Presidential Election 2012

In some regards the race for the White House in 2012 has already begun. President Obama is constantly talking to his constituents through traditional means like town hall meetings and more often to millions through emails and vlogs. Potential Republican nominees like Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal are keeping a presence with book deals and holding meetings with important political players.

The groundwork for new technology in a presidential campaign was fully realized in the last election and there is no turning back. To be a true player in 2012 the candidates will have to play by many new rules and now candidates who may never have been able to consider running will now be able to join the game.

Candidates will be exposed like never before and will be accountable for everything they do and say. Like we have seen in the past few years, one minor slip up of the tongue can cost you even if main stream media doesn’t pick up the story. Candidates will be forced to cater to a younger more vocal and active electorate than ever before. Grassroots mobilization and online fund raising is here and has proven can raise lots of money. Candidates will have to be more open with their constituents and show their human side through vlogs and blogs. They will also have to realize more and more voters care about the world and want someone who can be he face of the United States and represent us well.

The most important feature for a candidate to win may just be summed up in a key word from the 2008 election-transparency. Transparency in a candidates actions, on their stances, and who they really are. This of course is only the skeleton. Only the right candidate, with the right message, at the right time will clench the election as long as they use all new means to be heard.

All Things Beautiful

Yesterday one of my classmates blogged about what she said was America’s “Cult of Beauty”, referring to our obsession with beauty and beauty products. I didn’t realize how much women spend on products in a lifetime and it is sickening, coming in at close to half a million dollars over a lifetime! I am happy to say that at this point I’m not on that track since I got my last haircut at a barber shop for $17 and purchase most of my small array of products at drug stores.

The allure of all things vain is hard to avoid though. It is everywhere from subtle messaging in ad campaigns to mainstream news stories discussing the newest trends in plastic surgery. It is really quite sickening and scary. Everyone has things they do not like about thier body or looks but it seems more and more people are pinning their self worth on their looks. We are spoon fed these messages to help sell products and procedures. Even after choosing to undergo plastic surgery it seems people often aren’t truly happier about themselves or just move on the the next body image issue.

What is truly the saddest part of this issue is discussed in the original article my classmate was responding to. This obsession is starting with girls as young as kindergarten age now. It states that 8-12 year old girls spend $40 million a month on beauty products! That is ridiculous, beyond ridiculous. That line in should be re-worded though to be more truthful. Unless those girls have jobs their parents are willingly spending that on them. These girls should be playing t-ball or in dance class, not going to get facials after a stressful day of fourth grade!

We need more focus on making our selves more complete and beautiful on the inside. These are the things that will not go away with age, get better with products, and costs absolutely nothing.

War 2.0

This week in Social Media class we began to dig into the Iraq war and it’s coverage as the first war to be captured with new media. This struck me in a profound way, more so than any of the other topics we have covered. There are so many angles to this story that you can expose yourself to from the Taliban websites, soldier’s blogs, war-zone independent journalism, to pro or anti-war videos and more. Every new topic I delved into I wanted to explore more and had thoughts on it. For this sake of this blog’s length I’ll have to narrow down to a few key points.

One thing that really stood out to me came when I was reading the soldier’s and Iraqi citizen blogs. I assumed I would hear more of a consistent side of the war from both of these but in actuality they did not seem pro-war or anti-war. I have no doubt I could find blogs like that for either side but the majority of what I read did not have an obvious angle. This was especially shocking to me regarding the Iraqi citizen blogs, they definitely were not devoid of opinion but did not express complete contempt or admiration for America and the war like I would have though.

The other thing that really caught my attention was the controversial independent journalist Kevin Sites. More narrowly the blogger that calls him a traitor in regards to his coverage of the war and releasing a video of a soldier shooting an unarmed wounded Iraqi. I think it is completely wrong and dangerous to say that we should not have independent journalist covering the war and only military journalists. I’m not even sure what winning this war even means any more but to say we should only let biased coverage come out is ludicrous. America and its soldiers are not perfect but we must constantly strive to be better and set and example for the rest of the world. We cannot do this by having closed coverage of the war, no one would trust us for good reason and there would be more temptation to do unethical things.

The true authenticity of this coverage of the war is what makes it so compelling. I hope the military does not cut off blogging completely from soldiers as it is obviously a good outlet for many of them. Of course thier security is the most important thing but it is important to have this type of coverage that a typical journalists can’t get.

Global Blogging

Just like culture in general blogging culture is unique to each country and should be understood before diving right in. This is exactly what Robert Scoble and Shel Israel discovered when researching for their book Naked Conversations. Although it seems like blogging is a phenomenon that is taking over everywhere this just isn’t the case. Some countries are much quicker to adapt, like the US and France, while others, like Germany and Mexico, have been slower to adopt it. This is due to things like social acceptability to speak out, misconceptions of blogging, and censorship. Unfortunately some barriers like government censorship in places like China are not going to be overcome anytime soon.

