I dig the Gore Vidal quote. I saw it one day last week when I had to take a cab to work because I had a flat tire. I thought the bike shop would be able to fix it while I waited but the mechanic didn’t arrive until noon and I had a meeting at 11am so I had to go go go. It wasn’t too far from work so I rode by it on Monday to get the snap. What people hear…it’s personally, politically, and emotionally biased. I guess that’s what makes it so difficult. It’s even more difficult in these politcally charged times. It’s really difficult to have a debate about things like torture for me with someone who is a Bush supporter. I argue that the Bush administration is responsible for the things that have gone on in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo because they’ve changed the language so that emeny combatants are not protected under the Geneva Convention. A conservative will say that’s liberal nonsense and that it was the soldiers. But we love the CEO analogy here and employees take their cue from the boss, particularly when there is a leadership void, like there was on the night shift at Abu Ghraib. The problem is many conservatives won’t hear a rational argument that we have changed our policy and the fact that it has profound implications. All they hear is “Michael Moore, higher taxes, affirmative action, Kennedy, sex with an intern, leftist propaganda, communist lover, freedom hater, doesn’t support our troops.” At this point in time I don’t really know how to approach that argument nor do I have the energy. This to me is another case of a future “I told you so” which I don’t really partake in anyway. What’s the point?

Speaking of being pointless, I am having my doubts about Web 2.0. Yes, there are some cool tools and great interfaces being created but it’s a lot of hype and wealth creation but is it really making us more productive or making us better humans? I don’t think so. I guess wealth creation is cool but I find it makes me a scanner instead of a reader. You set up your homepage via some web app (Google, Netvibes, etc.) and have your RSS feeds bringing you information from news sources and blogs, watching the photos you’ve taken pass by via Flickr, see when you get a new email from gmail or other source, get a quote of the day, see the sports score, etc. If managed reasonably it can be great but one need be careful or else you find yourself a slave to the interface. Just a passive user instead of a productive contributor. I still say a bicycle is a whole hell of a lot cooler than anything Web 2.0 can produce…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Life in the States, Web + Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.