BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

December 09, 2003

The horror, the horror
: Runners are nuts. I know, I am one.

Pictures
: Zeyad has the camera and he sent me a picture already (boy, that was great). He plans to take pictures from tomorrow's anti-terrorism demonstrations in Baghdad. He also asks us all what we want to see. Go to the comments on his blog to join in the discussion. Here's what I said to him in an email:

The reason I so much wanted to get you a camera is that the more you make life in Iraq look real to outsiders, the more there's a real connection, person-to-person. I'd love to see just the basic things of life: your neighborhood (though, of course, I wouldn't expect you to get too close to home if there are security concerns for you); favorite restaurants; favorite stores; schools; whatever. Early in his days helping Iranians blog, Hoder put up some pictures of friends just having lunch and walking in a beautiful park and that's what inspired me. Sometimes, people here think there's something very strange and out of this world about a country so far away; the more we make it look like it's just people next door, the more people can start to understand each other. That is why I am so glad you're blogging -- and doing such a superb job of it: You are giving people thousands of miles away a very clear perspective on your life and what things are really like in Iraq. That is invaluable. So shoot anything; sometimes, the most everyday pictures will be the most telling. ...
your friend,
jeff

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A request from Iraq
: Chief Wiggles, who runs the wonderful program giving toys to children in Iraq, has a request for aid. I'm not sure what to make of it; let the Chief explain...

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U.N.com
: The U.N. backed off its attempt to nationalize (internationalize?) the Internet away from us. Says the Washington Post:

In a last-minute meeting before the start of this week's World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, representatives set aside a brewing debate over whether national governments, rather than private-sector groups, should be in charge of managing and governing the Internet around the globe.
UN member states instead will ask Secretary General Kofi Annan to put together a panel of experts from government, industry and the public to study the issue and draft policy recommendations before the high-tech summit reconvenes in Tunisia in 2005.
"Essentially this amounts to saying: Look, let's see what the problem is, rather than [suggest] any solution," said Nitin Desai, the special adviser to the secretary general at the summit.

What a unique approach.

: Focus has an inteview with UN Secretary Sashi Tharoor, who's running the meeting. Amid a few loaded questions from Focus (about globalization and "Internet colonialism" Tharoor says (German here):

We're experiencing a revolution.... But the information revolution is different from the French revolution. It brings us much liberty, but only a little fraternity and no equality.

No, the Internet is, at its basis, the most egalitarian possible technology: a connection and free software and you're part of the global future.

: I got this email from reader Richard Gardner:

I listened to "The World" on PRI (NPR) the afternoon covering this topic, and got very irritated. It was obviously a bunch of UN bureaucrats realizing they were becoming unnecessary (ITU), and scrambling to preserve their self-importance and jobs. If they don't take over the Internet, their cushy jobs will be gone.... The PRI show was about the 'digital divide" and had some guy running an internet cafe in Ghana complaining...
Therefore, the blame is on the Western World keeping down the poor folks of Ghana. Er, why are computers more expensive? Because their government puts massive duties on all imports, particularly technology imports (not mentioned, of course).... And the reason that there is no fiber-optic to the country is that the local government-owned telecom is a slush fund for the local politicians (folks might use internet telephony to contact those relatives who have managed to escape the misery). So blame the West.

: The Internet is -- pardon this limited reference -- like a telecommunications communion table: open to all who would come and open themselves to it. Nobody's keeping anybody off the Internet -- except various of the totalitarian regimes joining that U.N. conference (starting with Iran) who are keeping their own people off the Internet for fear of what a free flow of information and ideas can do to their dictatorships. It is up to local governments and business and education to encourage use of the Internet.
In the Focus interview, Tharoor says, for example, that there is no worldwide digital divide for India. He tells the story of a technology company in New Delhi that backs onto a slum; the broke a hole in their wall and put a computer and mouse there and children, with no teachers, learned how to download music and get sports scores from the web. India has Indian-owned technology companies and Indian know-how and Indian education. When Rafat Ali was in India recently, he was getting better mobile connectivity than I can get from my neighborhood.

