Dan Gillmor
The mainstream media did a horrible job reporting on the campaign, Dan says. But there were some good things going on around the edges. Journalism was evolving into a conversation — and that means governments have to move much more towards listening and talking.
And journalists were being watched by the web — witness Dan Rather. Nevertheless, mainstream media still called bloggers those people in pajamas.
But bloggers/citizen media having a big effect, and will continue to. Let's use wikis to watch candidate statements. Let's watch governments more closely. Let's shadow them.
Great job by Dan, who has announced that he is leaving the San Jose Mercury News to have his own citizen journalism effort.
Robert Putnam — "Bowling Alone"
Question: has Meetup solved the problem?
Nope. Putnam says we don't need to go to concerts thanks to CDs. A great loss. We do it all alone. How can the internet be used to build “real” face to face ties to other people? These other communities are fictional, because they're virtual.
And then the IRC channel learned that the SCT had taken cert. in Grokster, and we lost focus.
Berkman conference
I'm at the Berman Center's Internet & Society 2004 conference, Votes, Bits & Bytes. The first morning session was a little slow, but things sped up with Tod Cohen's business panel (particularly with the very human Craig Newmark).
Now Scott Heiferman of meetup.com is up, talking about meetup issues. Robert Putnam, who wrote “Bowling Alone,” will respond to his remarks. I have a feeling that Putnam will say meetup is no substitute for full human contact.
But the IRC channel that Joi Ito set up is buzzing along. I'm asking what happens to meetup 10 years from now, and someone mentions upcoming.org as a place to look. I guess the idea is that calendaring functions will integrate meetup kinds of events — it'll be built into the infrastructure. Hmm. I'd rather have lots of wildly non-infrastructure meetings going on. With pugs and ukelele guys.
Email amnesty day
As part of World Day (formerly known as Net Day, although gyrations are occurring about the name), Greg Elin had the bright idea that we should offer an Email Amnesty Day.
Here's the idea: On one day a year, you are permitted (indeed, expected) to delete all the unanswered mail in your inbox. Just wipe it out. Start fresh. And everyone will understand.
No more shame or grief associated with email — just for that one day.