The change all around us
People under 30 may not realize that less than 20 years ago the creation of the Web browser turned the Internet from a text-only labyrinth of BBS's, Gophernets and FTP's into the amazing World Wide Web that we almost take for granted today.
That transformation accelerated changes already taking place in the information, news and communications fields that not only continue, but are gearing up for another quantum leap that some have called Internet 2.
This blog is intended to track and try to understand these changes, particularly how they affect my lifelong field, journalism, as well as public life both on the North Coast and elsewhere.
One example is an article by Matt Bai in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on Dec. 9. His main point: It's becoming clear that presidential candidates have failed to grasp the key lesson of Howard Dean's soar-and-crash 2004 campaign. "Dean's campaign didn't explode online because he somehow figured out a way to channel online politics; he managed this feat because his campaign, almost by accident, became channeled by people he had never met."
Bai says that "in this new and evolving online world, the greatest momentum goes not to the candidate with the most detailed plan for conquering the Web, but to the candidate who surrenders his own image to the clicking masses, the same way a rock guitarist might fall backward off the stage into the hands of an adoring crowd."
That's why it's fun to watch Ron Paul, this year's darling of the blogosphere, looking stunned — like a deer in the headlights — as he goes from a "who's he?" to a guy who can raise $4 million online from 21,000 individuals in a single day. Or to watch Hillary Clinton's handlers work so hard to create a "hip" Web site that is painfully lame. Or analyze how the "Obama Girl" YouTube video may have affected Barack Obama's public image.
The Web users' campaign of 2008 could have as much impact on the future of politics in this country as television did with the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960.