Archive - Aug 4, 2007
IM and Thou
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 08/04/2007 - 22:54“You have my constant partial attention”, I posted in a comment as I glanced at my buddy list to see who was IMing me. In the lower right hand corner of the screen, little boxes appeared and disappeared as friends updated their statuses on Facebook. My phone chirped with text messages sent from friends on Twitter.
Neil Diamond’s ”IM, I said, to no one there, and no one heard at all” rang through my head. Yes, it does sometimes seem like this constant partial attention is nothing but IMing to nobody. Maybe this disquieting existence somewhere between being in constant contact with more people than ever was possible before and yet not really connecting with other people is all the more poignant to me right now as I sit in a place of unknowing about where I will live, what work I will do, and how I will manage to feed my family.
Perhaps this longing for real connections is why I am seeing so many people talking about how happy they are to be at YearlyKos in their Facebook statuses and their messages on Twitter. There are people at YearlyKos that have become close friends whom I have never met and whom I would have loved to meet face to face in Chicago.
Yes, this place of unknowing is uncomfortable, both in terms of what is going on personally, as well as what is going on with our online relationships. However, this place of unknowing is also where we can learn important things about ourselves and our relationships to people around us.
Too often, I’ve only glanced at the low priority emails, the IMs, the statuses updates, the Twitter messages and the blog posts that don’t catch my attention and let them pass me by without taking time to think about the underlying message that unifies all of them. Too often I haven’t listened to the collected digital unconscious or tried to view the digital palimpsest that all these messages build up.
As I got ready to leave for Boston this afternoon, I tried to whittle down the hundreds of unread emails to a more manageable size. Some messages I just deleted after glancing at the subject lines. Others I moved to folders that I’ll check again if the need ever arises, but they will most likely remain unread. Some received a little red flag to remind me to check the message again when I have more time.
Now, I’m on the train. I sent a message on my cell to Twitter and Facebook, which will get replicated via RSS to my blog and to Jaiku letting anyone who is paying constant partial attention to me that I am on my way to Boston.
The accumulated messages fade into the distance, like the evening lit swamps by the side of the railroad tracks. The swamps are lonely, empty, forsaken places that also contain great beauty if you look closely enough. As the train passes, I see beautiful birds take flight.
The success of a child using the potty for the first time is an important milestone and the mommy who is spending all her time talking with young children needs some friendly adult ears that can share the joy. They make for important blog posts. The remembrance of a special day with a loved one who lost the battle with cancer a few years ago is sacred and needs to be revered by all that pass by online.
In college, I read Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” and often think about how we treat the people around us as things. We relate to them as ‘its’ instead of ‘thous’. In these days of IMs and constant partial attention, it seems even easier to relate to those around us as ‘its’, as objects no different than bots that have passed their Turing test.
Can we learn to listen to the collective digital unconscious? Can we learn to connect with the sacred in those around us online? I believe we can, if we work on it. In doing so, our own writing will gain new meaning, our political advocacy will gain new depth. Please join me in seeking the “IM and Thou”.
NCSL Pre Game, Continued
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 08/04/2007 - 11:51This evening, I shall be heading up to Boston to blog the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Like any such blogging outing, I like to spend a little bit of time ahead of time getting my bearings. This entry will provide a little insight into my thoughts going up.
When Gov. Dean ended his 2004 Presidential bid, he encouraged his supporters to run for office. It was probably the first time that I gave any serious consideration to state legislatures. Kim decided to run for State Rep., and I was surprised to find that 85% of people don’t know who their State Reps are. People asked Kim if she would have to move to Washington if she were elected State Representative.
Over the following years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people, especially through Democracy for America, that are very interested in State Legislatures. Many important legislative decisions are made at the State level, and State Legislatures are a great farm team for the U.S. Congress. It is shocking how many State Legislative races go uncontested.
Years before all of this, I was at a financial services conference where Eliot Spitzer, who was Attorney General in New York at the time, spoke about the importance of state government in response to pressures from federalists. As the federalists get more issues pushed down to the state level, state legislatures become even more important.
It was through a group of liberal bloggers focused on regional issues that I first got the idea of attending the NCSL annual meeting. As I searched around, I found that Bill Hobbs from the Media Bloggers Association attended last years NCSL annual meeting as a blogger and I was glad to see focus interested in the role of blogs in our media ecology covering the event.
I’ve spent some time reading through press releases, the schedule for NCSL, contacting various State Legislators and activist groups and slowly the narrative I’m expecting begins to emerge.
Back when I was in high school, I went to a symposium at Williams College where Lester Thurow was a keynote speaker. He spoke about how as the basic needs of people could be met by fewer workers, more and more time would be spent arguing about how wealth would be distributed. That idea has stuck with me. When Kim was running, I remember Gov. Dean commenting about how much of the time in State Government ends up being about the allocation of resources.
Grover Norquist is often quoted as wanting to get government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” It has been suggested that he should have borrowed Bush’s Mission Accomplished sign to put up over New Orleans.
One of the methods to shrink the Federal Government has been to push programs off on to the States, but not fund them. In response, lawmakers at the NCSL annual meeting will on the schooner Roseway on Sunday afternoon for a modern Boston Tea Party.
State lawmakers will show their displeasure with the growing number of unfunded mandates and cost shifts passed along to the states by the federal government.
I expect to hear a lot of talk about cost effectiveness of various proposed programs. I sure hope that is the case. However, I do have some doubts.
As I read through the program, I find NCSL gratefully acknowledging ‘the National Grid/KeySpan for the continental breakfast’, ‘AT&T for breakfast ‘, ‘LexisNexis for lunch’, ‘Propylon for dinner’, ‘Wyeth Pharmaceuticals for this reception.’, ‘Zipporah Films for this session’, and ‘AstraZeneca for this tour’.
Concurrent with this, I received an email on a different list about eGovernment. These are from my activists friends who seem primarily driven by a love of technology or a desire to make the government more open. I hold both of these positions, yet what needs to be talked about is how eGovernment could make various government services more cost effective. I hope I’ll see a little bit of that too.
Beyond that, I will be looking at various initiatives on education and childcare, broadband, supporting local agriculture and other rural initiatives. I will be looking closely at how well different state legislatures understand the importance of the emerging regional political blogs. I will be looking at if any state legislatures are taking advantage of blogs, citizen journalism, and even high school journalism to get their message out and further their agendas.
It should be a fun few days. If you have thoughts on the annual meeting, or issues you would like me to pursue, please leave me a message and I’ll see what I can do. Then, stop back and lets see what really happens at the NCSL annual meeting.
