Another iteration in my own branding strategy. Let me know if this seems better or worse than what I had before.

You might have already seen Conor Oberst (a.k.a. Bright Eyes) on Leno this week, but if not, clicky-clicky.

I'm lukewarm on Conner's music at this point. I think if he keeps doing it he could really grow into a pretty formidable artist. Although the instrumentation and rhythm could stand development, there's no denying the echos of Dylan and Guthrie and Ochs in some of these lines: "No they're lazy George, I say we don't. Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke! That's what God reccomends." Acid sharp.

While I'm lukewarm, plenty of kids in my generation are hot for this 25-year-old from Oklahoma. This could be good.

Jeremy and Wes's internet has been out for the past three weeks, but it's back now baby! Oh yeah! This means I can fully return to my natural work cycle of 12 - 8 with optional late-nite overtime.

I'm grinding it out here. Going to make some invites today to party and performance next week. For those of you reading here:

Thursday, May 12th, Galapogos (70 N6th St, Billzburg), 8pm: CATCH

Frank and I will be performing in the mix with a collection of other "experimental" artists. It's generally a good mix of show, so come check it out. $7 or something.

Friday, May 13th, Ft. Green: GOING AWAY PARTY! (evite)

Frank and I will be performing again along with a few friend (Julia, maybe one or two others). If you want to see the show, come at 9pm. If you just want to party, come anytime after 10. It's going to be a big social mixer in a gorgeious loft with a keg and loud music and a good crowd, so invite friends and split a car service home at 4am. Just like the good old days.

Local church kicks out all Democrats for "sin" of voting for Kerry. This is a Bad Thing. Hopefully it will not catch on.

In this little ditty called British Politics Dives Into the Web, WaPo reporter Robert MacMillan puts his ignorance on display with a little quotational backup from a academic at Oxford:

Despite predictions in the United States that 2004 would usher in an era in which Web campaigning would rival the 30-second TV spot in importance, elections are still about knocking on doors and glad-handing on the sidewalks. The same appears to be holding true in Britain.

"I think it would be a mistake to assume that the Web has become a significant campaigning tool either at the national level or at the constituency level of candidates," said Stephen Coleman, a professor at Oxford University's Internet Institute and an expert on the use of the Web in elections. "They have a fairly symbolic value. You need to be seen to have one, but [the parties] are not quite sure what to do with them."

Dutton might be right in that the parties are not quite sure what to do with the web, but MacMillan's obliviousness to the connection between a campaign's online life and it's on-the-street activities betrays a profound ignorance of what happened in the US in 2004. Either he never bothered to investigate the Dean campaign (beyond fundraising), Meetup or GOP Team Leader, or he's taking the inside-the-beltway conventional wisdom over the evidence.

The reality is that a number of campaigns in 2004 (Dean, Clark, Kucinish and Bush) made highly effective use of the internet. Fundraising grabbed a lot of headlines, but that's an old story. John McCain raised a million dollars in two days in 2000; the GOP has been raising tens of millions through direct-mail for years. What happened in 2004 was that the effective campaigns were the able to turn donors into activists by giving people a sense of ownership in return for their online donation. The $20 donation helps keep the campaign alive not just by adding to the bank account, but by more effectively binding the donor to the campaign.

The effective online campaign maximized this by providing opportunities to contribute via sweat-equity (aka volunteering) in combination to a direct financial gift. They used their online presence to recruit, organize and monitor these volunteers, as well as to seed dense grassroots networks which helped support their campaign without technically being a part of it. While this is not exactly a revelation in politics, the changing ways in which the net allows a campaign to communicate with its constituents are integral to the deployment of these tactics in 2004.

The conventional wisdom on what drives a campaign is broken. TV ads do not put people in the street or knocking on doors. To do that, you need organization. The internet is opening up new ways for campaigns to organize constituents, and more excitingly for "regular people" to self-organize independely of campaigns. TV and print ads are and will remain important for the sake of visibility and framing. Though the net is transforming those aspects as well, the old media remains dominant (object lesson: the Dean scream). However, when it comes to organizing, there's no question that the internet plays an integral role for savvy campaigns and parties.

The ironic thing is, until old-media reporters begin to understand and respect this distinction, the current frame around internet campaigning will remain largely intact. That provides some opportunities as well as frustrations. The GOP did very well in 2004 by keeping a lot of its organization off the mainstream radar. While I find journalistic ignorance to be annoying, I also kind of hope people keep underestimating the internet.

Passing through my instant message window today:

i used the line, "seeking strategic partners that synergize with our core competencies" with no irony whatsoever

i felt dirty.

