While I admire Dave Winer‘s role in blogging, RSS and all that is happening now, I have to say that I truly admire his courage in continuing to sing his song when so often he is the target of slings and arrows.
I don’t always agree with Dave, but he’s long been a daily read of mine. A few days ago, he posted a gem of a comment on Joe Trippi and the Democrats’ “adoption” of blogging that struck me as being exactly on target.
Consider this. Dave says:
“Joe Trippi, get a clue. Geez Louise. He thinks the role of the Internet in politics is to raise money so they can run ads on TV. Look at how much good all those TV ads did for Howard Dean. You think he would have figured it out by now. The election will happen here, not there. Probably not the Presidential election of 2004. Perhaps one of our goals for the DNC is to smoke out innovative uses of the Internet by Democrats, where they’re doing more than raise money for TV ads. Put that one on the list for sure.”
I shake my head when I see John Kerry using the Internet only to raise money for more and more TV ads. I don’t get the reason this is someohow considered new politics.
If Kerry instead were focusing less on his ads and his good hair and more on the truly cool Internet technology that his campaign already has (maybe he knows about it(?)), I might be able to understand how he is able to claim his Internet savvy.
I’d like you to take a look at what Kerry’s campaign has at its disposal as a dedicated feed reader at http://www.download.com/3000-2164-10297071.html and tell me whether you find that a little more exciting and a little more “new politics” than millions of more dollars of superficial TV ads. It’s an innovative approach that intrigues me greatly with its potential and has me discussing other uses of this technology, in law and elsewhere, with the people at MyST Technology Partners, who were heavily involved in the development of the Kerry Reader. Put that innovation as one on your list, Dave.
Of course, there is an ironic analogy with the heady days of the dot-com era where companies convinced investors that the Internet was the future and then used most of their capital to buy expensive TV ads. All that money spent on ads didn’t buy too many people’s loyalty either.