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.

I disagree very much with Separight’s take on the Future of Ideas excerpt.

Particularly as the example given is a documentary, I feel that the filmmaker shouldn’t have to pay for objects that are truly part of the life he is documenting. The focus is on the truth, and taking things out because you would have to pay for them – posters or furniture or other objects that might tell you something about the subject – that is less truth.

I don’t think that the old rule – if a common person can recognize a piece of art, you have to pay – is really valid, because it is prejudice against the big artists and hurts the smaller artists, who need to make money more than the larger artists.

More fundamentally, though, if the way you are using the art is not equivalent to making a reproduction, I don’t think it should be protected by copyright. A song on the credits is a reproduction. A song in the background with voices talking over it is not. A paper copy of a movie poster is a reproduction. A poster in the background of a movie is not. If I mention a band in a book, or the band’s poster, is that subject to copyright law? Then why is it if I make a movie about my book? I’m not making a free copy that brings down its price.

What I am doing is using what the artist has set free into the world. If you don’t want your art to become part of the world, referenced in popular culture, used to convey a common idea, then you best copyright it and keep all your copies locked up safe in your own home. Don’t let anyone see your ideas, because they might just use them.

It's great to have info on how teenagers interact with the Internet. They're a powerful consumer force. But are the habits they have today the habits of our next generation of citizens, or are they only temporary? Will their impatience, preference for communications tools over informative pages, adversion to scrolling and reading magnify in the future, or will it disappear with adolescence? The Internet is so young, it doesn't seem like we've had any time to do longitudinal studies.

If teenagers' habits do stay, will website design be enough to overcome their adversions? Or will they be missing out on critical information? Is there some information that can be conveyed only in text? Do teens prefer to hear stories or read them? Maybe a solution could be more auditory features.

Jenkins' article "Cyberspace and Race," brings up a lot of good points. One quote in particular that I like reminds us that an anti-racist society does not equal a color blind society, that we do need to think about race in order to be a welcoming, just community:

Perhaps when early white Netizens were arguing that cyberspace was "color-blind," what they really meant was that they desperately wanted a place where they didn't have to think about, look at or talk about racial differences. Unfortunately, none of us knows how to live in a race-free society.

Is it true that there is no place in the world that is a race-free society? I am a big fan of writer James Baldwin, and African-American. He has said that when he was in Europe, he did not feel black - no one had that kind of social construct about African-Americans in Europe. Is it still that way today? Can the Internet recreate that feeling - is it a feeling that we want to create, or at least one of the feelings?

I felt a little bit funny in taking the Influential Quiz to determine if I was an influential. I answered yes to a lot of those questions, but I don't think I'm an influential, or if I am, it is only to 4 or 5 of my very close friends and family.

I often write letters to the editor, and I have well-formed opinions, but I am not a go-to person. I move so often and have had so many jobs, that I do make new friends, but I often lose touch with old friends, which means that I don't have extensive networks. In short, my personality is not an Influential's personality.

I do the influential activities, though. I write letters to the editor, I forward news stories, I call or write my representatives when the civic organizations I support ask me to. I had the opportunity to be involved in an organization that trained me on how to do all this, though, that made it seem ordinary. These seem like just ordinary civic activities to me, things that everyone should do.

I wonder, too, if you can been an influential at one point in time and then no longer be an influential as you move into a new age group, a new neighborhood, a new school. Is it just a personality thing, where you are always prone to be an influential? Or is it situational? I felt like in undergrad I may have been an influential, but in my personal life right now, I feel that's less the case. Can you be influential in one circle of your network and not in another?

Then, too, there are those people who like to think they are influential, the people I call in my head blow-hards. The crazy "activists" who are all talk, who write letters and always have an opinion but whom no one listens to. The ones that never seem to listen, often the ones that sound like there's no hard logic in their argument, like they're spouting someone else's argument, who refuse to answer your questions that may poke holes in their argument. The LaRoche guys. I'm sure they could check off a number of things on the influentials list, but who listens to them? I assume they must be a minority, though.

Nielsen's article on Low Literacy Users is scary. As more and more important things go online - taxes, drivers license applications, financial aid applications, contracts when you purchase things - habits of low literacy users, particularly skipping information, has huge consequences, particularly financial consequences, and legal as well. I am worried that some companies might take advantage of this. Some already do take advantage of people that skip info - like to sign up for online bill pay with Citibank credit cards, you have to give them the right to sell your name and email to other companies.

Nielsen's suggestions are good, particularly because they help a number of segments of society. Could we also make sites more visual, or more auditory? Do we want to support low literacy in this way, or demand high literacy? But then, are we punishing the victim of a society that doesn't fund education, and are we being prejudiced against those with learning disabilities, or against seniors or foreign language speakers?

I appreciated the post The African American Blogging Thing. To some extent, though, politics itself is a little racist and sexist. It's mostly a white man's game. While it is change in the people who participate, it's slow, and the people who talk about politics seems to change slower.

Talking about politics is seen as rude in some places, and women are polite. A lot of women also don't like arguing, and politics can beget arguments. Competition for being witty or to catch the other person saying something seemingly contradictory. Very "male."