People are getting back into business, and while it doesn't look like regular people have much hope of advancement, my guess is that in the next decade there will be an opportunity for the well informed/connected to get another little boom going for themselves. Given that I see this coming, it brings up a bunch of interesting questions on the subject of "career."

I'm forever entrepreneurial, that's just how I am, but there are real conflicts over what I really aught to do with my energy and expertise. I don't really know if it's possible to do a "tour of duty" in the business world. I used to think I might be able to sell myself out for a year, get rid of some debt, bank a little cash and the strike out on my own, but the reality is that at the level where you're getting that kind of pay they tend to want more from you than you really want to give.

The new alternatives seem to be either gearing down, going neo-boho, or getting ambitious again. Basically those mean:

• Gearing Down: continuing the frugal lifestyle I've been leading for the past four months, adjusted for a more sustainability; probably going somewhere with a lower cost of living than NYC. Looking to settle into some kind of easy groove. Probably not likely, but always a possibility.
• Neo-Boho: more or less continuing on-course in terms of work activity; freelancing; living a slightly more materially comfortable lifestyle (e.g. my own apartment); continuing to seek and sample. This is kind of the default plan, though I'm skeptical that I will find it very fulfilling for much longer.
• Ambitious: making some solid choices about what I want to do and where I want to go and really attempting to go all the way with it. Putting my social and cultural capital on the line; calling in favors; starting to ask for what I want rather than just what I need.

When I write it out like that, the obvious gravitation is towards the latter choice. The problem is in the "making some solid choices" bit. I'm not really in a position to do that at the moment. So I'm sort of in default mode, and that's getting to be exhausting and a bore, so I entertain thoughts of going to ground and hibernating for a while. Maybe that's what I need to do in order to figure out my path. I'm not sure.

In any event, I'd like to have some of this square by the fall. Hopefully the road trip will help. Time's a-wasting.

I'm back in the saddle, going easy but loving it. Every day is a gift.

One of the things I realized happened while I was laid up is I kicked off caffeine. The overall miserableness of the whole scene covered up any withdrawl symptoms, so now I'm pleasently free of the driving need to consume coffee in quantity on a regular schedule. I had one small cup today and it was quite a pleasure.

It was a good weekend. I got a fair amount of work done, caught up with some old friends, drank some great beers, remembered what it is to be attracted to a girl, and got back up on my bike for the first time since the crash.

That's just more than a week ago but already it feels distant. Things don't slow down just because you're banged up. It's May, baby, and the attitude is coming 'roung again. Spring is in the air.

Starting off with nerding out...

The first social network I joined was Friendster. I think I posted a spring street personal a long time ago, and once some of us guys at the meek posted the Schwinn City Sinners as a profile on makeoutclub (which is the sort of vice/hipster place) as a gag, but friendster was the first one I actually used.

Just now I got an invite to Where Are You Now which seems to want to cater to English-speaking world-travelers. This struck me as shockingly specific, and I wasn't sure if it was a legit social network or an attempt to get detailed marketing data on a valuable demographic.

But if then I realized it's not that strange (or specific) at all, just look at what else is out there:

Rotten Eggs, A Social Network for Pranksters, which sort of caters to the proto-hacker/goofball/Anarchist cookbook crowd. But some people on it are clearly young, like high-school. It's kind of a voyeuristic thrill to read. Here's an example; here's something a little more lowbrow.

On the opposite side of the high school, and a little more, uhh, advanced in it's social nature, is the "#1 Site For The 18-30 Crowd" Face The Jury, which combined the genius of a general social network with the added bonus of hot or not. Instant skin-deep evaluations. Rankings. Kings. Damsels. The whole nine yards. Feels very Miami. Ugh.

There are probably hundreds of other networks out there this, serving much the same function as old-skool BBSs did, creating communities of maybe a few hundred people. The difference now is that you have the ability for everyone to be online at the same time, and the potential population is huge. These little enclaves exist somewhere underneath bigtime utility players like myspace, friendster and the moneymaking dating services (who are starting to realize that adding social networking boosts their popularity). What someone aught to do is start putting all these tools together with identity services -- ways to let you prove you are who you say you are online -- allow them to start intermingling, becoming authoritative webs of trust and sources of virtual persona. That would be dope.

Imagine if you could carry your identity with you as you wanted on the net. This starts off as something as simple as automatically adding a little avatar and a link back to your own neck of the internet on any comments you left anywhere. But then imagine if people could then see who you were, tell you were a real person with your own community and connections, and you could keep track of replies to your comments. Think of the social discourse that could evolve!

And why not? This is the human thing to do. I haven't had a romantic relationship that didn't include an email component, and in fact I think it played an integral role in most. I use email with my friends and my family. I use IM and IRC to facilitate my work. I post to this blog so people can check up on me and hear what I have to say. This is normal behavior, to use a communications network to, well, communicate. That means to say your piece and stay in touch, but also to find out more about the world around you, to make more connections, to engage in conversation.

