If you peruse this list of policy initiatives provided by The White House in relation to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address last night (transcript is here; C-SPAN video is here), you may notice that two topics concern science and technology, two topics concern education and no topics concern the arts.
[NB: The final topic on that list, about worldwide compassion, stands out to me because I recently read about Compassion, which is a faith-based initiative that will use word of mouth blog power in Uganda next month. (If you’re interested in how non-profits are trying to leverage blogs and blogging and bloggers’ enthusiasm, you might want to follow Beth Kanter’s blog and read about How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media; she is one of the top experts in this area.) But I digress.]
So, while it’s nice that President Bush leaves us with his thoughts on science-related issues and makes sure to mention education (given No Child Left Behind’s continued existence, it’s unlikely we could forget Bush’s role there), some groups are demanding (or trying to demand) that the presidential candidates pay attention to their specific issues: Science Debate 2008, Ed in ‘08 and Arts Vote 2008 are three examples. Read the rest of this entry »
Bill Clinton, Oprah and Angela Jolie are often in Africa these days, with reporters and camera crews in their wake. This week the Christian Science Monitor is taking a long look at what they are doing:
“The world’s poorest, sickest, most war-ravaged continent is now the charity of choice for many of the West’s best-known political, pop, and Hollywood stars. Outside attention to the continent has fueled thousands of successful programs. But, despite the aid, the number of poor people in Africa has almost doubled in the past decade, and skeptics wonder whether some stars are most interested in boosting their own profile in the eyes of a public that expects a moral dimension to its heroes.â€
In a two-part series, reporter Danna Jarman tries to go beyond the reflexive sigh or sneer at their efforts and offer insight into who is doing what and to what effect.
As she follows him on a week-long four-country tour, Bill Clinton tells her, “It’s easy … to say, ‘Oh, this is not serious, they are just trying to get press’ My experience has been this is not true. Not everything every actor does, works. Just like not everything I do works. Not everything Bill Gates does works. But it’s not true that it’s not genuine. By and large, it just is.”
A visiting scholar observes, “The bang for the buck is high in Africa. You can leverage your money and time. So you are not only bringing in more mosquito nets, but potentially shaping the entire national policy.”
For the open-minded and/or star-struck, the Monitor series is a whirlwind tour of what George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Mia Farrow et al are doing on a continent where nothing can be enough. If it stirs readers without big names to write small checks, that would add to their efforts.
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Information Overload and The Race For President
By Alex Hammer
Bill Gates a while back wrote a memo to Microsoft employees detailing a new era for software. Software 1.0 (not his term, but he does speak in striking terms about the shifting paradigm) was about getting consumers more information. Software 2.0, he states, which is the future of software and a huge market opportunity, is about organizing the information that we already have, so that it is useful.
Actionable.
I’ve never heard anyone accuse Bill Gates of being stupid. He knows, as we all do, that we’re inundated - overwhelmed - with information. I know people, for example, that refuse even to use email anymore because they just can’t get through all the spam.
Welcome the 2008 race for President. As the owner of Politics 2.0, which focuses on the race for President in 2008, how do we traverse across the sea of Presidential 2008 information to provide readers what is useful to them and the type of information they are looking for and want to know?
In this day of information overload that is the question we all must answer.
We seek to do it, most essentially, by being hooked into the broadest relevant network of informational sources upon which to draw upon that we can, and then employing developed processes and tools of sorting, analyzing and implementing those informational sources in an efficient manner.
I trust that the candidates for President are likely doing a lot of the same.
When you look at the websites of the top Presidential candidates they are generally well organized, but there are differences. Barack Obama has the most sophisticated online social network on his site, and as Politics 2.0 details, Obama competes with Hillary Clinton and yes, Ron Paul, for the most Internet traffic.
