Archive: Year: 2004

Jon Stahl reflects on the victory of "a decentralized network of citizens and media activists [that] took on the 'old media' network of Sinclair Broadcasting" and draws some interesting lessons: 1. Don’t agonize over which tactics are best – try ‘em all and continually report back on what seems to be working. In this fight, we quickly figured out that going after advertisers worked well. 2. Use technology tools to quickly aggregate information and make it available to everyone. In this case, one person put together a quick, simple database where folks could report in on Sinclair advertisers. This allowed a massive, distributed boycott to take shape overnight. 3. All of this stuff is...

If you're in NYC on Tuesday night, check out Matt Kohn and Dan Efram's new film, "CALL IT DEMOCRACY." It's showing from 7-9pm, FREE, at the New School, Swayduck Auditorium, 65 Fifth Ave, between 13th and 14th Streets. It's a non-partisan look at the history and future of elections in the United States. I helped Matt a little with the film along the way, and I know he's got some really eye-opening material, not just on Florida 2000 but also on the Electoral College (and how some liberal Dems once got in the way of reforming it). Could be very timely, depending on what happens November 2nd....

One out of four American adults have rated a product, service or person using online reputation systems, according to this new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And that's not counting the under 18-year-olds! (30% of 18-27 year-olds have posted an online rating, Pew says). Over at RateMyTeachers.com, more than 6 million ratings have been posted by students on more than 900,000 teachers at nearly 40,000 American and Canadian middle and high schools. That’s triple the number from one year ago, covering about 85% of all the schools in both countries. Hmmm. Just registered RateMyMemberofCongress.com and RateMyCongressCritter.com. Got the .org's too. Thinking ahead...

Dan Gillmor makes a nice counter-intuitive point in his San Jose Mercury News column today. Jumping off the hyperventilation all over the Internet about the "bulge" in Bush's jacket during the first debate with Kerry, he argues that at some point, we ought to come to terms with the fact that information technology is becoming pervasive, and maybe politicians should be allowed to take more of an "open book" test when they go before the public. After all, we want the President to excel as information synthesizer, not a memorizer. He's got a huge staff at his disposal. As Gillmor writes, "In the Information Age, the ability to find relevant information quickly and use it intuitively will be at least...

The fact that Jon Stewart's blistering appearance on CNN's Crossfire has now been seen by hundreds of thousands of people on the Web (via Ifilm.com and bittorrent) has got bloggers, like Jeff Jarvis, talking about the "future of TV." With photos from Abu Ghraib flying around the Net despite the Pentagon's best efforts to suppress the story; JibJab's "This Land is Your Land" parody of Bush and Kerry viewed over 65 million times; Big Media outfits ranging from the New York Times to 60 Minutes facing continuing assaults on their credibility; and "a little community website" called Craigslist (that's how Craig Newmark described his site to me when we met two weeks ago, even though it gets a billion visits...