connecting*the*dots

Randi Rhodes laying the smackdown on Janet Parshall, October 7th, live on C-Span…

… me jamming on a mini-design project…

…which is now preserved in time as another Monday morning vessel of a pick me up.

(via blather)

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)

Two days ago, Bill O’Reilly ran a 10 minute segment dedicated entirely to blasting Media Matters for America for "making stuff up about me… everyday of my life." And in order to validate his position, he stoops to pulling a bait and switch on David Klein to passively defend his position.

No class. None.

Well, apparently on the very same day, O’Reilly moved over to the radio mic and delivered his perspective on slavery, making the case that the Irish flight in the 19th century was the equivalent to the capturing, shipping and selling of African slaves.

Now, I’m a proud 25% Irish and happen to know this particular aspect of the history of our struggle. Beyond a shadow of doubt, O’Reilly is way off base.

The Potato Famine of 1846 - 1850 was horrible on numerous levels. In a nutshell, when the potato crops (which were the Irish peasants only form of food, barter and payment) became diseased and non-edible, absentee British landlords who owned most of the Irish land took advantage of the situation by running the tenant population out of house and home, driving many into starvation or to cargo ships heading to the New World, all in order to establish eminent domain in a foreign land.

2 million Irish men, women and children died — about 25% of the total population.

For the Irish who decided to undertake the many month-long trek to America on huge cargo ships, they fought disease, rape, murder and famine in the bowels of the vessels for the chance to make a new life in the new world. Upon landing in New York City, they were treated terribly by the established ethnic groups, beginning their uphill battle for a place in society, though already numerous steps ahead of generations of African slaves.

There’s a terribly beautiful and moving monument to this injustice and struggle located in Battery Park, Manhattan called the Irish Hunger Memorial. And if you want to read a stirring blow by blow account of the Irish potato famine, pick up a book called, “Paddy’s Lament, Ireland 1846 - 1847: Prelude to Hatred.”

While the book will open your eyes, it cannot excuse O’Reilly for his historically inaccurate portrayal of African slavery in this country.

As terrible as the circumstances surrounding the potato famine were, the Irish fled to America; bringing our names, our history and our culture along for the perilous ride.

Irish immigrants supported new arrivals of family with earned money, helping pay for their escape from the clutches of mother nature and British rule.

Africans, on the other hand, were dragged out of their villages by colluding terrorist states such as the Portuguese and the Dutch (two other parts of my ethnic DNA) and sold into slavery as a possession — like cattle — in The New World (Order). They lost their religion, their customs and their namesakes.

There is no comparison.

So I guess congratulations is in order, Bill. You poked your historically inaccurate paws into the bee-hive of Media Matters and then smeared their honey all over your face… all in the same day.

And you wonder why you get stung?

Chump.

Yesterday on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly invited two guests onto his program to whine about being held accountable by watchdog web sites for the things he says on-air. Number one on his “smear list” is Media Matters for America.

Personally speaking, I couldn’t have been more delighted.

You see, I’m in the midst of finishing up my part as the information architect on the next version of the mediamatters.org web site. When the site launches, it’ll be even easier for Joe Q. Public to provide media misinformation tips to the Media Matters analysts. The information retrieval system will be advanced as well, improving direct navigation and contextual browsing to topical items of interest. All in all, it’ll be a more educational, interactive and intuitive user experience.

Media Matters for America has a noble charge; to frame conservative misinformation as it occurs within any aspect of the American media ecosystem. Bill O’Reilly should be scared… as should Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and the entire mainstream media establishment. Media Matters is not about smearing, they’re about accountability.

If you don’t report the facts, Media Matters will point you out.
If you present a racist or immoral opinion, Media Matters will expose you.

The American press is supposed to operate out of principles of integrity and ethics, serving as the fourth estate, the public check and balance of government. That isn’t happening, as the media ecosystem has turned for the worse, pimping information for advertising dollars. So Media Matters, and thousands of blogs, now have a role in contextualizing the reported news, providing perspective and keeping the paid professionals in check.