To delve deeper into blogging around the globe our professor asked us to choose a country that started with the first letter of our name and scope out what the scene is like. I took it one step further and chose the country that is pronounced like my name, Mali in Africa. While searching for individual or business blogs originating in Mali another barrier to blogging became very apparent, access to technology.

With a population of roughly twelve and a half million as of March 2008 Mali only had 100,000 internet users. During my search the only blogs I came across that were solely focused on Mali were from people studying abroad or there working for things like the Peace Corps. The majority of blogs were collaborations of blogs from all over Africa and most of those referring to travel. French is the predominant language in Mali so I might not have discovered a business or political blog because of the language barrier.

It seems pretty apparant that blogging hasn’t taken off in much of Africa because of the limited access to technology. Over time hopefully this will get better and we will then be able to really discover what the culture of blogging is in Africa and in each of its countries.

Wikipedia Project

Danville, Indiana

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This week we had to create a new page on Wikipedia or edit an existing page. This was both easier in some ways and more challenging in others than I anticipated.

Finding a topic you can add value too that you know enough about or can research is the first challenge. Luckily for me my hometown’s Wikipedia page left a lot to be desired so I several options. Finally I settled on adding information about my town’s parks and recreational facilities and started my research.

After going through the Wikipedia tutorial I was very intimidated. There are a lot more rules than I expected including the nature of your edit, the voice you use to write, and stringent formatting. This does however make me appreciate the dedicated editors all the more and see how this really adds to Wikipedia’s ease of use.

Again part of the relative ease of my editing was because of the page I updated. My hometown page was not filled with lots of behinds the scene’s discussion or filled with any controversial information. What I added was basically pure fact, although I was tempted to say that the park is the town’s most prized possession but realized that was definitely my point of view and therefore a no-no on Wikipedia.

What I unexpectedly learned from this project was the pride that can come from bringing information to others about something you care about. I can only assume this is why some people become dedicated editors.

Time to Reconsider the War on Drugs

Lately we have been hearing a lot about the war on drugs and the elevated crime in many places, namely Mexico. It is a never ending battle that only seems to get worse, especially in tough economic times. Quite a bit of talk recently has swirled around legalizing drugs and from some of what I’ve read I think it should be put on the table.

Frankly I don’t think it will even be considered, Obama publicly announced making marijuana legal would not happen, but I think this is wrong. People want to immediately say no without even  considering all the facts. We need a deep investigation into how much money is spent on what aspects of the war on drugs and how it is working. This is after all what we were promised by Mr. Obama before and after he was sworn into office, putting the fine tooth comb over everything.

It is obvious that not enough money is spent on drug education and prevention. The only program I remember ever receiving as a kid was D.A.R.E. and it is underfunded and has many critics who say it doesn’t work. I can’t even begin to image how many billions are being spent incarcerating, or trying to apprehend, all of the people involved in the drug ring.

It is obvious that legalizing drugs would have to come with lots of regulation and shouldn’t be the same across all drugs but it is worth some thought, especially for marijuana. I can’t imagine some of the harshest of drugs like heroin and crystal-meth being legalized but if someone gives me a well researched reason why I’ll at least listen with an open mind. We have to be honest with ourselves, people are going to use whether it is legal or not and many people thinking legalizing might actual make those numbers go down. It will at least give us a revenue source for prevention.

If you still aren’t convinced to even consider it take a look at this article from the economist and consider if you think we can do better allocating all of that money.

Del.icio.us Feed: Bloggers Make a Difference

This week one of my classmates posted a thread about bloggers and the travel industry on our class del.icio.us feed. The first half of the article gave little snippets of the David vs. Golaith tales of travelers taking on the big travel organizations with a simple blog. What these examples prove is the legitimacy of blogging and how businesses would be wise to stay true to the image they try to promote.

It is an empowering feeling to know each one of us individually can use simple words to bring about real positive change. We can’t all go around threatening companies to ruin them by blogging but these organizations have to know word of mouth is the best advertising or detractor. What is unfortunate though is that so many companies, even if it is just one employee having a bad day, have previously gotten away with so much because as individuals they don’t care about us and we didn’t have many outlets to spread our voices.

Even though I am was glad to read about these individuals whose blogging made such a big impact I still find it hard to believe that these examples are the norm. I have read a lot of online jargon by people complaining about companies and I’m sure not that much change is being done. I still think for an individual blog to make a difference it either needs to be done by a well known blogger or picked up by a highly trafficked site.

