Many to Many missing in US election
Every one is trumpeting the great advance the internet will bring to the 2004 US presidential election (yes you will see lots of commentary on this little world changing subject in the coming month from me). I am a strong advocate of many to many communication and I simply HATE TV and massmedia. Massmedia and people in charge of it have more power then any politicians, had no real enemy for almost two centuries and therefor flourished beyond control. There is no census for them, but instead of using it advocating peace and justice they are victims of corporate bribery (advertisements) and powerhungry moguls that teamed up with the worlds worst in politics and smear over the world with a tasteless dark view, full of hate and fear. I blame the massmedia for much that has happened over the last two centuries.
Anyway, along comes the internet and all go uhyeah on it. It will give the freedom of speech the liberty, it will give the people a voice to be heard. Presidential faithful Governor Howard Dean (who I still like best out of the 8 slimy smeary democratic contenders for presidency this year) tapped on it heavy, opened a blog and multiple tools to team up and go public. Everyone saw that move as smart, clever and the mass media was shivering because this could have been read as the true many to many revolution. Witnessing a slight decline in TV watchers, heavy decline in Newspaper readers those media moguls are seeing their fait going down where the red martian wind blows. So they are hammering on this candidate as much as they can.
But is his campaign really so devasistating to one to many communication. Is it really a many to many communication platform - even so all circles around a Blog. Lauren Gelman is given a good commentary on this subject. and I can not agree more with her. Even so the blog has a commentary function it has grown so big and serves now as a centralized portal for all things Howard Dean (supporting wise). But things are not free for everyone. Not all can post. The guest bloggers are handpicked and the critique is mostly hidden somewhere down in the threats of sometimes up to a thousand posts. I mean that they are leaving the threats open for everyone to post is a good thing (so they have required registration now because there have been several dos and troll attacks on it in the past day) something that hadn´t been done before, but to really have this blog as a true many to maby medium it should stay on paar with the thausonds of blogs of other supporters perhaps even the millions of blogs of everyone. No censored stories, critique allowed. Maybe it should just serve as a portal to the other blogs who want to have there links there and then have a polling mechanism which puts the most popular blogs on top. Maybe do a feature from now and then on some extraordinary commentary.
This would be truly untested pure democratic water to be entered. This might not work at all at present times for a Presidential campaign but its worth a look at if the mass media is really what you want to get rid off (regulate) Mr. Dean - as you state so often in your speeches.
Th bloggers are on their right way to make many to many communication possible large scale. With them the friends of the wiki, where I am still amazed how well this goes with even unexperienced web users.