If the American news machine actually cared more about exposing the truth of a story, and not constructing their format around an advertising model — placing a burden on editors to choose between the news and fact checked news — Media Matters wouldn’t exist.

So put on your seatbelt, Billy Boy. If you don’t stop spewing misinformation from a projected position of news, your rough ride is going to continue to get worse.

UPDATE: It turns out that O’Reilly and his producer goons baited David Kline to come on to discuss political blogging in general, and then switched format midstream to whine about Media Matters. Typical O’Reilly. Well, I’m sure Media Matters will thank him for the unpaid advertising. I would’ve thought that FOX learned their Marketing 101 lesson after hitting Al Franken up with a lawsuit. I guess not.

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…

First, the The Legendary K.O. dropped "George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People." Now subMedia has put together the video to go with it.

(via Guerrilla News Network)

UPDATE: Here’s The Black Lantern version as well…

About a month ago, the Economist published an article about Yahoo!’s schizophrenic nature as a company. Yahoo!’s history as an Internet pioneer moved me to christen them as a change agent for Web 2.0 — the complete opposite of the flaky AOLish operation.

Well, those wacky Yahooligans are off their meds again. God bless ‘em.

In a few weeks, Yahoo! plans on releasing In the Hot Zone, a first person, solo journalism (SoJo) effort by Kevin Sites, who’ll cover the most war torn areas of the globe; areas which receive little to no mainstream coverage in the US. Here’s a taste of the Yahoo! approach:

Our Principles:

We will be aggressive in pursuing the stories that are not getting mainstream coverage and we will put a human face on them. We will not chase headlines nor adhere to pack journalism but vigorously pursue the stories in front of and behind the conflict, the small stories that when strung together illustrate a more complete picture.

We are professional journalists and will apply to our work the ethical code of conduct as outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists:

• To seek and report the truth.
• To minimize harm.
• To act independently.
• To be accountable.

We strongly believe, as stated in the preamble of this code, "that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy."

We also will add four more criteria to our work that will take us above the journalistic code. We also pledge in our reporting and storytelling:

Transparency
An honest and authentic accounting of both our failure and successes, to pull back the curtain on our editorial and technological process. We refuse to propagate the myths of the omniscient, infallible correspondent.

Vulnerability
We will strive to live, breathe, and experience the lives of the people we are covering — including the daily dangers they’re exposed to from combat, disease, and hardship.

Empathy
We may not always agree with our sources, but we will make every effort to understand their positions and report them with clarity, so that our audience may have context and perspective.

Solutions
Our site will contain links to organizations and groups that are working to aid victims of these conflicts and assist in their peaceful resolutions.

Will Yahoo! succeed in this venture? I don’t know, but it really doesn’t matter, because by just making this announcement, Yahoo! has already set the tone for alternative news reporting in a mainstream format (the far reaching walls of the Yahoo! membership and reach).

Even if they fail in the tactical attempt based on any number of conflicts (remember the Chinese reporter incident?) more sites will undoubtedly take on the challenge and pick up the baton running. A change agent, when all is said and done, is about the change. Steering change through it’s evolutionary course isn’t necessary the goal.

Yahoo! is leading at the point where Web 2.0 crosses over into the real. Sweet.

UPDATE: Current TV anyone?

When is enough, enough?

How many times can Rush Limbaugh get on the mic at a radio station (770AM, WABC in New York and hundred elsewhere via his own network: Excellence In Broadcasting), which is supported by paid advertisers, and not be held accountable to the hateful venom he spews? Every advertiser on his show should immediately pull their sponsorship today. Why? Limbaugh just called Mayor Nagin, “Mayor Naeger.”

“… Mayor Naeger, yeah, Ray Nagin wants…” is the exact quote.