When you think 10 or 20 years down the line, John Dewey's optimistic vision of America as a multitude of "communities of inquiry" seems almost possible. I think we're in a watershed era here in terms of how we organize ourselves socially. Things are going to change, but there's no guarantee they're going to change for the better. If we're not careful here, we could also end up with some kind of kind of ugly 1984 situation; propaganda, surveillance, oppression.

Slipping into politix...

While I can point to small (and even some medium-sized) ways in which we're currently drifting in those negative directions, I think the opposite momentum -- the rise of a resiliently and positively American ethic, driven by a shift in the way our society obtains and evaluates information -- is coming up faster and stronger. Bush won another term, yes, but he doesn't have an iron grip on power in this country, nor is he really a horrific villain of epic proportions. He's a very bad president, but I don't believe he is evil. And I think he and his kind are on their way out.

I watched the little press conference today. He's not doing good, the President. He performed pretty well on the personalty scale. I expect he'll pick up a few points in the polls for being nice-sounding and seemingly earnest, but he didn't give many substantive answers to the questions people are asking. That means he either doesn't have any substantive answers, or his actual answers are unpopular. In either case, his general momentum is going to continue.

Compounding that, Bush's uber-GOP coalition (62,000,000 votes can't all be fake) is beginning to splinter. One reporter asked whether he (the Prez) agreed or disagreed with the statement that Democrats were filibustering some truly reactionary judges because they were "against people of faith." Bush was forced to disagree, making some pretty weak noises about how "faith is a personal matter." The statement was made by the #1 Republican in the Senate (and a man with Presidential ambitions of his own, ho ho ho) Bill Frist, just last weekend on a live multi-network Christian telecast called "Justice Sunday."

Meanwhile, the Democrats are behaving like a party out of power should: sticking together. Congress passed a budget 214-211. NO Democrats voted for it; 6 Republicans broke party lines and voted against. The bill cuts Medicare by $10B, but contains $106B in tax cuts, mostly for the already wealthy. Hooyeah.

Under pressure, Bush talks about bipartisanship, but if he wants to be taken seriously he'll have to distance himself from Frist, Delay, the Fundamentalists, and the Party Hatchet Men like Grover Norquest, who famously proclaimed that "Bi-Partisanship is like Date Rape."

These pig-eyed Goldwater geeks and grown-up Reagan Youth are the backbone of the Bush machine. They're king-hell organizers, they've been in and out of power for 30 years, but they've never really been in control before. It's been a rampage ever since they squeaked through the door in an unquestionably fucked-with election, and then got the greatest political gift imaginable with 9/11. They looted the economy, launched an ill-advised and poorly-planned war, and formed the uber-GOP coalition with the good ol' boys, the corporate wing, and a community of post-dispensationalist evangelical Christians which continues to increase its right-wing political clout. All that is coming to an end, because when the chips are down their ideas are bullshit, the electorate is turning against them, and their coalition is spending its precious time in control bickering amongst itself.

I'm a partisan for Utopia, so I'm glad to see the breakup. I think it's going to contine, and I think it's going to set up a better situation for everyone. In the future, it's going to be increasingly difficult to lie to people. Leaders in business, politics and society are going to find it's easier (read: more profitable) to be transparent and good than to be two-faced and clandestine.

Anyway, I'm turning in to get some rest. I get my stitches out tomorrow, and my leg and arm improve by the day.

Starting off with nerding out...

The first social network I joined was Friendster. I think I posted a spring street personal a long time ago, and once some of us guys at the meek posted the Schwinn City Sinners as a profile on makeoutclub (which is the sort of vice/hipster place) as a gag, but friendster was the first one I actually used.

Just now I got an invite to Where Are You Now which seems to want to cater to English-speaking world-travelers. This struck me as shockingly specific, and I wasn't sure if it was a legit social network or an attempt to get detailed marketing data on a valuable demographic.

But if then I realized it's not that strange (or specific) at all, just look at what else is out there:

Rotten Eggs, A Social Network for Pranksters, which sort of caters to the proto-hacker/goofball/Anarchist cookbook crowd. But some people on it are clearly young, like high-school. It's kind of a voyeuristic thrill to read. Here's an example; here's something a little more lowbrow.

On the opposite side of the high school, and a little more, uhh, advanced in it's social nature, is the "#1 Site For The 18-30 Crowd" Face The Jury, which combined the genius of a general social network with the added bonus of hot or not. Instant skin-deep evaluations. Rankings. Kings. Damsels. The whole nine yards. Feels very Miami. Ugh.

