As always, I'm loving the ways that technology is helping people organize and communicate on important issues.
The monastic uprising in Burma's backlash is a perfect example of real humans connecting online to change the offline world. Here's how:
1. Online education
2. Real world event planning
3. Solidarity through technology
4. Real voices, real stories
How will you make a difference with the power of technology today?
Like a bajillion other people ('bajillion = a highly technical count of users, incidentally), I use YouTube for brilliant video finds like GalagaGal's 'Waiting for a bus' and Mr. Show videos. But lately YouTube has been making me look/feel so much smarter by smashing really great political content into my ordinarily chuckle-induced online video world. This makes me really happy.
Case in point: YouTube is sponsoring one of 6 Democratic debates this year
It's all still a fascinating experiment at this point, political stuffed shirts relying on their young, hip campaign team members to lead them to virtual campaigning ecstasy. And why not? It's a different world, with new technologies and new ideas on how to communicate, share and spam each other.
“It’s really a new day,” Carol Darr, director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University said of YouTube’s role. And, she added, it’s smart marketing - especially for organizers of an early debate - to seek out an audience, and online political activism is especially hot this election cycle.
“You go fishing where the fish are,” she said.
To be honest, I don't know that they are really going to get the kind of catch that they are intending. Previous efforts to move young voters have fallen flat on their faces - apathy is so much cooler than standing in line to make a difference, I guess. Ironically that same demographic has no problems standing in line for 12 hours to buy Xboxes, audition for American Idol or get the coolest new sneakers. What gives?????
This YouTube sponsorship is still significant though - in all sorts of crazy ways. It symbolizes potential partnerships between the old skool MSM suits and the new skool social media crazies. Perhaps most importantly, it means that my YouTube favorites won't look quite so cracked out (or depending on the candidates, maybe 10 times more so).
Some terrible news via the Bangkok Metblog on a new Cyberbill:
Thailand's National Legislative Assembly approved a controversial law this week which could seriously effect how Thailand's internet users use the web. The main effect of the bill is to outlaw any attempt at bypassing government censors to access any of the thousands of sites that have been censored due to their moral or political purposes.
This single law could put Thailand in the same category as China and Burma with regards to censorship and the lack of a democratic right for free speech.
Send this online petition to any/all Thai friends to fight this. This is hugely disappointing.
This Avaaz.org video 'Stop the Clash of Civilizations' is a powerful plea from ordinary people to bring peace to the international political sphere. We feel so divided from one another in so many ways - language, culture, religion - but in the end we are all human beings who want to live, love and grow our communities.
Please do visit the Avvaz Web site to watch the video and sign a petition to Israeli, Palestinian and international leaders to start talking peace and stop talking politics.
Thanks to the ever-on-top-of-it Britt Bravo for the heads up!
MySpace's Impact political channel is the social community's latest foray into the wonderful world of Web-based election communication - (hopefully) reaching a good number of emoticon animating soon-to-be voters.
I also dig the voter registration links and featured videos and news links to important social and campaign issues - easy access for some eyeballs that may not regularly peruse such non-Britney related news items.
Will the younger MySpace demographic move beyond merely friending Barack Obama and dive into campaign vlogs and surprisingly interesting candidate Twitter updates? Well, at least the communication medium is more accessible... but I have a sinking feeling that if P-Diddy couldn't rally the troops, MySpace probably won't get voting to trump the Wii either.
The 2008 presidential election campaign has begun. How are you going to arm yourself with knowledge on the hot issues and candidates? If you just answered 'watch Fox news' please walk yourself over to the nearest refrigerator and insert head. Slam door. Repeatedly.
Try this on instead: OpenCongress is a very cool political site to track and understand bills and other legislation that is being run through Congress. Info on the latest votes, data from the Library of Congress, Congressional profiles, political Blog posts and campaign financing notes make this one incredibly well-rounded voter resource.
What's cooler than being cool? OpenCongress incorporates social media into their open source site by tallying bill popularity by site visits, keeping track of the most frequently search for politicans and laws and by offering an abundance of RSS feeds.
For starters - be sure to read the OpenCongress primer on how to start using the Web site and educate yourself on the issues and political figures that will shape our tomorrows. There's really no excuse not to.
Brilliant Fred Stutzman had a great post yesterday looking at Barack Obama's social network online initiative. As he says 'simply creating a blog does not equate to meaningful use of the blog' - it's all about the strategy and Barack and others seem to be rocking it out in their sites' early stages.
I love the fact that politicians are beginning to engage with me in my little Internet bubble. The presidential elections are still months away and the fact that I get all this politico screentime with my future/potential leaders is key in getting me primed to support my chosen candidates in more concrete Real World ways.
Check out the techPresident site to get a big picture view on how candidates are utilizing the Web for their upcoming campaigns. This truly is a fascinating era to live in.
Reporters San Frontieres has an interesting/sad visual on the global 'black holes' of the Internet - parts of the world that do not allow their citizens free access to the World Wide Web.
Specifically these are: Belarus, Birma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
From a JTA story on a Jewish interest group meeting with Bush comes this:
“There was a common refrain of the importance of values and how values are the most valuable antidote” to despotism, Sandler said. Bush said that despite declarations of piety from Muslim radicals now fighting the United States, he doubted that they believed in God.
“ ‘Terrorists can’t be God-believing people,’ ” Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University, quoted Bush as saying.
An indirect quote, yes. But still a thought provoking one. Was this just another incompetent stream of blathering or does this man mean what he says (if that ever in fact happens....)??
Our country's leadership is firm enough in its beliefs to kill people, so why can't Islamic radicals feel the same way? This seems like just one more way to de-humanize the enemy, those faceless 'terrorists' are now also godless which sure makes it easier for the Bible Belt buffet-eating QVC shopping masses feel GREAT about sending off our youth to kill them (and be killed by them).
Way to completely not address the real issues. Let's just keep on generalizing and blowing things up - maybe that will somehow magically start working.
This kind of ignorant-speak is sure reminiscent of other wartime propaganda. I don't dig. I just don't dig. As Hilzoy says, Can we all admit that it's not enough for a would-be President to be someone we'd like to have a beer with? Please? (Not that I'm asking to crack open a Heineken with W., seriously)
Bullet Lights is a beautiful proposed project in Beirut (found via BldgBlog):
This proposal that I called ‘bullet lights’ is reversing the meaning and experience of the ‘bullet hole wallpaper’ at diverse locations in the city. Introducing unexpected poetic moments of beauty. Beauty, ambivalently mixed with the physical testimonies of violence. The project doesn’t want to make a point it just invites people to look at things differently. Seeing things from more than one perspective is the starting point for empathy.
How do we as an international community enlighten ourselves (pun intended) and take the bullet holes in our global policies and military actions to produce something beautiful and peaceful? Sometimes life mimicking art is and would be a very good thing.