I don’t have access to his radio show to jot down his advertisers, but Barnes and Noble advertises on his website. I’ll never shop there again.

(via Crooksandliars.com)

Media Matters clearly describes how Fox News is a major part of the Republican Noise Machine.

If you’re a Republican, please read this article in depth. Everything is based on facts and a timeline. You tell me: Who’s spinning here? The President and his cronies talk about not playing the "blame game," so how would you classify the glare on local government?

Here’s my take on the federal governments response:

Pre-hurricane preparation: Failure by the federal government by:
a) Hiring Michael Brown (bi-partisan failure in approving the hire)
b) Moving FEMA under the Homeland Security bucket (stealing funding to support the War in Iraq)
c) Cutting said funding to the development of the levee infrastructure (80% complete is completely incomplete)

Hurricane response: Failure by the federal government by:

1. Not being proactive based on weather forecasters reports describing the size of the impending hurricane as definitely greater than a category 3 (levees only hold back a level 2 based on years of studies)
2. Not immediately responding to local government cries for evacuation assistance
3. Not using all means at their disposal (i.e. Aircraft Carriers) to assist with the evacuation/rescue efforts in a timely manner
4. Not allowing private business to assist (WalMart, Amtrak, UPS, airlines, Greyhounds, etc.)
5. Not allowing volunteers to do anything aside from posing in photo ops or forcing them to endure with the red tape or go home
6. Not knowing what was happening in NO until TV reports informed them.
7. Considering evacuees as threats ("looters/thieves") before considering them people in a desperate situation
8. Locking evacuees into the city of NO and specific staging areas, causing more death and violence
9. Not allowing the media to report what is happening in the streets (i.e. photos of dead bodies)

(originally uploaded by Antifluff Superstar)

While I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment from the left blogosphere, nothing that the Bush administration has done (or not done) surprises me.

Why?

Because a large percentage of the American public will continue to allow themselves to fall into the trappings of the Bush administration’s lies, no matter the dark alley we are led to.

It’s called fear.

And even though Bush’s overall approval ratings are unbelievably low, his hardcore support continues to be there in force for one simple, but powerful, reason:

The wealthy and powerful stick with the wealthy and powerful to keep and create more wealth and power.

Only when it is not in their best interests will they act otherwise.

These strategic relationships — private industry to public service and back — provide vast resources and networks in keeping the masses in consume and desire mode, while providing each other the cover of a shared vocabulary to continuously spin themselves clear of criticism.

And when I say consume, I don’t necessarily mean eating drug-laced poultry or purchasing unnecessary material products.

This administration has perfected the consumption of propaganda regarding what it means to be an American — or more precisely — they’ve generated clear symptoms of an anti-American as any person who dissents from the party line.

Back To The Future State

Towards the end of the Athenian Empire, Socrates was sentenced to death because he had the bad habit of questioning his surroundings. He was viewed as dangerous, particularly because of his ability to influence the youth of his time.

So he was offed with a swig of hemlock.

Thankfully, we’ve evolved as a society to where outspoken voices such as Noam Chomsky can debate the origin and potential results of foreign policy, while question the motives of all parties involved without the possibility of being put to death by the rulers of our times.

Dissent forms priceless threads of discourse that are necessary to continuously evolve a moral Republic.

But there are other ways to silence a person in this modern age.

Chomsky is a rock star overseas for his political essays and speeches, but he can barely get an interview from the mainstream American media. So without sentencing good ol’ Noam to death, the collective will of the US media — with editors focused on advertising dollars and corporate sponsorship — has created a passive method of forcing hemlock upon our independent minds.

So, how does this tie back to our government?

The very freedoms and rights that our soldiers are fighting to protect have already begun deteriorating through conglomerate ownership of conglomerate media empires.

Unless voices with challenging perspectives are able to creep into the media conversation and the periphery of the average American, middle-America will continue to be ripe for rallying support by the serial spinners of big business and government.