The writer mentions that the style of blogging, and the way that people can get "flamed" for just brining up questions, not offering answers, is white-male style, and can leave African-Americans out.

To some extent, more on political blogs than ones around a commercial product (like TiVo), the comments on the blogs seem cliquey, exclusionary. People seem to know each other's handles, they make fun of/insult one another - it doesn't seem like a welcoming environment for anybody.

I was so offended by this paragraph off of Nielsen's article on usability for people with disabilities:

Some critics of our study have claimed that having Web designs that treat people with disabilities three times worse than other users is not a big problem. After all, the argument goes, people with disabilities should expect some difficulties, and they should be grateful if a website aims for basic accessibility and allows them to use it at all. As these critics assess it, it is an unrealistic goal to make the Web as usable for users with disabilities as it is for those without.

Computers and the Internet are becoming such a large part of our world that we have to make them as accessible as possible to everyone in order to have a just society. This is like saying that, back in the days of Jim Crow, that African Americans should be happy to be allowed on any bus, they should expect difficulties, and not worry about where they have to sit or whether they have to stand.

In Johnson's book, I also found it weird that Senators can’t put any “transmission of holiday greetings.” Not even for Thanksgiving or the 4^th of July? What kind of patriotic country are we?

Johnson wrote in his book about the conflict between lawmakers who want to have exclusive control over CRS reports (reliable, non-partisan policy briefings paid for by taxpayers) and those who support public access to public policy information. Here's an article on a new site that would provide these valuable reports for free on the Washington Post. They call it Napster for policy wonks. It's only a matter of time.

According to Johnson, “Senate internal rules require that official websites cannot be updates within sixty days before an election.”

What if there is some movement on vital policy? Does government stop for elections? That’s not the message that we want constituents to hear – they already hate that politics overtakes governance.

The origins of the rule are understandable. Senators are not allowed to send out mass mailings from the Senate office just before an election because

(1) it gives the incumbent an unfair advantage and

(2) it uses public resources for political, campaign ends.

But the difference between updating a website and sending out a mass mailing is that a website is something that visitors seek out, while mass mailings, like commercials, are kind of forced upon people, unsolicited – interruption marketing. People are seeking out information on public websites, and it’s not really fair not to provide them with the most up to date information possible about their government.

One of the things I would like to see put out by Congress is some easy way to track legislation. THOMAS is so clumsy. You have to be able to read legislation-speak, and you can’t search with that many different fields. I haven’t found a way to see if there is a version of the bill in the opposite house, either.

As we have said before, the thing about the Internet is that you can’t control it, you can’t own it and stranglehold it, and there are repercussions for those who try. There are too many people out there who want the information and who want the communication, and now that they have a link between them, a link so easily accessible, they will find a way to get the information, or a way to get rid of those who try to keep the information from them.

I’m not suggesting that there are so many people that are going to demand access to civic information that they will be able to oust any representatives on that issue – that’s not the way the world works. But it is an all-round mentality movement.

The Internet is increasingly becoming a part of people’s lives, and it is changing their mind frame. They expect to have access, quick answers, to anything they want, because they can get it in the much larger commercial world. If you as a representative have the kind of mentality that you are privileged to some things that other people can’t get, that attitude trickles throughout your image, and people aren’t cool with that anymore. You are behind the times, you’re elitist, unresponsive – whatever you are, you’re out.

Last night we talked about how legislators are super-reluctant to post their voting record online. Professor Johnson said, as he wrote in his book, and opposition researcher worth his salt is not going to rely on the Internet and is going to get the candidate's voting record any way about it.

Sure, any opposition researcher worth his salt. But the "problem" is that there are thousands of amateur opposition researchers out there now who do rely on the Internet - just as thousands of amateur journalists or bloggers are now out there causing problems for politicians. No longer is journalism just about relationship-building with reporters and editors, and no longer are the traditional players - the candidate, the opponent, and the two parties - the only voices.

Before, it may have been that the candidate figured the opposition had the dirt on the candidate, but both candidates figured the other would play by the "rules" - I'll bring out the nasty stuff if you do. Now, with the proliferation of single-issue groups and 527's, in addition to the Internet democratizing politics - reversing the trend, as Johnson's other book says, of politics being beyond the reach of amateurs - the rules have changed. We have a greater number of voices, but we also may have a lower level of civility.

Legislators really need to take the opportunity websites provide to explain their votes before the opposition gets to the public with a distorted presentation. Any Congressman who is too ashamed of how he voted should not be voting that way in the first place and needs to leave.

Just a thought on committee sites, too - I disagree with the idea that ordinary people don't use the sites. As more and more people become disillusioned with politicians, issue groups and issue advocacy becomes the way to engage people in democracy. When I worked in issue politics, I used committee sites more - mostly education/workforce and the energy committee - because I had very little idea about the people on the committees, and the members' websites usually provided little substantial info - or presented it in such a seemingly biased way that I couldn't bring myself to trust it.

Don Beyer’s Campaign for Senate is barely a campaign. Though he has told newspapers that he is interested and many people have openly encouraged him to run, Beyer has not officially announced his candidacy and he has no online campaign. It seems he has no online campaign because he has no overall campaign yet.

