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Problematizing Technology

starbuck — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:40:28 -0500

Hey folks, great blog.

While I appreciate the democratization of the media, I wonder sometimes if we aren't a bit too "in the tank" for the internet. I want to put it out there that the internet exist on a different plane from all of the open mines in the US, Africa and China. The minerals have to come from somewhere, somehow.

See my post on Technology Fetishism for a bit more elaboration.
http://stayingsick.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/technology-fetishism/

Starbuck,

stayingsick.wordpress.com

Bloggers troubled, film at 11!

JonPincus — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:27:34 -0500

Excellent post, Peter -- very thought-provoking. A couple of comments:

Image making and message crafting, enduring political arts once the back-room purview of a select few, are now in the public domain.

Indeed. The good news is that broad and democratic involvement in message crafting can lead to messages that have substantially broader and more visceral appeal (Scott Page's excellent The Difference provides the theoretical underpinning for why). However, this is incredibly threatening for many of the people doing the image making and message crafting today: it lessens their power position, opens them up to questions and feedback, and often reveals that others' insights are as good as or better than theirs. It's much more comfortable for many people to shy away from a real commitment to inclusive and democratic participation ... and while there still are benefits in this case, they become incremental, not transformational.

Bloggers - the heart and soul of the online commentariat - continue to be troubled ....

First of all I think it's important to recognize that bloggers are a heart and soul of the online community, but especially with the 28-and-under "Millennial crowd", they're not where the action is -- it's on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. A clear lesson both from Obama's success and the more recent Join the Impact protests is that youth is a key component of successful online activism ... people who grew up with these tools and use them far more naturally than those of us who came to them later in life. So, unless bloggers are willing to leave their "we are the gods" comfort zone and participate in these other more democratized environments, their influence will continue to be limited -- especially with the social network-oriented Obama movement.

Also, as I discussed in Petitions are sooooo 20th century, to the extent that bloggers rely on old-fashioned tactics, they're likely to continue to lose influence. Two of the most successful blogger-inspired campaigns over the summer were Get FISA Right and 100,000 Strong against Evan Bayh -- both of which had a strong social network component. Since then, however, with rare exceptions like Twitter Vote Report, nobody else is following up on this path. Join the Impact went from an idea to 150,000 people in the streets in ten days with a wiki/social network organizations.

jon -- http://talesfromthe.net/jon

Democratization of [fill in the blank]

Ari Melber — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:07:41 -0500

Interesting big picture thoughts, Peter. I found the democratization of commentary mattered more in areas where pundits drop the ball -- like calling out dog whistles or subtle lies -- and less when bloggers and citizens talk like pundits (eg who can really claim that more people debating polls within the margin of error is good for democracy).

n/p Liza and thanks again

Jill — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:10:35 -0500

Let's hope the campaigns are listening.

Oh but wait, there is more

QueenofSpain — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:19:59 -0500

Not only am I an elections editor, I'm the producer of Election '08 and we've been trying for months on end to get the candidates to answer our Voter Manifesto. 8.3 million readers per month, the majority of which are women and not a single candidate has accepted and scheduled a 10-15 min video interview.

BlogHer is a non-partisan site. Editors from their own parties will ask the voter manifesto questions (Morra Aarons-Mele and Mary Katharine Ham) and while we've had contact back and forth with each of Obama and Clinton's campaigns, neither have scheduled us.

We've taken to answering the questions FOR THEM via quotes, links, youtube videos, etc.

8.3 million. 8.3 million many of which are women who blog.

8.3 million engaged readers who show up in our discussions on primary days, during televised debates and who have been told over and over and over again they matter greatly in this election.

8.3 million.

You're right

Liza Sabater — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:31:53 -0500

Erin falls into the category of mommyblogger at BlogHer but there's a whole spectrum of women bloggers in the community. I mean, grack!, I'm a founding advisory board member of the conference. LOL!

So you're right, that's an important distinction about the community. Yet I think it's valid to call her a mommyblogger. I mean, I saw at least 20+ momblog who responded to her thread.

Thanks for pointing that out.

=================================
Writer and Publisher
www.lizasabater.com
www.culturekitchen.com
www.dailygotham.com

More comments

Jill — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:06:22 -0500

Hi Liza - I posted Erin's letter a very short time after she wrote it - both on my blog here and at The Moderate Voice. It's a great letter - I'm not 100% sure if I agree with the need for Clinton to step aside, but Erin wrote a fantastic letter.

The one point I'd like to add, though, in case Erin didn't already, is that BlogHer is NOT just mommybloggers. I'm a mom and a blogger, but there's hundreds if not thousands of single women who utilize BlogHer and contribute to it. So - it's a community of women, from what I understand is the way the founders typically look at BlogHer. I could be wrong - Erin and Morra would know best. But I just wanted to say that it's not just moms. You may know that too - but I think it's important to say that it's a community of women, and moms are, of course, women too. :)

I don't know if it was machine tampering

Liza Sabater — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:03:49 -0500

I have been following the controversy. The Diebold machines are not just prone to tampering. They are also prone to error. And given that there is no easy way to verify their results or audit the machines, something has to be done in order to properly verify a county's tally before releasing the numbers to the board of elections. I am not just talking about New Hampshire. I am talking about each and every precint that is using Diebold.