Unless this administration is held accountable to the illegal war and domestic messes they’ve birthed, I can’t envision where this degradation of our moral fiber will end.

It’s almost as if each move the Bush administration makes that concludes without legal or mass public recourse, they consciously create an even greater climate of fear and mistrust within our own society to further propagate their unimpeded actions.

Moving Forward

So, how can we each work towards breaking this unnatural ecosystem of immorality as a nation — breaking through the spin climate of Karl Rove and President Bush’s managementof “global extremism?”

• Either turn off your TV or remain an active participant with critical, deconstruction of the media
• Use the web to find and connect with real people that share your perspectives
• Meet and share ideas off-line, in the real (leave the web for connections and community discourse)
• Influence non-political citizens to become involved in making a difference
• Most importantly: Walk your talk in the daily choices you make in your own life

/soapbox

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.

So President Bush has met with more than 700 family members of 270 soldiers killed in Iraq. I’m sorry, but this fluff piece from Newsweek ("I’m So Sorry") just doesn’t cut it for me.

How is it that myself, half of this nation and a majority of the world, didn’t buy the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq, yet this smug bastard was still able to Shock and Awe us into the next Vietnam? Why isn’t Newsweek writing an “I’m So Sorry” piece about that move?

That was a rhetorical question by the way.

Bush should meet with every family that has lost a son, daughter, sister, brother, mother and father due to this war. This Newsweek piece smells like one huge wristband to me. Just do the right thing and stop the media spin barrage, please. And oh yeah, one more thing: Break convention and meet with Cindy Sheehan for a second time. This is all starting to sound like a bunch of ankle biter’s complaints that the birthday girl is receiving a second slice of cake.

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.

Finally, a voice without an AP or Reuters feed behind it.

Finally, journalism which tells the story without editorial pressure to take advertising into account.

Finally, someone using TV as a weapon against… TV!

Well, it hasn’t come to fruition just yet, but Independent World Television (IWT) is starting to get legs. I’m really hopeful for their efforts (especially after watching their promotional video). If they’re successful in establishing a broadcast channel in enough places around the globe, this would be, unquestionably, the most important addition to the media landscape in years.

If you build it, they will come.

Alright, I admit it. I didn’t get out (or online) much while I worked for Ameritrade. 60 hour work weeks for two straight years while building a design practice and a forward-thinking trading platform will do that to your peripheral vision. Well, I’m making up for lost time, slowing down to explore the web… big time.

• Flickr is sooo good
• My teeth are stuck in del.icio.us
• I’m blown away by the approach and possibilities of Technorati

The IA in me is smiling. No, not for the sheer joy of seeing community indexing, the IA in me is smiling because it’s becoming clear to me where the web is heading, and it’s not following a topical, structured, media-filtered path.

Take Technorati. The approach is like a Bizarro perspective of the mainstream media.

Now, Technorati isn’t dumb, ugly or inhumane as in the illustration below, but it is backwards when looking at it through the typical political/news media lens of corporate America.

I mean, the mainstream media reports news by using explicit filters to ensure that what is published or broadcasted supports the primary objectives of capitalism. In the past, I’ve ranted about the much needed expansion of the Google and Yahoo! news model to place blogs into the mix when drawing from indexed sources. Well, Technorati flipped the model entirely with an approach to sharing information that spits in the eye of mainstream media constructs, creating a communal approach to digesting information. There are no "vanilla" labels of a topical navigation, splitting the world into simplified categories and driving a pre-conceived notion of "valuable" content into the skulls of society.

Technorati leverages tagging to present contextual concepts of information back to the user based on our desires.

Run a tag search on "free speech" and you get a descriptive page of the latest blog entries, Flickr images and a contextual list of social bookmarks which include mainstream media articles (based on del.icio.us and Furl tagging). It took me a few returns to stumble upon the revolutionary aspect of this approach. I mean, three months ago, I would’ve been happy if Google News simply added a column of contextual links of blog post that corresponded to a search query. Technorati has flipped the script and placed the hierarchy crown on the head of bloggers, reducing the "real" media to a column of "see also’s."

