Idealist Action Politics and the New Media

Mozilla is a little too subtle.

I know that it blocks pop-ups, but I didn't notice the beige box up at the top that shows when it does block pop-ups that lets you allow pop-ups from specific sites. I always assumed the spell check just went through. Then I was fighting with Mozilla with an email program that has Compose Message pop-up and my roommate showed me the subtle box.

Now that I know it's there, I appreciate the subtlety. Windows is so instrusive, with pop-up boxes for everything.

If I filter that out, right at the top, what else do I filter? Do ads on websites even work?

The flash video that walks you through instant run off voting is particularly suited for something like IRV, which confuses some people and which some people make up their own rules for, and then say they don't like it. I think that it could be a little clearer, and I hope it is accessible to those with disabilities.

It could benefit with a few pretend races - letting people mark their own ballots and showing how potential votes could be allocated. One of the big problems I see is it uses percents, which can confuse a lot of people. Imagine those without good math skills (people particularly have weakness dealing with percents) trying to solve this word problem:

Gore got 48% of the vote and Bush got 49.5% of the votes. If Nader got 2.5% of the vote, and 60% of the votes he got went to Gore while 40% when to Bush, who won the election?

And people are afraid of what they can't figure out. From my experience teaching general math to adults, I can tell you that people can get creative with the above type of problem.

Having some practice elections would help a lot of people out, because then they would be better advocates for IRV since they can explain it. That's the biggest question I've met when I talk about instant run off voting, is potential election questions, and people want to do it out on paper. If citizen advocates know how to do it out on paper (though this shouldn't be the focus!) they are more confident and can convince other people, too!

The IPDI report on web videos and the details on how negative the videos can be asks a question: the people who make these web videos are probably influentials, just as the people who blog are most likely to be influentials - they are on the cutting edge of technology and they have something to say, which is why people go to them. Does that mean, then, that influentials are more likely to be negative and angry, and these two mediums reflect?

I've noticed that I have often had more to say, and I retain information better, in critiquing a policy or position than in promoting one. Is it the same for influentials? Does this translate into a negative discourse, since the leaders of that discourse are negative? Is it different at the local levels of government? We had hoped that the new media would bring about civil discourse aimed at solving problems, and maybe it has, maybe it has just broadened the spectrum of discussion, to include vicious web videos and blogs. But the civil solution-based problem solving has yet to be seen.

I found it interesting that China's Internet Filtering System, as reported in the report "Internet Filtering in China," has no central control point - that is, no one way for someone to beat the system.

Unlike the filtering systems in many other countries, China’s filtering regime appears to be carried out at various control points and also to be dynamic, changing along a variety of axes over time.

Like the insurgency of the Viet Congg in Vietnam and like independent-cell terrorism today, there is no one way to cut off the legs of the censorship system.

Do American companies have a responsibility to make sure that their technology is used responsibly? In World War II, IBM provided the punch-card technology that the Nazi's used to track Jews, concentration camp prisoners, and otherundesirables. Now, Microsoft shrug their shoulders at China's abuses of citizen rights.

Companies such as Microsoft and Cisco respond to these charges by suggesting that they simply sell the technology to China; thus, they cannot and should not control how their customers use what they have bought.

Companies such as Microsoft and Cisco respond to these charges by suggesting that they simply sell the technology to China; thus, they cannot and should not control how their customers use what they have bought.

I think if companies receive any kind of government money, particularly subsidies, but potentially also contracts, they should be prohibited from dealing with a country that the US has said has gross violations of human rights.

China's Internet censorship, according to the article "Internet Filtering in China, 2004-2005," is sophisticated and extensive, extending across religion, dissent against Communist China, and pornography. While BBC is blocked, American news stations are accessible (which says little for the American news media).

The censorship of the Internet in effect makes citizens stupid. That is, if there is no access to opposing view points, there is no way for Communist supporters to learn to defend and inoculate Communism and China. Not good policy for a movement that sees itself as expanding to bring justice to the entire world.

But then China has a history of supporting policies that make its citizens stupid. Because of the Cultural Revolution, when teachers were beaten and killed, excelling students ostracize, and academic learning in schools stopped, an entire generation of Chinese young people grew up stupid - also brainwashed and unable to support themselves or the advancement of their country, which is an ideal situation if you are more interested in maintaining absolute power over a large citizenry than in furthering a movement of economic and social justice.

Re: Fact Check's article on Bush attack ads

It seems strange that Bush would attack Kerry on receiving special interest money. First, people don't really get special interest money outside of the political world, and they think all politicians are financed by corporations. Second, it seems strange that the Bush campaign would be the one delivering the message - Kerry, in political circles, has often been seen as standing up to special interests while Bush is popularly to be known as a man tied to special interests, particularly oil. It seems like that would open him up to attack from all sorts of organizations, not just the Kerry campaign, with attacks that he couldn't respond to.

But he has done this throughout his two Presidential campaigns - he campaigned as a compassionate conservative though he served as Governor of a state with the highest number of prisoners sentenced to death, and the highest number wrongly so sentenced. He campaigned as a common-sense environmentalist, though Houston, Dallas, and Austin have air quality at dangerous levels and he is a former oil man.

The problem, I think, is that people are just not familiar enough with policy. For instance, people don't know enough to realize that lobbyist money, while special interest money, is one of the weaker forms of influence, because lobbyists represent many different interests and the contribution limits are so low, where as corporate PAC money, with its higher contribution limit and direct link to corporations, not people, is much more influential. In the environmental battles the Bush Administration has waged, it took an incredible level of resources from leading environmental groups across the country to educate, persuade, and mobilize the American public on how Bush's Orwellian-named policies would really impact the environment.

I often come back to this question - why aren't we taught to think critically, why aren't we taught politics in school?

I think that the Fact Check article on Cheney vs. Edwards ad misses the point. This is not journalism here, but political messaging. The details that were "left out," I would argue are not even details that Edwards should be obliged to include, even ethically. The message rings true because there are so many instances for proof, and as long as the message rings true, and there isn't a gross twisting of words - the ad even indicated that Cheney quoted al Qaeda - then I think it's fine.

The fact is that we all view the world selectively, through our own individual lenses. Political communication pieces only reflect this reality. Democrats and many Americans hear fear in the messages of Cheney and Bush - even when they are quoted directly from their speeches, and they honestly see hope in Edwards. Perhaps the news has a responsibility to help us see through other lenses, but political communication is a form of free, creative speech and self expression. As such, just like short stories or opinion pieces, it pays attention to the details that matter to the creator, and excludes details that are not of interest. Only if it is grossly misleading or out of context is it wrong.

The nuances of message are subjective. There are so many words, each carrying its own bit of message, that you could argue forever about the overall message, theme, and subtext of a speech. Edwards has no responsibility to view Cheney's message the way Cheney views his own message. He has a responsibility instead to present Cheney's message as he views it, through his own lens.