Showing messages 1 through 3 of 3.

• recommendation for Digital Democracy Teach-In
  2004-01-10 12:00:12  Tim O'Reilly | [View]
  
  
  I was trying to figure this message out, and then I realized that you must have fallen for the Republican National Committee's smear campaign. For those of you who don't know the background, MoveOn ran a contest in which anyone on the net could submit a video campaign ad. There were two ad submissions that compared Bush to Hitler. But these ads were not produced or promoted by MoveOn -- they were just submitted by random folks from the net. The only place they've been promoted is on the RNC web site -- in an attempt to position MoveOn as extremists!
  
  But regardless of your politics, MoveOn is interesting. (And in fact, we've invited SICM, a Republican organization that is modeling itself on MoveOn, to the Teach-In as well.) Think about this video ad campaign, for instance. Instead of spending millions of dollars producing campaign ads, MoveOn asked ordinary people, using their own videocams and video editing software (which is becoming increasingly available -- anyone on Mac OS X has iMovie, for instance.) Then they opened up the voting process to their millions of members, to actually select the final candidates to be run on television. That's the tip of a very large iceberg if you're interested at all in the way that technology is changing politics.
• recommendation for Digital Democracy Teach-In
  2004-01-14 12:04:52  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  
  Thanks for responding to my initial post. I am not anonymous; my name is Iggy and I am an American living in Singapore. My comment was
  kinduva kneejerk reaction: almost all the time when I go to a blog that I think is going to be about technology, the techologist has to weigh in about his/her political view and ruin it for me. Yes, my other choice is to completely ignore all technology "pundits", and I am getting close to it.
  I took 3 days to chomp the bit on what you said, trying to figure it out. No, I don't directly get what the RNC says, but my daily source of news is from websites such as:
  http://www.rushlimbaugh.com
  http://www.newsmax.com/
  http://www.nationalreview.com/
  http://www.worldnetdaily.com/
  http://www.frontpagemag.com/
  http://www.debka.com/
  http://www.chronwatch.com/
  http://www.drudgereport.com
  http://www.cpa-iraq.org/
  http://www.opinionjournal.com/
  http://www.poorandstupid.com/chronicle.asp
  
  so perhaps my news is from the vast right-wing conspiracy :) Thank god (oops, sorry to mix in religion) that I have the choice to get alternative viewpoints.
  
  I haven't figured out your comment "regardless of your politics" when you go on to say that you have even invited some Republicans.
  
  I am a conservative, Republican, less-government kind of guy.
  
  I also don't understand your supposedly non-partisan comment "an attempt to position MoveOn as extremists". I don't know what you mean by
  extremists, but my position is that the views on the MoveOn.org home page is close to treasonous. Whomever is correct or not, it certainly does
  not come under the realm of "regardless of your politics". If this extremist stuff was written by Republicans or if a Republican said that Mahatma Gandhi was a gas station attendant in St. Louis (Hillary Clinton), there would be no end to the hellstorm.
  
  I agree that there is merit in studying the Internet phenomenom that is witnessed in the Dean campaign; the December issue of Wired also
  mentioned it. I just wished that there was a separation between the technology and the political viewpoints. From what I have seen so far, it's few and far between.
• recommendation for Digital Democracy Teach-In
  2004-01-18 08:29:55  profg [View]
  
  
  Iggy,
  
  I'm the token conservative :-) at the "teach-in", since I head up RightMarch.com and ConservativeAlerts.com. The idea here, as I understand it, is to lay out how leading online activist groups are using technology to enhance activism in ways it's never been done before, thus empowering people all over the political spectrum.
  
  I realize that the left has gotten most of the press when it comes to online activism, but it's my observation that conservatives actually hold the upper hand in this area in terms of total messages sent to leaders, funds raised, etc.
  
  I think both sides are making remarkable strides in this area, and it's an exciting time to be involved. Join in on the fun. :-)