Still, though, not officially deciding to run is no excuse. Even without announcing a candidacy, he could have an online presence by putting up a general webpage, with biographical information, pictures, and his political involvement, such as his time as Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor, his run for the governorship, and his work on the Dean Campaign as Treasurer. This, at least, gives potential supporters the feeling that he exists. Particularly because he is running against George Allen, whose Congressional website reads like a running campaign, and who has a standing campaign website, Beyer needs to have at least some online presence which he is in control of. His website now, before announcing any candidacy, could be a kind of progressive politics page, like Dean before becoming DNC chair and like Edwards now.

The good thing about Beyer’s online “campaign” is the online presence, support, and active volunteers he has without any coordination by him. Supporters threw up a Beyer for Senate website without his coordination. Though the website is bare bones, it does show that there is support. There are also a number of blog postings out there supporting Beyer for Senate from people who are familiar with him through the Dean campaign. In absence of a real campaign, these online activists are an exciting asset. But they have little to work with. They are ready to volunteer, and have organized group trips to DNC trainings so that they “will be ready” when called upon. They are waiting to be asked to do something, eager to recruit more volunteers, and I think that the lack of a campaign is hurting their enthusiasm, momentum, and ability to recruit.

Information is power. If this was the Information Age, then we are now in the Power Age - Joe Trippi

I was struck by the way that Johnson’s book chronicled the attempt to keep public information only in the hands of the moneyed and the powerful.

Johnson notes that working drafts of bills and amendments are generally unavailable, but are available to lobbyists and the interests that they represent if they have the right friends. The government was slow to post information on THOMAS. To hear public Congressional hearings, customers would have to pay HearingRoom.com $1,000. Ordinary citizens do not have access to Congressional Research Service reports, which provide public policy analysis. Individual Congressman gave out the reports as favors, and defended this privilege, even though it sacrificed a well-informed, engaged citizenry.

All of these practices put a huge gap between ordinary citizen activists or nonprofits with small budgets and the wealthy interests that could purchase the information from private sources. It’s like our government is for sale. The Congress doesn’t look too excited to stop these practices either.

Johnson cites the lack of online access to public information which is available at DC agencies, such as junket reports and other disclosures. He argues that anything that is publicly accessible in DC should be accessible online – it’s almost like only those in DC have an effective right-to-know.

There are some sites, many of them non-profits, and many of which you must pay to subscribe to, that do put this information online, but in an aggregate form, not in a first-source form. If I was a Congressman, I think I would rather have the first source form up their than only the aggregate form. Aggregation necessarily requires a judgment call. You can’t control a judgment call.

All of this material on how Congress and the federal government is failing to provide the public online access to public and civic information reminds me of what Joe Trippi said at a Speaker’s Lunch. He said that this, now, is not the Information Age, but the Power Age, because access to information is power.

On page 145 of Congress Online, Johnson notes that Congressmen’s official government website cannot “include grassroots lobbying or seek support for a member’s position, nor could the member websites generate, circulate, solicit, or encourage the signing of petitions.”

Why not? Don’t we want our constituency to be engaged? Isn’t the job of Congressmen to pass legislation that their members support? And isn’t that what they are doing by engaging in grassoots lobbying?

To me, it sounds just like the argument against 527s. McCain’s mad because all the 527s are talking about politics, trying to influence the government officials and elections. Isn’t that the whole point of democracy and free speech? Really, he and his fellow incumbents just want to be the ones in charge of the message. Likewise, the Congressmen don’t want to invite pressure, and don’t want other Congressmen to help invite pressure from the outside.

In truth, I think that most of them would be happy if no one paid attention to what they actually did, if no one tried to put in their own two cents about what they would like their representatives to be doing.

Disabilities

Along with foreign languages, at a prior class we talked about learning disabilities. What about other disabilities? Johnson notes on page 141 of Congress Online that the Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus pushed for greater use of accessibility standards.

What about people who are blind? The Internet is so visual. Will there be another huge divide between those who can use the Internet because they can see and those who cannot see? Or are there technologies that we can develop that can help those who are blind use the Internet?

I can think of some things we can do. There can be visually-impaired versions of pages, similar to Spanish versions. The visually impaired version pages could be set up so that each and every page followed a template, so that the visitor could know typically where to put a mouse on a given page to access more info. It would be easy to have a keyboard button that reads the page text of the appropriate section, but the sections would have to be separate – a section for links, a section for text, for example, so that the visitor isn’t listening to the computer just reading every word it can find on a page.

Language

It was good to see, in Johnson’s book, that many members who do have large Spanish-speaking constituencies try to offer webpages in Spanish. Unfortunately, the technology (like Babel Fish) that translates pages into other languages does a poor job.

Even in the wealthy, mostly white, New England state I come from, there is a large population of people who do not speak English or Spanish. There are many Cambodian communities, in addition to Indian communities.

These folks may not be potential voters, and they may not have any reason to use the Congressman’s site, but that may change, and it is something we need to continue to watch, particularly as the digital gap between rich and poor, powerful and not-so-powerful, continues to narrow.