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Wednesday, March 3, 2004

election day trouble

we recently had an election around here – and apparently at least one polling place in maryland had to switch to paper ballots because of trouble with the diebold machines.

i’m just going to leave it at that for now. i want to give the professionals some time to dig into this before i go off on another rant about this mistake.

update: the discussion begins at ars technica and slashdot.

update: this is the kinda thing i was waiting for…

posted by roj at 5:50 am  

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

the blogging myth

it took a while to get to me, but eventually, i found the cnn piece titled Study: very few bloggers on net which refers to this report from the pew internet & american life project.

2% maintain Web diaries or Web blogs, according to respondents to this phone survey. In other phone surveys prior to this one, and one more recently fielded in early 2004, we have heard that between 2% and 7% of adult Internet users have created diaries or blogs. In this survey we found that 11% of Internet users have read the blogs or diaries of other Internet users. About a third of these blog visitors have posted material to the blog.

the pew study is fairly brief and worth reading, but i’m going to have to pick some nits with the associated press and cnn – not a great headline, guys.

first, the data is almost a year old (march 12 – may 30, 2003).

second, the study reports based on adult (over 18) internet users.

third, 2% of adult internet users works out to more than 2 million americans (this nit pre-picked by matt woodward over at ars technica). to back that up, both technorati and the nitle blog census figure about 1.8 million (those are both global counts) blogs. livejournal alone is carrying some 1.2 million “active” users. 1

so, if i may introduce some commentary at this point, there’s a youth bias and there’s an active versus passive situation.

i’m just guessing, but i think maybe the under-18 population might be busy in this medium. i also think it’s just silly to assume that everyone would (or should) assume an active role in any medium. in the case of blogs, based on this survey, there are 5.5 passive participants (that is, readers – 11%) for each active participant (2%). is it really surprising that more people read than write? given the demands on attention, i’m not terribly surprised. in any case, i think a 5.5 passive-to-active ratio for blogs is a lot more impressive than the passive-to-active ratio for most, if not all, other media2. don’t get me wrong – i think there are some serious problems that come with lots of people “going active” – not the least of which is that most of what’s out there is crap and it introduces a filtering problem.

the bigger numbers from the study (and ths stuff that pew leads with) is that 44% of people are contributing some content in some form. this is an old lesson that i’ve explored here with musicians, – people will find a form of expression with which they are comfortable, and they will use it.

do these people really expect everyone to use every medium just because it’s availble? i think that’s an odd expectation – no more reasonable than assuming that everyone on the planet would paint, draw, write, photograph, model, act, speak, edit, and direct, just because those verbs are available. personally, i’m glad that (for example) anthony hopkins focused on acting… and i think it’s safe to say that many of us wish some [nameless to protect the guilty] models would stick to… y’know… modeling.

i do think that blogs are still a small phenomenon, and there’s an echo chamber phenomenon going on (the echo chamber phrase seems to be pretty hot in the blogosphere lately). there’s always a danger when you assume everyone has your perspective on things. blogs haven’t taken over the attention market, but they are begining to make a showing…. and it’s enough of a showing that the problems (like that crapfiltering thing i mentioned earlier and blogspam) are becoming evident.

very few bloggers on the net? well, it’s enough to make trouble.


1 at this moment, technorati reports tracking 1,806,014 blogs, the nitle blog census reports 1,750,365 “likely weblogs.” livejournal reports 1,191,820 active users.

