presidential candidate: Barack Obama
Politics is intensely complicated, and I find it a shame that the powers that be still want to propagate the idea of this false dichotomy, this “two party” system, when it is so clear that we live in a world of “varying shades of gray” (as my mom likes to say). This presidential primary is just a perfect example of that concept. We have Republicans saying they will vote for Clinton, because she is more conservative than McCain or that they don’t want McCain to make their party look bad. We have a kooky Libertarian running on the Republican ticket, when his views are so clearly opposite from many of his running mates. It’s all over the board.
The illusion of the two parties becomes clear the minute you take a political quiz with any true thought. Here I am registering Barack Obama and Rudy Guiliani as my top two candidates. Say what? But they are on different sides, right? Well if you really break it down on the many axis of political thought, it isn’t so crazy. Apparently, I am a socially-progressive pacifist who is moderate on economic and government control issues… maybe I lean a little Libertarian and a little Capitalist. If I look at where I map out, there is actually no candidate running who takes on my exact pattern, and there probably never will be, so long as the two-party system remains that is.
So, how do I choose who to support? Well, I started by prioritizing my issues. I usually put social and science issues on the forefront of my mind, but with tax time hitting us hard, the stock market down, and our need to refinance our house during a time of complete housing market bust… its really hard to ignore the economy. And this is where it gets really complicated. The most beneficial economic plans that effect me directly come from people who are so polar opposite with me on social issues that I can’t possibly vote for them. The candidates that I agree with most when it comes to social issues seem to leave people like me out of their plans altogether… I’m not wealthy, but I’m not struggling enough.
Then add into the equation that the “fair tax” proposal, one of the most interesting ideas in tax reform, is on the table of Michigan’s government and in the hands of the House and Senate in Washington. That begs the question, will the president be the catalyst of tax reform, or are there many players involved? So if economy is off the table… and if you really start to think about it, a lot of issues are determined in this complicated checks and balances system… what is left?
Inspiration, passion, direction, unification. A glorified figurehead of how we want to be perceived and where we want to go.
And I have to say… Barack Obama inspires me. I think he is a cool dude that speaks well, yes. But there is more there than that, and to anyone who doesn’t think there are plans underneath his lingo, they just haven’t dug far enough. What really pushed me far over the edge was this website that compares candidates views on science and technology, and this amazing 30 point plan from Obama (Hilary Clinton’s was a 1 point plan by comparison). I can’t believe some of the stuff in here. Making government policies available online for public comment before they are voted on, requiring representatives of government to hold online “town hall” meetings, and using social network technology to promote cross-agency communication within Washington.
This guy gets technology, and he gets why it is important and how it can change the way we live. And a guy who gets that is just more interesting to me than a boring old white dude who probably gets uncomfortable when people talk about what they twittered today.
life, the universe & everything
I haven’t blogged in a quite a long time (20 days) due to being overwhelmed with life. And funny enough, I just recently found out that my desire to multitask in order to combat the overflow of life activities might actually make me less efficient. I’m not sure that I believe that entirely, but it is something to think about (and apparently think about alone, not in conjunction with driving or blogging or anything like that).
So here is a short list of what life activities have been juggling in the past 20 days:
1. Halloween
Upon returning from my Organic trip to LA, we had to plunge head first into decorating the house and building our costumes for our Strickland 2nd Annual Halloween Bash. Many many hours and a few days later, our house was transformed (pictures here). We built a serial killer clown complete with wanted photos and two crime scenes in our showers (victims strangled via balloon animal). I tackled double the amount of tombstones this year so that we could have a proper graveyard. Lon built the most terrifying demon baby and seance room imaginable. All in all a success.
2. Eurotrip
Tom and I are living in about a week for an 18 day Eurotrip. We are going to be doing some high tech documentation of the trip that I will explain in a farewell post before I go (notice the Twitter feed I’ve added to the side of the page). In addition, we’ve been figuring out new ways to make our trip itself be more tech enhanced. This includes using Google My Maps in combination with a GPX export tool and a GPX editing tool to upload wineries, restaurants, and attractions I’ve researched to our Garmin device, complete with descriptions and photos I collected from the internet. Fun!!
3. Web 3.0
Upon returning from LA, I gave a presentation of my Web 3.0 deck to the Organic Detroit creative team. I was then asked by Chad Stoller, Executive Director of Emerging Platforms, to go on a road show with my presentation to the other Organic offices in December. Since I’m going to be out for a good chunk of November, I’ve been trying to polish my deck, via his great recommendations, to include some more tangible and easy to imagine examples of what Web 3.0 could be. I’ve been having a lot of fun with Photoshop as of late to create the following fancier interfaces to some already prominent Web 3.0 front runners:
Things are moving quickly. I probably will only have time to post one more blog before I leave. But when I return (refreshed and reinvigorated), I will have a whole slew of experiences, thoughts, and consumptions that I will be itching to share. More on how I plan on sharing those next post…
technorati tags: garmin nuvi, social search, web 3.0, joost, wink
web site: google maps - my maps
I have posted a few entries as of late on the Organic blog about Web 3.0, once on the new Adobe Thermo software coming out and another on the creepy AI direction the web is starting to take. The one thing I haven’t posted about is the idea of the mobile web continuing to explode, more people using smarter devices and more useful applications being developed for them.