Exit Polling Holds the Clue to New Hampshire Obama Loss

bacalove — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:32:20 -0500

Exit polls are the clue to the mystery of what happened on Tuesday night regarding the New Hampshire primary and the clue to the losses of both Kerry and Gore. Exit polling both in the Kerry and Gore contest had them both aheard and they are white men. Yet at the end of the day, exit polls were wrong, it had nothing to do with Race then and now. This keeps happening over and over again and no one questoins why, how long are we going to sing this song "what went wrong with the exit polls". Exit polls had Obama way ahead and at the end of the day he lost by 2 percent.

I cannot believe the so-called Intelligentsia of the media are so bewildered and so baffled as to the wide discrepancy between the exit polls and the polling and the so-called actual vote in the Obama total for New Hampshire'sTuesday night primary. In the very first two vote tallys done by paper ballots put in boxes, the exit polls were not wrong, and Obama won those voting places by a large margin. The reason for the later discrepancies are due to MACHINE TAMPERING. The Powers that Be were not ready to give Obama the victory. It happened with Gore, it happened with Kerry and it will happen with Huckabee. HOWEVER, IT DID NOT HAPPEN IN THE IOWA CAUCUSES BECAUSE PEOPLE STAND UP IN THE LIGHT OF DAY AND ARE COUNTED. The Powers that Be cannot control that. And, until we address this secret weapon of the Powers that Be, the people cannot vote their true choice into office, that would be like putting the power into the People's hands -- imagine that! The Media, as a whole, is acting negligent and irresponsible and has an obligation and a duty to inform the public and question all options. Not a duty to stay silent, like they did after 911, and we got into a war that should never have been. It was not racial that skewed the voting total, as Obama has broad appeal to all races, sexes and ages. May be the so called intelligentsia would like us to believe that so we cannot see the truth. They keep questioning and saying -- even the exit polls when we ask people said Obama was ahead. What went wrong? We can bring up questions and scenarios and ask can a computer hijack an airplane? Of course. Can a computer hack/change votes? Most Definitely! Now they are having a debate over ID Cards when the debate should be about how to have a voting system the people can believe in. INCREDULOUS! WILL THE MEDIA FAIL US AGAIN?

vote fraud against Obama and Paul

JMalone TN — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:35:53 -0500

Clear Evidence Of Widespread Vote Fraud In New Hampshire

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
January 9, 2008

There were several major vote fraud issues to arise out of the New Hampshire primary revolving mainly around Ron Paul and Barack Obama, who were both seemingly cheated out of third and first places respectively as a result of rigged Diebold voting machines and deliberate malfeasance in the counting of hand-written paper ballots.

- Obama had a 13 to 15 point lead over Hillary Clinton heading into the primary. Nothing occured that boosted Hillary’s numbers immediately before the election, in fact immediately after the staged crying incident, many pundits argued it could only have harmed her chances. And yet Hillary somehow managed to instigate a near 20 point swing to defeat Obama by three per cent. If not for her 7% swing as a result of Diebold voting machines, Hillary would have lost to Obama. If Obama was struggling he would probably contest this bizarre outcome, but he is likely to accept the results simply to save face.

- Going into New Hampshire Ron Paul was polling in the early teens and was a strong bet to take third place behind McCain and Romney. Four days before the vote, Rasmussen had Paul at 14% - a significant lead over Huckabee on 11% and Giuliani on 8% - and yet Ron Paul finished with just 8%. Proof of clear vote fraud, allied with the fact that Paul’s numbers show a 6% swing from normally accurate pre-polling forecasts, clearly indicate chicanery was at hand, especially considering the fact that Paul lost those crucial few percentage points to Giuliani as a reuslt of electronic Diebold voting machines which are known to be wide open to tampering and fraud.

- Going purely on hand-counts, which as we saw in Sutton were by no means angelic but at least harder to cheat on than Diebold voting machines without getting caught, Ron Paul would have won 15% of the vote and finished third. This figure would have more accurately correlated to the pre-primary polls rather than the ridiculous 8% he was eventually given.

- Numerous districts reported totals of anything up to 22% for "other candidates". What on earth does this black hole of "other candidates" mean? How can one vote for a candidate that is not on the ballot without spoiling the ballot paper? The district of Lisbon reported 22.5% votes for this mysterious "other" candidate, while in the large district of Londonderry, the "other" candidate received 10%. Many are now alleging that these "other" votes were merely siphoned from Ron Paul to keep his final number low.

- Rudy Giuliani, the 9/11 candidate who beat Ron Paul thanks to the aid of a 3% swing on Diebold voting machines, received 9.11% of the vote in three different towns. Coincidence or somebody’s idea of a sick joke?

- The New Hampshire town of Sutton admits that it voided every vote Ron Paul received. The Congressman got 31 votes and yet due to a "human error," Sutton reported zero votes for Ron Paul. How "human error" can explain not counting 31 votes in succession for one single candidate is beyond the pale and Ron Paul’s campaign should ask for a recount across New Hampshire immediately.

- As soon as people went public with the fact that their votes in Sutton had not been counted, other districts where Paul had supposedly received zero votes, such as Greenville, suddenly changed their final tallies and attributed votes to the Congressman.