Archive - 2006
December 24th
Transformational Candidates
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 12/24/2006 - 20:27(The following is a comment I made on a thread at MyDD about whether Edwards should run, which got into a great discussion about transformational politics.)
I think Trippi is hitting the nail on the head. We need a transformational leader. I supported Gov. Dean in 2004, not because he was a transformational leader. When I started paying attention to the 2004 race, I wasn't thinking in those terms.
Nonetheless, I found myself transformed by Gov. Dean and his campaign. Many of us were changed by the campaign and we are all better off because of it.
Who will be the transformational candidate in 2008? I like what Sen. Edwards is saying and doing about poverty. I hope it transforms people and gets them to contribute to local food banks, to help rebuild our houses the way Sen. Edwards has in New Orleans or the way President Carter has done with Habitat for Humanity. As well as bring about meaningful change in Washington on issues related to poverty.
As I've written elsewhere, I hope it spawns a new generation of Freedom Riders; perhaps this generation's Freedom Riders with be Freedom Writers leading a war on poverty through blogs, video blogs and citizen journalism by helping all of us see the side of America that is rarely on broadcast TV.
Whether or not Vice President Gore chooses to run, he too, could be a transformational leader if his message translates into people's lives being changed with the way they use energy. I sure hope that many of us are transformed in our relationship to fossil fuels.
Will any of the other candidates help transform our system? I don't know enough about Vilsack to comment about him, but I will mention one candidate who took me by surprise by the transformational attitude of one of his staffers.
I ran into a staffer of Sen. Dodd at an event in Washington. The staffer talked about using Dodd's campaign to help bring about lasting change in our electoral system. Now, I'm from Connecticut. I like Sen. Dodd. I know that he's been in the Senate for twenty-five years, was a former DNC chair and is the son of a former Senator. The idea of him bringing about meaningful change to the electoral system took me by surprise. He did co-sponsor the Help America Vote Act, which while it may have been well intentioned seems to have done as much to help America vote as No Child Left Behind has done for education.
So, as it stands right now, Sen. Edwards is the candidate that I believe has the greatest potential to bring about transformation, so that's where I'm putting my energy.
December 22nd
Exploring Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/23/2006 - 02:09I really don’t have time or energy for my first life right now, but several different groups I’m part of are talking to me about Second Life, so I thought I should put up a quick post about what I’ve been up to there and what I’ve been finding.
Friends of mine who are videobloggers, non-profit technologists, and political activists have all been talking with me separately about Second Life. To me, these three groups have some interesting potential overlaps and I would love to see them connect a little better.
A videoblogger had recently posted on BlogHUD. BlogHud is a blogging system for Second Life. You can send a message from Second Life and it will show up on BlogHUDs page. They have nice feature to find who blogged what, and from where they blogged it.
For example, check out my recent posts from SecondLife as well as posts from Commonwealth Island.
Ideally, all of my friends should probably use this to publicize places and events in Second Life.
From there, I stumbled across Snapzilla. Snapzilla, aka SLPics can be found at http://www.sluniverse.com/pics. It is sort of like the Flickr of Second Life. It is even supposed to support cross posting to Flickr, but that hasn't worked for me yet. Bloghud includes pictures from Snapzilla, and you can associate them with your profile there.
As I was learning my way around Snapzilla, I also came across SLProfiles. If Snapzilla is the Flickr of Second Life, SLProfiles is the MySpace of SecondLife. I haven't really started putting up much of a profile there yet. Like MySpace, I’ve been contacted by people I don’t know very well asking me to add them as friends. Ideally, I would love to see all of my videoblogging, non-profit tech, political activist friends add me on SLProfiles. The we could do some really interesting Second Life based online social networks. My profile is at http://www.slprofiles.com/slprofiles.asp?id=5450.
SLProfiles also has a blogging tool, very similar to bloghud. I’ve posted one quick note there.
When I get more time, I’ll explore more and think about how we can really use some of this for positive change.
December 19th
KLHT Stairwell Singers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/19/2006 - 17:36
So what do we do while waiting?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 12/19/2006 - 12:29It is almost Christmas and I am only now getting around to my obligatory Advent entry. It seems as if Advent captures so much of my life. It is that time of hope and expectation, when we “are reverently, passionately waiting // For the miraculous birth” (W.H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts). It often seems like I am waiting for something miraculous to come along as well, especially now as I try to figure out what I do after the Lamont campaign.
Well, as Vladimir responds in Waiting for Godot to Estragon’s question, “What do we do now?”, “We could do our exercises.”
So, I continue to blog. I continue to try and help others get going with their blogging. I keep reading NewsTrust, as I wait.
For those who don’t know Auden’s great poem, I would encourage you to go out and read it. After the section I quoted comes the twist: “there always must be // Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating // On a pond at the edge of the wood”
No, I’m not going skating today. However, I will go hear one of my daughters sing in a Christmas concert. I will go see a movie tonight. (Yes, it is about blogging). I will eat cookie and play games, and all of that will be part of my exercises as I await the miraculous birth.
December 18th
The Media Heating Tunnels
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 12/18/2006 - 09:01I don’t often write blog entries based on dreams that I’ve had, but one of my dreams last night seemed very applicable. It metaphorically asked, where to ‘hot’ stories come from in the media?
Back when I was in college, I led groups of students on tours of the heating tunnels on campus. The school had a large plant on the south east side of campus that among other things provided steam to the buildings across campus. There were tunnels all over the campus where people could go down and work on the pipes. If you knew where the entrances were, wanted a little bit of a different type of excitement on a weekend evening, and weren’t afraid to get a little dirty and sweaty, you could see a different side of campus that most people never saw.
This wasn’t a sanctioned activity and the heating tunnel spelunkers were known to show up at unexpected places, sometimes resulting in requests to show up at the Dean of Student Affairs office as well.
In my dream, I was showing friends, particularly from groups like the Media Giraffe Project or the Action Coalition for Media Education the heating tunnels of the media establishment. I don’t remember the details of the dream other than there were tricks about turning on more powerful lights as well as helping one person remove a spider that had gotten stuck in her hair. I’m sure that these were all symbols for something bigger going on, but I’m not sure I know exactly what it is.
So, what makes one story hot and another one get almost no coverage? I’m not sure I know, but let me provide a couple illustrations. Last week, Fox News ran a story (NewsTrust) about possible terrorist threats related to the health of an imprisoned terrorist. The story noted “the FBI said there is no credible indication that a plan for retribution is in place”. What makes this report important?
Meanwhile, news about police taking cameras from citizen journalists in New York or information about a forum on fair elections in New Hampshire gets little coverage.
Yes, it was just a dream that people start looking at the dirty underside of how stories become hot in our media, but dreams our powerful things. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream has inspired millions, and this little dream is perhaps not as far from becoming real as people might think. After all, you are Time Magazine’s person of the year. You are changing the media landscape.
