Jesse Oxenfeld, of Editor & Publisher, on the bubble of blogging conferences.
Moveon.org's Bush in 30 years contest to find great shockwave animations about the President's plans for Social Security privatization. It is based on a "am I hot or not" type of mechanism where you have to sit through one of the animations, vote and then get to another. While I applaud any effort to fight this proposal I have to say that I am disappointed by this site. I only made it through 5, somehow B made it to 10. Many aspire to be jib-jab, the ones with audio all seem to have the same monotone voice, yuck. The make your own anti-Bush ad contest they ran before the election got much broader and creative responses. I wish they had put their effort into a series of podcasts by George Lakoff on the framing of the Social Security issue, rather than try to get people to make; animations about the great depression, tax rates, the social security lock-box, the nature of an IOU, and old age. They could just have pointed people to talkingpointsemo. MoveOn lately has been disappointing me. I find it sort of pathetic that we are being urged to help our elected Democratic representatives " find more courage" to fight the Senate's " radical leadership's plan to eliminate the filibuster" to keep our basic system of government functioning.
Link to audio of the Who Owns the Culture Panel at the NYPL last night with Steven Johnson moderating, Jeff Tweedy, Lessig, etc.
J.D. Lasica on Google and people's video.
