Friday, September 12, 2008
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About Me
- Pretty Lady
- Darlings, where to start? Sometimes I feel as though I have lived a thousand lives in this one, dewy and unlined though my complexion may be. To Tell All may be to intimidate; thus I maintain, at most times, a discreet reserve. But here I share my musings, perhaps revealing the secret to my exquisite poise and charm.
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Blog Archive
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2008
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September
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- What Poverty Entails
- A Plea To Genuine Conservatives
- What Lies Ahead
- The Crisis, Reexplained
- What Was NOT Said
- Hooray, conservative Republicans!
- Verbatim
- The Incentive Myth
- What Pretty Lady Was JUST About To Say
- For Bane
- Ready, Set...
- Irresponsible Psychological Theory
- The Global Village
- The Jest Is Not Infinite
- Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness
- The Experience Issue
- The Taming of O'Reilly: Part 1
- The Taming of O'Reilly: Part 2
- The Taming Of O'Reilly: Part 3
- The Taming of O'Reilly: Part 4
- Attempt at Balanced Reporting
- A Short History of Community Organizing
- Just in case you missed it...
- Pretty, Pretty, Pretty!
- George Hits A Sore Point
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September
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5 comments:
Pretty Lady
Just saw Obama’s “Still” ad – the one where McCain’s computer literacy is questioned. I do not accuse Obama of lying – just reckless stupidity. McCain is actually techno savvy but physically handicapped with a keyboard. I suspect that if the choice comes down to LIAR or STUPID the electorate might opt for liar.
Does an implosion make much of a noise?
McCain was just 'figuring out how to get on the Internet' this year.
In 1998, I taught people how to get onto the Internet, in free classes at the San Francisco Public Library. The people in my class tended to be at the lower end of both the economic scale and the IQ curve. People at higher socioeconomic levels already knew how.
Why are you accusing Obama of stupidity for pointing out that a person who is nearly Internet illiterate in 2008 is perhaps not sufficiently in touch with the cultural gestalt to lead that culture?
Many of the major mistakes made by the McCain campaign have stemmed from a failure to understand the power of the Internet--for research, rapid distribution of detailed information, fundraising and organization. McCain's campaign has assumed it could get away with blatant lies, because it grossly underestimated the Internet.
The electorate has opted for both 'liar' and 'stupid' more than once, as well as for 'pure, unadulterated evil,' as is proven by the fact that George W. Bush is still our President, and Dick Cheney has neither been impeached nor prosecuted. I am merely pointing out that it is inconsistent for Christianists to vote for proven liars while claiming to stand upon 'moral values.' I have no doubt that most of them will do so anyway.
Pretty Lady
“Why are you accusing Obama of stupidity for pointing out that a person who is nearly Internet illiterate in 2008 is perhaps not sufficiently in touch with the cultural gestalt to lead that culture?”
This is why.
“In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate's savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. "She's a whiz on the keyboard, and I'm so laborious," McCain admits.”
Richard Rapaport, Forbes ASAP, 05.29.00
That last line - “05.29.00” = May 29, 2000
Okay! Obama camp is lying or misinformed or Mr Rappaport is lying or misinformed. I am not lying but admit to possibly being misinformed. I leave you to sort it out.
George, sometimes you absolutely astonish me.
Email is not the Internet. I was using email in 1987, as an employee of a university library. Email is electronic mail. One-to-one, presumably private text messages.
The Internet as we now use it is: blogs, YouTube, personal websites, corporate websites, news media websites, RSS feeds, comment functions, podcasts, online forums, listservs, interactive games, eBay, online shopping, online dating, chat rooms, Facebook, LinkedIn--do I need to go on?
This is NOT email. This is an enormous network of open source, public, instant communication among billions of people, filtered according to interest, media, motive, etc., etc. It is a MODE of communication which extends our ability to connect in ways that were unthought-of, even five years ago.
When I read that McCain was 'learning to get on the Internet' THIS YEAR, I interpret that to mean that he's figuring out how to click on links, go to URLs, visit forums, etc. The sorts of things I taught my class in 1998. I acknowledge that manual dexterity is a barrier to this; web interfaces were designed by people under 35 who had no concept of what small-muscle coordination is for senior citizens. This was one of my biggest problems in class--the older students had a terrible time with pointing and clicking.
But it is crystal clear that the McCain campaign in general does not understand the ramifications of Internet communication as it exists today. They assume that "the media", as in journalists who work for newspapers, magazines and television, are responsible for the recent uproar about Sarah Palin's lack of qualifications and questionable character. They do not seem to comprehend that sources such as the Anchorage Daily News are now searchable by ANYONE with a computer and an interest in doing so; they do not understand that ANYONE can start a blog, and post firsthand information about political figures they know personally. They're accusing "the Obama campaign" of attacking their candidate, without realizing that the Obama campaign does not, and could not possibly, control the flow of information and discourse among people who care about this election.
Average citizens are now "the media." That's what the Internet has done, and that's where McCain is woefully behind the curve in his perceptions of media and technological interfaces--not in his physical ability to point and click.
Personally I always type "e-mail" because "email" looks like it should be pronounced UHmail and that sounds dumb in my head.
Yes, this has nothing to do with anything.
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