverage it to it’s fullest degree.

So what’s the connection between geo-political events, blogging and the tactical fervor of Web 2.0? (social bookmarking, tagging, open source, open content, etc.)

In a nutshell: everything.

Without a true social democracy in the real, we’ve evolved to create one on-line — where boundaries can be broken down, hierarchies can be dissolved, control can be minimized, etc.

I blog in order to get my voice out into the ether of this new social construct; I tag my blog posts to provide context and semantic relationships on numerous levels, yet with a similar purpose:

1. On the base object level to provide a succinct description of how I perceive this content from a conceptual perspective, perhaps creating a) a greater connection with the reader on a discernible level and b) connections on associative & relational levels with other objects (within my domain and elsewhere)
2. On the categorization level to establish context within a particularly defined category or across a faceted classification scheme. If I were an actual brand, this would be how I’d ensure my position was reflected within my editorial construct and navigation scheme.
3. On the retrievable object level to allow for more avenues of findability (four, well-thought descriptive tags exponentially increase the odds of object retrieval rather than none or even one, either in straight queries or in contextual presentation on the base object level)

These are tactical strategies in the information revolution.

The same principles apply to tagging even more granular object such as photographs, video and sound files, as well as the macro-level social bookmarking of URLs. The effort, I believe, is based on the desire of individual voices to be heard amidst the shelling of the mainstream media. While technically speaking, Web 2.0 is about the creation of richly defined object models and attributes — the more good data we entrench within our objects (be it content, files or URLs themselves), the better the chance for a semantic web experience — the movement behind it is much more compelling, much more philosophical in nature.

After leaving Ameritrade in April, I spent a month digesting Noam Chomsky’s Understanding Power, which introduced me to the specifics of his propaganda model thesis, which I fully digested by watching the documentary Manufacturing Consent. Recently, Dave Sifry (CEO, Technorati) posted a graph on the Technorati Blog displaying the impact that blogs are making within the once dominated realm of entrenched, funded, mainstream media.

I’m only guessing that if Chomsky has studied the progression of the web, he’s smiling up in Cambridge right about now.

The legitimization of the individual (creative and political) perspective is being sustained in the 21st century by the conviction of the blogosphere, passionate focus on the possibilities of 2.0 revenue models and domains, such as Technorati, taking a leadership position. The concept of social dialog, networking and organization and the elemental foundation of capitalism are beginning to shift in exciting ways.

Imagine a near future where:

• Individual perspectives can be made more readily sustainable through a common revenue model, reversing the big money/power structure of publication and media saturation? How would that impact the politics of our nation? Our wage labor practices?
• Algorithms and interfaces allow for rich, precise retrievals of topical queries, with just as precisely retrieved contextual objects presented within a usable format, based on better clustering techniques and taking richer and more valuable attributes into account? How would this impact the way we learn and connect to one another?
• Information domains allow topically defined objects to be rolled up into navigable concepts by users (through customization) instead of predefined categories by information architects? How could this seamlessly raise the bar for common folk in their efforts to research online? To manage information across numerous domains?
• Mainstream media articles and blog posts are presented on the same level (query or article), ensuring checks and balances of mis/disinformation, without a partisan bias? How important is it for check and balances to be rooted within the last bastion of traditional governmental checks and balances — the media?

And the great thing is that we’re not too far away from this revolutionary existence.

Blogs are beginning to bridge the social and communication gaps between nations. My peers are thinking differently when developing this medium, even in traditional business development circumstances. The tactical approach to producing, managing, sharing, finding and using information objects — defined from the bottom up — is finally getting it’s due.

Yes, these are tumultuous times, but they’re exciting as well.

A few years ago I ranted about my fear of a society where the media is absolutely controlled by corporate interests.

Now, my head wasn’t in the sand. I obviously realized that we were already living in a particular version of such a world, as money and power drives practically everything in this country. I was just a little concerned with the audacity of the FCC to even consider the type of deregulation it ended up approving. Sure, it happens every day; legislation lobbyed for by people in power turns around to increase the empowerment of those same people. I mean, this is how the free market works. But this legislation goes beyond just making money for the upper class.

If you view media reach as ephemeral noise in the ether, then the concerns of this post won’t bother you. Feel free to hop over to Amazon and consume away.

The fact is that Americans are glued to the tube and this type of conglomerate legislation — spanning all media (television, print, radio and the internet) — has now allowed for a greater possiblity to create a lasting, singular, corporate perspective in the psychology of the moment and beyond. Consume messaging has been given even more proximity to our children’s brains.

They Live shades are looking pretty good right about now.

So without the prospects of landing a pair of magic sunglasses, what exactly can be done to defend ourselves from this destructive approach to creating a consumer culture at all costs? As a contributor to public discourse, I’ve always believed that the ‘net (in 1997), and specifically, blogs (over the last five years) were a key development in the fight to present a perspective to battle corporate or government disinformation. Why?

• With blogging, there’s no managing editor around with advertising pressures to censor (or generate) a particular perspective. (Well, that is until the corporate structure tries to jack the nomenclature of blogging to dilute it’s effectiveness outside the reach of capitalism)
• Blogs are also a time permitting endeavor; you can publish many times a day or once a year. There isn’t a revenue figure to drive towards, which allows for individual perspectives to be expressed at will

This break from the days of publishing via the standard print revenue generation model is something akin to the advent of the printing press, yet with the merchant nation-state taking the place of the previously empowered Church. Okay, maybe that’s a little pre-mature, but the possibilities are there. And what are the possibilities?

Over the past few years, the blogging revolution has become more and more accessible and mainstream with the advent of RSS and aggregate readers. With Yahoo! adding access to RSS feeds to their My Yahoo! content modules, blogs are one step closer to being mainstream. But this last step is a big one, steeped in moral conviction… a belief in the common man. Why?

Until blogs are automatically indexed as viable, alternative feeds when running, say, a news query at Google or Yahoo!, they are going to, at best, sit on the periphery of the conscious of the world’s inhabitants. The average person does not have the time, nor the patience, to sift through the pedagogy of managing RSS. Bookmarks are about as much as they can handle. Blogs do return in general search queries, but this “general return only” pre-supposes a value level to the quality of the information being retrieved. You know, a perspective or opinion or even investigative research presented by a blogger has less value than a feed from the New York Times, The Washington Post, etc.

That’s why this information retrieval concept would have to be one generated out of moral conviction. By keeping news sources limited strictly to incorporated, staffed and vested (in the economic structure of society) newspapers, a Google (or any other news search engine) is basically saying that only these sources can report and editorialize news. Even though Google has gone a long way in presenting perspectives from small and foreign sources, providing the chance opportunity for conflicting perspective, it’s still not enough.

It seems to me that with a search capability, news aggregator and a blogging tool, Google and Yahoo! are best poised to create convergence between the “professional” news organizations and blogging communities, within the boundaries of their individual interfaces. How accessible blogs become in the presentation, will be a litmus test of their commitment to providing contextual channels within the information age, while creating usable interfaces for digesting a world of information overload and disinformation.

It’s completely doable and their historical commitment to data mining and information presentation doesn’t seem to indicate that they’ll shy away from heading in this direction. Well, as long as blogs don’t impact their institutional investors or advertisers in a negative light, that is.