So I am going to just come right out and say that I LOVE the My Maps feature on Google. This feature allows you to save points on a map and add notes, pictures, and icons. It is a great way to see how close things you are planning on doing on a trip are in relation to each other, locate nearby businesses on your route, and just generally amazingly useful things.
Although I can’t post it here, because it contains contact information for the people I am interviewing in LA next week for Organic, I just created an awesome map for my trip. I mapped out all the interviews, but also added icons for nearby cafes that have internet access, restaurants that people have been recommending, and the best LA wine stores from Dr. Vino’s blog.
It’s so fun, but it is also an INCREDIBLE tease as…
1. It doesn’t work on my Motorola Q
2. There is no export to GPS units for cars
So, there is no way to have the technology tell me that whilst I am driving that there is an awesome wine bar coming up about 10 miles away and I should take a detour to go check it out. Again, I am back to printed out maps and planning where I am going the day before hand. I long for the day when technology can actually service spontaneity.
Still, even with the limitations of what I can and can’t do with my phone… pairing a site like Yelp with the Google Maps mobile app is pretty powerful. It is a power that I have grown accustom to in life, and a power that I am going to miss so very much when I go smartphoneless in Europe for 18 days. A time when a technology like that could have really come in handy.
I’ve been techno-spoiled.
Update: I just found a website that lets you convert your Google My Maps into GPX or upload to your Garmin GPS unit. While this does nothing to solve the problem with my Motorola Q, I’m sure that there is some GPS-enabled cell phone out there that would accept GPX files. Since I happen to be renting a GPS unit in LA, I am going to test out how this all works (rental companies might not let you upload to their devices). If it is a success, then Tom and I are going to be vacationing future style with a European GPS device rigged with our special wine and food lovers dream map. Hurray!!
technorati tags: google my maps
web site: Sony Bravia Play Doh Bunnies
Sony just released an adorable and amazing stop motion advert (as the British say) for their Bravia high-definition LCD televisions. As someone who attempted a stop motion project for a film class, it just boggles my mind how this was done. In fact, looking at these behind the scenes photos only makes it more amazing.
How did they digitally remove all of the poles later? How did they keep New Yorkers from messing things up? How could they tell where the bunnies needed to go from day to day, considering they were marking with chalk in a public place?
The high quality version is well worth the wait on their painfully load heavy web site, but if you are in a hurry, you can watch it on YouTube.
technorati tags: bravia, stop motion animation, play doh bunnies
web concept: Web 3.0
Somehow, I’ve found myself reading a lot lately on many different forms of evolution. There is the RNA-first theory of biological evolution, where the gene is the basic building block of all life. Its a truly remarkable theory, which I hope to learn all about next week on my plane ride to LA where I will bury myself in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. This return for me back to burying my nose in scientific reading was inspired by both a fascinating chapter in Carl Sagan’s Shadow of Forgotten Ancestors on evolution of the cell and by Douglas Adams’ quote in Salmon of Doubt citing Richard Dawkins as one of his greatest inspirations of all time.
Besides biological evolution, I have found myself researching cultural evolution. It was after reading an awesome article on Web 3.0 that didn’t hesitate to use the (previously foreign) concept of the meme all over the place that I decided to do some Wikipediing on the topic. The idea is that while a gene is the basic unit of biological evolution, the meme (an idea, a fad, a belief) is the unit of cultural evolution. This meme is passed along, replicated, and mutated until it either dies or becomes an part of the social fabric.
Thinking about both cultural evolution and biological evolution together in the context of what I do everyday, it struck me the similarities in the origin of our biological universe and the way the web evolves. The idea that stuck in my head was that the social nature of the internet allows memes to roam freely, information passing with ease from person to person in a way that builds upon itself. This is highly comparable to the “primordial soup“, wherein genetic units muddled about until forming symbiotic relationships that lead to greater organisms than possible before.
I will be giving a presentation to the strategy team at Organic on the definition of Web 3.0 and the current frontrunners present on the web today. But, in the meantime, I thought I would toss out a little science and a little web onto the blog page here, just to get the ideas out of my brain, so that I don’t get too nerdy when presenting to my fellow Organics.
In the beginning…
the evolution of the cell
- Free form DNA swam in the primordial ooze
- Membranes grew in order to house and protect the DNA
- DNA mutated slowly
- Useful DNA was passed along to future generations before the benefit of this information was even known
- Specialized biological tools (i.e. chlorophyll eating, protection from sickness) were incorporated into greater multi-cell organisms
the evolution of the web
- Free form HTML code swam in the primordial ooze of the web
- Web pages and sites grew housing and protecting the code
- Every information unit that was passed along to the next was an opportunity for mutation of that idea
- Seemingly good ideas (such as RSS) would pass form web site to web site even before it was know what the ideas could be used for
- Specialized internet tools (Google Maps) are incorporated into greater organisms
technorati tags: memetics, web 3.0, internet evolution, primordial soup,
RECENT WINES