: So it's not a matter of the big, bad U.S. and the West again trying to keep anybody from anything. It's not a matter of the U.N. being able to improve a damned thing.
It's a matter of local governments and institutions joining the future.
And if the U.N. really wants to be helpful, why doesn't it shame Iran and China and Cuba and North Korea and Libya (and the list goes on) into opening up the Internet to its citizens.

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Anti-terror
: Tomorrow, Iraqis will hold anti-terror demonstrations. Zeyad will be there.

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The value of context
: John Robb groks [word of the day] a lesson on social software from the Dean Campaign, via the NY Times mag story on it:

The software works in the Dean campaign because it allows people of like mind to communicate, meet, and become friends. Generic or "global" systems will never work. Social software needs an "interest space" to be useful.

Right. In this case, a presidential campaign provides the context, but that comes along only once in four years. In Friendster's case, sex is the context. But often, content is the context. That is the "interest space." That is what media is really about, in the end: We all read this newspaper because we care about our town, or read this food magazine because we like fashion. Content has always been the flame that draws moths. And now the moths can have a party.

: Howard Stern read the same Times article and came away with -- that is, grokked -- a different lesson: The Dean campaign is a great place to pick up people; it's about sex.

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This Internet thing
: David Brooks does not grok the Internet. He seems to grok Howard Dean. But he can't understand the intersection. In, as Josh Marshall calls it, a "weird column," Brooks says this on Dean:

When he began running for president, he left his past behind, along with the encumbrances that go with it. As governor of Vermont, he was a centrist Democrat. But the new Dean who appeared on the campaign trail — a jarring sight for the Vermonters who knew his previous self — is an angry maverick.
The old Dean was a free trader. The new Dean is not. The old Dean was open to Medicare reform. The new Dean says Medicare is off the table. The old Dean courted the N.R.A.; the new Dean has swung in favor of gun control. The old Dean was a pro-business fiscal moderate; the new Dean, sounding like Ralph Nader, declares, "We've allowed our lives to become slaves to the bottom line of multinational corporations all over the world."
The philosopher George Santayana once observed that Americans don't bother to refute ideas — they just leave them behind.

You can argue with the take -- depending on your pro- or anti-Dean weltanschauung. But it's a legitimate political analysis of the guy and perhaps the country.
But then Brooks goes off the cliff trying to blame the Internet for this:

Everybody talks about how the Internet has been key to his fund-raising and organization. Nobody talks about how it has shaped his persona. On the Internet, the long term doesn't matter, as long as you are blunt and forceful at that moment. On the Internet, a new persona is just a click away. On the Internet, everyone is loosely tethered, careless and free. Dean is the Internet man, a string of exhilarating moments and daring accusations.

That couldn't be more wrong. Maybe Brooks' last view of the Internet was an AOL chat room, but in this Internet -- this personal Internet of relations and reputations -- long term certainly matters. And though this is an immediate medium -- a helluva lot more immediate than a coupla-times-a-week column laboriously produced on paper -- it's also true that if you're too "blunt and forceful at the moment" -- you can and will reconsider it later... or others will reconsider it for you. On the Internet, this Internet, we're not "loosely tethered, careless and free" -- in fact, we're making stronger relationships than many of us have in the world sometimes known as the real one. And we watch what we say because somebody's fact-checking our ass. And we take on the responsibilities that come with all that.
Mr. Brooks: I'll be happy to give you a guided tour of this Internet and show you how it's the opposite of what you say and also how this new medium of strong relationships and of power rising from the bottom is -- like it or not -- what has powered the Dean campaign and what will change politics as we -- or at least you -- know them.

: UPDATE: Will Vehrs says I'm wrong on Brooks. Andrew Sullivan says I'm right. I link, you decide.

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Vlogging
: Glenn Reynolds has a very helpful video-geek aside today with advice on equipment, formats, and bringing more photos and videos to weblogs. More good guidance from Doc Searls.

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Sex is money
: Variety launches a blog on the business of porn. [via Lost Remote]

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Besten blogs
: The nominees for the German weblog awards (auf Deutsch, of course).

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