This is why I have a problem with the second part of this article. It goes on to discuss how to be a travel blogger and lists seven ways you can get started. Just like any medium once the population gets too full don’t most of the messages just get dilluted?

Wikipedia World

Should we trust Wikipedia or an expert-led encyclopedia more? How could Wikipedia be better set-up to better provide accuracy? Should it be open to everyone or just verified “experts”?

What I find so intriguing about Wikipedia is that it works. If you heard about its model and didn’t see the results I think most people would be suspect of it providing more than vague details on a topic or in some cases just garbage. This hasn’t proven to be true for the most part. Yes, there are plenty of articles that are amateur or obscure at best but when you have a body of information that almost dwarfs a regular encyclopedia that is bound to happen. The ability to start a new page on a topic is what I think is the best part about the site. It engages the user to create a solid piece of information on a topic they are passionate about. Many of these are the items an encyclopedia would not deem worthy to have an article on.

Wikipedia success is tied to opening it beyond verified experts in a field and wouldn’t be what it is if it switched to a more traditional model. The studies that have been run on the site shows that its accuracy is surprisingly good, although they are admittedly not perfect. Wikipedia is used best as an initial resource for people trying to find information on a topic. This should not be the source cited in anyone’s research paper but the place they come for some initial browsing. Many topics have tons of links out to other sites to get more substantiated information.

Wikipedia has the great advantage of being solely online and free to anyone. This makes changing mistakes quick and relatively painless. I tried to view Britannica’s encyclopedia online and noticed it did have an “edit suggestion” button but was not able to investigate further because I am not a member and it closed me out. I think Wikipedia is concerned about being seen as a viable source of information and has taken steps to regulate content more through peer reviews and article assessments but there are still problems. They must keep it an open source medium for it to stay true to its purpose but besides peer reviews and notifications I’m not sure what the answer is for further reliability other than to tell users to take information with a grain of salt.

Life can bring you up then pull you down fast…

There are times in all of our lives when we are forced to sit back and re-evaluate everything. Often this is brought on by an event that is beyond our control that seems completely daunting at the time. 

I’m in one of those places right now and frankly I’m hating it but past experience has shown me that things do get better and often a lot can be gleaned from it. It’s hard to see that though when you are deep in the muck and it can take all your might and willpower to see the light.  I feel fortunate that my life had been blissfully ignorant of an event like this until I was 21. That’s a lot more time than a lot of people get, especially those living in poverty stricken places around the world. I learned so much from that experience, most of which I would have avoided if I had the choice, but you have to find the good or else these things can cripple you.

Here I am again though, fearful for the time being and the near future but holding on to the things that will help brace me. Yes, friends and family are often there for you but you also have to make your own positive movement and sometimes fend for yourself. Luckily for me spring is right around the corner. Somehow everything seems more hopeful when the sun is shining down warmly on you.

It’s rainy and cold today though but I am still feeling positive as I write this. Positive that although things are going to get worse I am confident I will get through this, despite a few scars.

Second Life Sentiments

My only reference point of the online world Second Life prior to research for class last week was an article I had read over a year ago about its users “cheating” on their spouses by establishing relationships with others on the site. Needless to say it didn’t paint Second Life in the greatest light for me, in fact it seemed downright creepy.

Even though I didn’t have good thoughts about this online world going into it I was actually kind of excited when I saw our assignment was to set up our own avatar (our online persona) and explore Second Life. I chose the human avatar I thought looked the most similar to me and got to work right away trying to mold her facial features and body to make her look even more like me. I can’t lie, I was having fun with it. This quickly turned to confused and then upset when I found out I would have to pay Linden dollars (Second Life currency) to get the hair cut and color I wanted and to get linden dollars you have to spend real money.

Amorita Endrizzi- My Avatar

After I got the look, or as close to it as I was willing to use resources on, I started to explore. This is where things got really difficult. Second Life is a massive never ending landscape with no instructions to speak of. I’m sure this is what attracts a lot of people to it and what really separates it from other online gaming. Some people might say it has no point and others love that they have the ability to create what they want in this world, including property, cars, a new persona, or if you are technically inclined pretty much anything. This was too much for me though. After logging in a few times and trying to learn some things to make sense of it all (along with trying to figure out how to get a new outfit for free) I got frustrated and lost interest.

I can see how people can get caught up in this world and think it does serve a purpose, although I don’t know its a completely positive one. I don’t claim to be an expert on Second Life now that I have spent a total of two hours on it but what is the most bothersome to me about it is that it seems to be a place where people do not want to be themselves, but really an alter ego. No doubt this is fun every once in a while, it’s freeing in a way, but I think its worrisome if anyone feels the need to spend hours a day or week being someone else.