Heartwarming the Public Policy
Today brings news of technology that's unexpectedly heartwarming.
David
Pogue sings iChat
video's praises today following a heartwarming
trans-Atlantic session with
his family a couple of weeks ago when he was Lonely in London:
"There's a lot of junk in technology, a lot of hassle
and frustration, a lot of disappointment. But this moment was like a
TV commercial. It was an emotional, powerful, simple, perfect example
of how technology can change a moment, solve a problem, and despite the
gulf of time and distance, bring you face to face with the people you
love."
| And Doc published
a photo gallery of
an iSight tour of Dean HQ that Halley and
I gave him yesterday. We just walked around the halls, introducing Doc
to all the
people we ran into.
Doc calls it PiPhone - Picture-in-Picture Phone. One
of the heartwarmers of the walk around was running into Campaign Manager
Joe Trippi, who distributed copies of the Cluetrain
Manifesto to
the staff as a guide to the campaign's manifesto destiny. Joe was genuinely
delighted to "meet" Doc, who invited him out to the Bay area to keynote a
conference.
Joe's amazing wife, Kathi Lash, the campaign's designated sparkplug and
Regional Field Desk, was right there with Joe, literally backing him up
as usual.
|
Max Headroom Meets Kathi and Joe |
And Samantha Shapiro published the New York Times Magazine
article she
started researching last
September. It's such an intimate look at the campaign staff that Zack and
Clay felt exposed and, frankly, uncomfortable. but it's a masterful story,
full of humanity and the voice of authentic people doing important work based
on heart and belief. Though there's heartbreak in their story, it's mostly
heartwarming.
Heartcore Media
It's an aspect of the campaign that we don't associate with
our preconceptions of hardcore power politics, where fat cats in smoke-filled
rooms decide which of them will be offered to the public and how much money
will
be invested in their packaging and coronation.
There's a different kind of power in politics now, unwelcome
in Washington. Peer power is, literally, the power to peer into the hearts
of real people taking unexpected actions for improbable candidates. These
Internet
media
allow
us to drill past dull or phony appearances into the heart of lightness.
Blogs and comments and RSS feeds and video calls and all the rest give us X-Ray
vision into the heart of what matters.
Plato would be delighted.
8:02:44 PM 
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