I love it.

So where can this go? Can this approach sustain a movement towards fundamentally altering how American society is exposed to, finds and digests information? Man, "it depends" is such an understatement.

• If Technorati can reach a tipping point, similar to Google a few years back, where, say, Tony Soprano is shown "Technorating" waste management on his computer, the impact on society could be huge. People will start to look for information from other people (sans an editorial slant)
• If Technorati partners with a Google or a Yahoo! to provide user-generated content within their results pages, society will begin to experience contextual alternatives to mainstream reporting, entertainment, et al without being forced to have to go search for it through RSS and other technical means.
• If Technorati is bought by a Google or a Yahoo!, all bets are off. Only time would tell if Chomsky’s "propaganda model" proves itself to be a truism or if new media and it’s superstars are exceptions to the rule.

No matter what, it’s obvious that the web’s semantic synapses are continuing to form. This is only the beginning.

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.

I’m a registered Independent, so everyone is fair game for me to criticize. And that’s my only beef with Michael Moore’s approach to his work. While I agree with his stance on about everything he’s dropped, he practically disappeared from the theatre-going public eye for eight years while Clinton was in office. Okay, he made “Big One,” but that doesn’t quite count.

If you’re a documentary filmmaker, attempting to represent the best interests of the people in this country, specifically the under-privilaged, don’t be partisan. There’s more than enough bullshit on Capitol Hill to sift through during any administration in the White House.

Greed, shadyness and stupidity don’t hold political cards.

I realize that Moore didn’t vote for Clinton or Gore in the last two elections, but his films projects a perception of a hardcore anti-Republican stance, instead of one that just supports doing the right thing, first and foremost. The government of this country—including the media—operates with the smoke and mirrors of a two-party system, meaning that Moore’s output can then be manipulated to work against the Democratic party, as he is presented as a strong supporter of “the other side.”

There’s nothing wrong with choosing a party to support per se, but when his agenda is to open the eyes of the fringe to sway votes (with Fahrenheit 9/11), middle-ground needs to be served in the midst of the sniper fire as a peace offering.

No matter! I’m counting the days for the release of “Fahrenheit 9/11.” I’m hoping he can put to celluloid at least a chunk of emotions that I’ve been struggling with for the past 3+ years. Call him what you may, but Moore does have a knack for capturing the poignancy of a particular issue.

It was around 1989 that I read Six Days of the Condor — a perfect story for an 18 year-old, chock full of deceit, murder, paranoia, sex, intrigue, spies. For some reason — possibly my attention span at the time — the end of the book threw me for a loop. So tonight, I kicked back with my Netflix choice of the week and watched the film adaptation: Three Days of the Condor.

Three words: Rent. it. now.

It was made 28 years ago, yet the plot line has come to life in eerie fashion over the last few years. I don’t want to ruin the movie for you, so if you are going to rent it, don’t read on.

Condor (played by Robert Redford) is a spy, and per chance, misses a hit on his office that leaves the entire office of seven dead. After some brilliant screenwriting, we come to find out that one of his previous reports, sent off to Langley as usual, hit a nerve within a secret faction of the CIA that just happened to be playing war games concerning the overthrow of an unstable regime in the Middle East in order to gain control of oil reserves.

Sure, the US has been meddling with numerous foreign spots over the past 50 years to keep a stranglehold on power, but shivers the size of nine inch nails traveled down my spine just the same.

The rogue CIA unit ordered the execution of the entire office after reading Condor’s spot-on investigative report, so he does the only thing he can and goes on the run to plan his next step. After outwitting numerous suits over the course of the film, he ends up confronting the CIA Director directly in front of the New York Times office in Manhattan.

