« February 04, 2004 | Main
| February 06, 2004 »

February 05, 2004

What's next for Blog for America?
: The body's not cold but still, I can't help wondering what happens to the Dean blog if and when he drops out of the race.
It could just fade away or, for that matter, be turned off like the lights at the last campaign party.
But doesn't that seem like a shame? All that enthusiasm and energy just dispersed into the ozone?
But can it really be transferred to another candidate? Won't the Deanies find themselves at war in this realm they rule -- especially without a candidate in the castle. If Dean throws his support to Edwards, say, and lots of the Deanies don't like him or don't think he can win, then there'll be Kerry v. Edwards squabbles. That would be unbecoming and unproductive. Not pretty.
Can it be transformed, instead, into a movement? Well, in a sense, of course, it already is a movement (more than a campaign). But a movement for what? A movement against Bush? A movement for the Internet? Again, it's a headless horseman.
Can it be taken over by the Democratic National Committee as the basis of its next-generation party organization (in other words, can the DNC do to BlogForAmerica what BlogForAmerica wanted to do to the DNC)? No, that probably wouldn't work for, as a DNC representative said at Bloggercon, such an organization really can't be quite as bottom-up and open as a campaign; it has too many constituencies and political priorities to safely relinquish too much control and that would wrankle the Deaniacs.
(Update: Surly in the comments suggests leaving it up with comments disabled as a monument to the Deaniacs.)
So what happens to all this effort and organization? Is anybody planning for the eventuality? Or will it become just a chapter in the history of the new world of Internet politics?password babylon 5.06

LINK | Comments (16)

Good reason to watch Bill Maher
: Andrew Sullivan will be on Friday. Should be fun. (Friday, 8p, HBO)password babylon 5.06

LINK | Comments (2)

Howard Dean, in the toaster
: Howard Dean says he will quit if he doesn't win Wisconsin. I don't find anything about this on the Dean blog (wouldn't you think this would be news reported there first?). Instead, it helpfully announces the launch of Arab-Americans for Dean.
So Dean is toasting to a crispy crunchiness. I'm already slathering the jam on Clark (and oh, how I wish I'd bet on this one). The rest are insignificant; they're not even spoilers.
So now it's down to two.
I'm ODed on commentary about why Dean blew up. It couldn't be simpler: The voters didn't want him.password babylon 5.06

LINK | Comments (7)

AOSwell
: As a holder of AOL-Time-Warner stock, this really pisses me off. Maybe they should have invited their long-suffering shareholders. password babylon 5.06

LINK | Comments (5)

History
: I've heard many worries and complaints about the web and weblogs but this guy needs to get some Prozac and relax. In a ZD story on ABC News (touted atop GoogleNews), some guy notes that MTV changed its online press release about Janet Jackson after her show and so he frets that we can "change history."

The tools used to populate the Web with content afford us the ability to remake history on the fly. Whatever is posted is as ephemeral as the air around us. It can blow in and out and away with little notice. News stories published in traditional print media become public record unless someone can manage to, say, burn every copy of today's New York Times.
But a homepage and a headline online can change from moment to moment, and a mistake can be erased long before many people notice. For content producers, this is a good thing, but not for the public. It provides an easy out for the media and lets companies that produce information and entertainment online become shifty....
MTV is not the first to do something like this. Anyone running a Web site can change the facts quickly. Bloggers, for example, can edit anything they've ever written. That may be fine for Joe Schmo writing about his goldfish in Poughkeepsie, but as blogs have become more mainstream and major media outlets begin to provide them as tools for news reporters and columnists, the ability to go back and change what's been said about important events seems much more dangerous....
I predict that we will, in the next two years, see a major libel case involving a blog, and that there will be subpoenas of server and desktop caches and any printouts that were made of the blog on the day it may have libeled the complainant.

Make it two Prozac.
Relax, fella. The web only replicates life, where conversations and sights come and go and people change their minds. That's the natural state of things. Printing everything for posterity is and always has been the privilege of a few. password babylon 5.06

LINK | Comments (18)

No name
: Glenn Reynolds reiterates his stance on anonymous blogging (and commenting, I would add). I've said it before but he says it well. password babylon 5.06

LINK | Comments (15)

Elegance
: The Times discovers Teleflip, which allows you to bypass the mess that is America's mobile phone structure and send an SMS to any phone, for free. It is an elegant solution to a mess. I've used it and it works. password babylon 5.06

LINK | Comments (0)