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Ball of confusion

I've been trying not to waste time writing about DW, but scripting was just too full of nonsense this morning to resist.

Scripting News: 12/10/2003

Robert Scoble, who works at Microsoft, points to an innovation from Sun. Why? "I want to be an authority on the operating system industry," says Scoble. I'm sure there are people at Microsoft who think this is stupid, but it's actually really smart. Create a new media context for yourself. A tent that's big enough to hold people who are interested in your competitors. If your products are superior what have you got to lose? MS people are always whining about the press.

Which is why you often see DW pointing out the innovations in Moveable Type and Blogger, and why in his current job he made sure a wide choice of blogging tools were made available to Harvard students. Physician, heal thyself. And he never ever whines about the press.

We also get:

People who say the campaign is over are assholes. Not a single vote has been cast yet. Dean is out of the running now, he's a slave of the Democratic Party. I'm sure it's even worse than it appears. Looks like Clark is the front-runner for making something sensible happen in this election cycle, although I wouldn't hold my breath.

In another context, this could be pretty sensible, until you realize that behind it is a belief that the campaigns should be run entirely on the Internet, the candidates should be seeking blogger endorsements, and that the campaigns should be adopting that "Ask not what the Internet can do for you" line (which I think cheapens and demeans JFK's original) as the campaign slogan. This is at least as far as I can make out from the vague rants and vituperation from scripting.com wrt the Democratic campaigns.

That's the impression I get from this:

One more time. Any candidate who made an effort to understand the political issues of the Internet could make a difference. Whether they would win or not, whether they beat Dean or Bush is hardly the point. Find out what makes the Internet so great. Take a weekend off from your campaign that isn't working anyway. Then stand up and tell us what you learned. You might be surprised to see your poll numbers start climbing.

Riiiiiiiiight. "I'm not running in the hopes of winning the election, I'm running so that I can get a better sense of the politics of the Internet." OK. "Hi, I'm the lobbyist for the Megalomaniac PAC." Sorry, but I think the internet is one among many important issues, and the upcoming election is too crucial to the country's future to be trivialized in this way. Whether the candidate writes their own blog does not make or break my vote. I mean, step back, already. This is not Nixon blowing 1960 because he failed to understand the nature of television. Blogs have not yet reached sufficient mass to act as the dealbreaker in a national election. Could they in future? Maybe. Not sure.

Posted by John on December 10, 2003 11:07 AM |

Comments

I think my response to that kind of thinking might sound a lot like one of the retorts heard in the opening sequence of an "Even Ste(ph)(v)en" segment on The Daily Show:

"What's the weather like, up your own @ss?"

You've hit the nail right square on the head. The Internet is not the be all and end all of society, the future, or really much of anything. It's a tool, it's an environment of sorts. Cozening up to it is not the way to win an election.

Posted by: GreyDuck | December 22, 2003 5:20 PM