By Way of Introduction

Ted has graciously invited me to be the resident geek at jobsanger. Bio: I'm a web developer with two kids in the Dallas area. My political strips skew libertarian/green, and if that doesn't make sense to you check out Green Liberty That'll do for now.

Why Everyone Should Care about Techy Issues.

Technology, and especially our darling the Internet, represents a meta-problem in politics. The problem of empowerment obviously encompasses the problem of access, and the problem of access is increasingly just a problem of media. The channels by which information is distributed have the power to frame debate in the only forum where it can have impact: the public consciousness. My optimistic half rejoices that it is still possible to go out to the polls and vote for/against a candidate in droves, and that these actions in the aggregate really effect our society.

My pessimistic half laments the fact that so much public discourse is simply worthless with respect to the solving of problems in society. My conspiracy-theorist half blames this almost exclusively on the marriage of corporate (especially corporate media) powers with governmental power.

I watch the local news, when I feel like my stomach can take it. Something in me is screaming the whole time "WHY are you covering this?!" The 2-3 most violent crimes and the 2-3 most violent traffic accidents comprise half of the local news. The rest is usually given over to weather and sports. Meanwhile, every day someone is selflessly putting together an organization or project to make our city, state, nation better -- and starving for attention because they know if enough people were aware of their purposes they'd enjoy enormous support.

My conspiracy-theorist half realizes that it is simply not in the interests of the broadcasters, or the elected representatives who have given them their oligopoly, to empower people to make changes. Far better to have groups of people fight with other groups of people over phony issues (Cf. Marriage Protection Amendment or whatever they call it) while the Straussians (of all political orientations) pull the actual levers of power.

Okay, that was pretty heady; next post will be more nuts-and-bolts