2 one source puts broadcast (both television and radio) employment at just over 250,000. assuming most people in the united states listen to a radio or watch a television at some point, there are at least 250,000,000 passive participants (i’m being generous). that’s a 1000-to-1 ratio, so 5.5-to-1 seems pretty impressive to me.

posted by roj at 5:46 am  

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Letter from America

thanks for the letters, alistair.

posted by roj at 4:41 am  

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

kudos to bush

for what seems to have been an uncharacteristically generous phonecall to nominee-apparent kerry.

posted by roj at 3:24 am  

Tuesday, March 2, 2004

kerry: run the cabinet

as super tuesday winds down, we find kerry in a strong position, and set up to begin the general election campaign in march. that means months of hardcore campaign ahead. it’s an unprecedented situation, and maybe calls for an unprecedented strategy. i’m going to suggest one: run the cabinet.

bush has more than $150 million on hand, and is reportedly planning a quarter-billion-dollar campaign. that’s more than $1.3 million dollars per day. personally, i think that is obscene, but i’m not talking about campaign finance today. this is strategy.

the democratic field represented an amazing array of committed, involved people, many of which campaigned on particular issues. now that the race is [essentially] over, it’s time to demostrate diversity as a strength and contrast it sharply with the binary-thinking bush approach to politics (with us or against us).

the cabinet comes with these jobs: vice president, attorney general and the secretaries of agriculture, commerce, defense, education, energy, health and human services, homeland security, housing and urban development, interior, labor, state, transportation, treasury and veterans affairs.

we also have nine current and former presidential candidates from the democratic party, many of which made significant contributions to the political debate: john kerry, john edwards, howard dean, wesley clark, al sharpton, dennis kucinich, dick gephardt, joe lieberman, carol moseley braun.

i suggest that kerry approach the candidates – his former competitors – and ask them if they would commit to serve in the new administration. there’s some wiggle room about who should be in which office, and some won’t do it at all, but if the kerry campaign can establish a good chunk of the cabinet now, they could run several people on particular issues with a unified vision of a new administration. build some or all of a cabinet now, and create multiple issue-focused fronts that the republicans have to address.

if kerry picks a vice president (perhaps edwards), a secretary of defense (perhaps clark), a secretary of education (perhaps sharpton), a secretary of labor (perhaps gephardt), a secretary of housing and urban development (perhaps braun), health and human services (perhaps dean), then each of these committed individuals can engage particular points of the bush administration record. if the democrats can find a few more non-candidates that are willing to commit to the cabinet, i think it would go very far in changing the nature of the campaign and, even more important, give the voters a person that speaks to some issue they consider important.

maybe a former clark supporter with a particular interest in isn’t convinced that kerry is the best man for the job, but if it’s on the record that clark has a place in the new administration and will play a significant role in both the campaign and the future government… well, that might be enough.

do that six more times, and the kerry campaign can give most voters someone to pay attention to (even if they disagree). if the republicans decide to go negative, the assault is greatly diluted.

what i don’t know is how well these people get along – if they can move past competitors and pull a unified campaign together – but if even a few people (beyond the president/vice president positions) are willing to continue to focus on some of the issues they brought to the primary campaign, i think it becomes a whole new kind of election.

a uniting, not dividing, election (to borrow a phrase)…

just a thought…

posted by roj at 7:11 pm  

Tuesday, March 2, 2004

microwaves for security

science takes a great leap forward, with microwaves for security (and medical) imaging applications…

“Microwaves are inherently safe, certainly in comparison to X-rays, which are ionising radiation that causes tissue damage. Microwaves are non-ionising and don’t cause tissue damage,” said Smith

tell that to my popcorn.

posted by roj at 1:13 pm  

Monday, March 1, 2004

voting is for old people

there’s some controversy over this shirt being sold by urban outfitters, and the various theories that it’s intended to promote apathy among young [democratic] voters as part of some agenda by the old [republican] urban outfitters executive.

i’m all about stirring a little with a silly t-shirt….

… but there’s more here. and more i should talk about in some depth. there’s a hint of truth under this controversy… and it’s something i’ve been considering a bit in the past several weeks (and, if i am blessed with the platform from which to shout, you may be reading about that in a few months…)

in any case, i want to drop the thought here that political power is less and less about voting, and maybe the young (as in “not old”) people have seen a bit of that clue.

(then again, maybe i’m giving them too much credit 🙂 )

posted by roj at 11:55 pm  
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