There are probably hundreds of other networks out there this, serving much the same function as old-skool BBSs did, creating communities of maybe a few hundred people. The difference now is that you have the ability for everyone to be online at the same time, and the potential population is huge. These little enclaves exist somewhere underneath bigtime utility players like myspace, friendster and the moneymaking dating services (who are starting to realize that adding social networking boosts their popularity). What someone aught to do is start putting all these tools together with identity services -- ways to let you prove you are who you say you are online -- allow them to start intermingling, becoming authoritative webs of trust and sources of virtual persona. That would be dope.

Imagine if you could carry your identity with you as you wanted on the net. This starts off as something as simple as automatically adding a little avatar and a link back to your own neck of the internet on any comments you left anywhere. But then imagine if people could then see who you were, tell you were a real person with your own community and connections, and you could keep track of replies to your comments. Think of the social discourse that could evolve!

And why not? This is the human thing to do. I haven't had a romantic relationship that didn't include an email component, and in fact I think it played an integral role in most. I use email with my friends and my family. I use IM and IRC to facilitate my work. I post to this blog so people can check up on me and hear what I have to say. This is normal behavior, to use a communications network to, well, communicate. That means to say your piece and stay in touch, but also to find out more about the world around you, to make more connections, to engage in conversation.

When you think 10 or 20 years down the line, John Dewey's optimistic vision of America as a multitude of "communities of inquiry" seems almost possible. I think we're in a watershed era here in terms of how we organize ourselves socially. Things are going to change, but there's no guarantee they're going to change for the better. If we're not careful here, we could also end up with some kind of kind of ugly 1984 situation; propaganda, surveillance, oppression.

Slipping into politix...

While I can point to small (and even some medium-sized) ways in which we're currently drifting in those negative directions, I think the opposite momentum -- the rise of a resiliently and positively American ethic, driven by a shift in the way our society obtains and evaluates information -- is coming up faster and stronger. Bush won another term, yes, but he doesn't have an iron grip on power in this country, nor is he really a horrific villain of epic proportions. He's a very bad president, but I don't believe he is evil. And I think he and his kind are on their way out.

I watched the little press conference today. He's not doing good, the President. He performed pretty well on the personalty scale. I expect he'll pick up a few points in the polls for being nice-sounding and seemingly earnest, but he didn't give many substantive answers to the questions people are asking. That means he either doesn't have any substantive answers, or his actual answers are unpopular. In either case, his general momentum is going to continue.

Compounding that, Bush's uber-GOP coalition (62,000,000 votes can't all be fake) is beginning to splinter. One reporter asked whether he (the Prez) agreed or disagreed with the statement that Democrats were filibustering some truly reactionary judges because they were "against people of faith." Bush was forced to disagree, making some pretty weak noises about how "faith is a personal matter." The statement was made by the #1 Republican in the Senate (and a man with Presidential ambitions of his own, ho ho ho) Bill Frist, just last weekend on a live multi-network Christian telecast called "Justice Sunday."

Meanwhile, the Democrats are behaving like a party out of power should: sticking together. Congress passed a budget 214-211. NO Democrats voted for it; 6 Republicans broke party lines and voted against. The bill cuts Medicare by $10B, but contains $106B in tax cuts, mostly for the already wealthy. Hooyeah.

Under pressure, Bush talks about bipartisanship, but if he wants to be taken seriously he'll have to distance himself from Frist, Delay, the Fundamentalists, and the Party Hatchet Men like Grover Norquest, who famously proclaimed that "Bi-Partisanship is like Date Rape."

These pig-eyed Goldwater geeks and grown-up Reagan Youth are the backbone of the Bush machine. They're king-hell organizers, they've been in and out of power for 30 years, but they've never really been in control before. It's been a rampage ever since they squeaked through the door in an unquestionably fucked-with election, and then got the greatest political gift imaginable with 9/11. They looted the economy, launched an ill-advised and poorly-planned war, and formed the uber-GOP coalition with the good ol' boys, the corporate wing, and a community of post-dispensationalist evangelical Christians which continues to increase its right-wing political clout. All that is coming to an end, because when the chips are down their ideas are bullshit, the electorate is turning against them, and their coalition is spending its precious time in control bickering amongst itself.

I'm a partisan for Utopia, so I'm glad to see the breakup. I think it's going to contine, and I think it's going to set up a better situation for everyone. In the future, it's going to be increasingly difficult to lie to people. Leaders in business, politics and society are going to find it's easier (read: more profitable) to be transparent and good than to be two-faced and clandestine.

Anyway, I'm turning in to get some rest. I get my stitches out tomorrow, and my leg and arm improve by the day.