After a quick verbal sparring over the morality of what our government was doing, Condor tells the Director that the story is out and the Times will be publishing it all. The film ends with the CIA Director asking Condor,

“What if they don’t print it, then where will you go?”

Redford’s face drops a bit as the last frame freezes on him.

Does Our Press Get Squeezed?

Forget the uncanny plot line that syncs up with the recent activity in Iraq (and the wild coincidence of the main NYC CIA office being in the WTC) all together. It’s eerie to see this on film, but I’m more interested with the final jab.

I often wonder how free our press really is. Our government has indoctrinated us to speak so harshly against media practices around the world, especially during the eighties and in the midst the cold war (when I was an impressionable teenager). The old “look, over there!” trick has done the trick to build a sycophantic capitalist society of productive worker bees.

Here’s something to ponder: Did you know that congress is on the verge of passing unprecedented legislation, allowing media entities to merge with minimal limitations? Can you imagine what this could mean in an Orwellian novel? Or in this capitalist society where an individual, like Bill Gates, has more wealth than the bottom 45 percent of American households combined?

Less and less competitive news media = a singular perspective.

• Advertising revenue begins to drive editorial premise and journalistic objectivity.
• Agendas are set and met.
• A top down, targeted media push (via news, marketing, advertising, programming, etc.) becomes the mainstay of communication operations.

Our society has evolved from watching the news on TV at 6 and 11 (1970’s) to digesting news 24 hours a day on TV, radio, and the internet (1990’s) to having access to thousands of individual perspectives blasting on blogs (present). So with all of this newfound access we should feel both informed and empowered, right?

To quote Mel Gibson from Conspiracy Theory, “That’s what they want us to think.”

For even the most advanced netizen, information technology is still a hindrance when trying to decipher noise from news, and fiction from fact. Simple to use, individually operated publishing channels are now available to the masses through blogging, but the reach to the majority is minimal at best as they’re presented in a non-digestible ecosystem.

I can easily imagine the power structure in this country thinking:

Let the kids play with their toys — be it bloggers broadcasting opinions based on theory or fact — no one will be able to tell the difference. No one will ever connect the dots even if they do find “truth.” The sheer amount of posts and opinions projected outwards will make all opinions null and void.

Our organized, top-down messaging is so strong via advertising, marketing, media, etc., that the bottom-up representation of the people will become lost in the noise of the the mainstream media, as well as in it’s own scattered presentation.

We’ll then use their information as data to feed our strategic messaging.

Americans have turned into thought veal over the past twenty-years. We’ve been tenderized perfectly to be devoured oh-so-nicely in an economic system that is set up to succeed only if the masses over-consume everything from food to entertainment to material goods to political punditry.

This is the boogie man that lives under my bed. I step on his throat when getting up each morning.

the world has changed.
no shit, glad you’ve woken up.
we don’t all drink from the same fountain
or even from the same cup
but if the music’s right
and the air is clear
why confuse the good times
with political matters
we fear
nothing.
at all…
because "no fear" is a fucking brand
manufactured for morons
living in a testosterone dreamland
yeah, we’re all now awake
we now have an enemy to curse and blame
but do we really understand why
"they" burn our flag and name?
no.
but who cares?
we’ll bomb ‘em till they quit.
yeah that’s a solid tactic
a top five rotation hit
now all the brands are buzzing
pulling at our patriotic strings
the marketing is subtle
yet sick and deafening
"united" is just that
ready to serve you across the land
and since they’re so "united"
they want us to go lend a helping hand
because, you see, they’re "with us"
and not just a part of our verbal psyche
but what if their name was continental?
or fuddruckers?
or nike?
brand opportunity
awareness at an all time high
higher than they used to go
when consumers weren’t afraid to fly
so come on out and support ‘em
get the business back on track
while you’re at it buy a rolex
shit, get a new cadillac
because money is all that matters
to a society built on exploitation
i wonder what "those people" would say
if we opened up actual lines of communication?
yeah right…
too late…
it’s all about annihilation.