Wow, it would never ever have occurred to me that our ultra right nationalist party leader is a big admirer of marxists, socialism and people with multicultural migration background. In his current campaign for the Austrian national elections he copies the famous image of Che Guevara to make himself look like somewhat revolutionary and he is using graphic and textual elements (“yes we can”) from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
Makes me wonder if he has ever read more about the people he’s trying to imitate than some catchy slogans on t-shirts. Maybe somebody should tell him that Barack Obama’s doesn’t really stand for xenophobia, fear and anger. I guess both of them would have a hard time to find a single point in their politics they could agree on. Nor would Che Guevara throw people, who come and ask for help, out of a safe and wealthy country and send them back, even to war zones, where they came from.
Last night we attended a great talk given by Amy Walters (political analyst for CNN) about the upcoming US elections and the ongoing democratic primaries. Because of recent private changes I got somehow involved into US politics. Even though I’m just an observer from outside, it’s interesting to watch the political process and how the political landscape of the US seems to change (oh, there it is, the “c” buzzword!) right now.
Anyways, I found especially one quote of Amy Walters interesting. The discussion was about how many people one politician attracts to come and fill up civic centers compared to the other. It’s often seen as indicator for popularity. But, as polls show, it’s not. At least the number of people going to civic centers doesn’t reflect the polls in any sense. It’s a matter of the target group: civic centers are filled up by the “rally people”. People who have time and money to go there.
It made me think about the hype around Web 2.0, the next big thing to generate millions page views and create so much more awareness about your product.
Most Web 2.0 services still only attract the “rally people”: people who have time to spend online and participate in whatsoever web service or people who are somehow professionally involved (mostly techies and PR guys). Or people who spend their saturday afternoons to write blog posts about themselves instead of doing their weekly grocery shopping.
I think all the countless Web 2.0 services, all the effort, still focuses on a very limited group of society.
Although it’s fascinating to see politicians heavily using Web 2.0, their real business, collecting votes, lies outside the web. That’s what polls teach us. The next president isn’t going to be elected by YouTube views, Facebook friends or Blog subscribers, but by real people with real issues they are concerned about.
If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.
Tony Benn in Sicko
Simple, but listed under “Favorite Quotes” of a person running for president of a superpower it gets a whole different meaning. [Found on Dennis Kucinich's Facebook page]
Though I’m not quite sure if “Metternich 2.0″ is the most appropriate title for this online demo, I believe something has to be done to raise public awareness about that issue.
On December 6th our government sneaked a security law amendment into the parliament. Unlike the German government, they were clever enough to dump democracy, do it secretly in order to avoid any public discussion and finally passed the amendments on the very same day, on 6th December around midnight (that already says something), without preceding parliamentary discussions.
The amendment radically enhances police surveillance rights and allows far-reaching monitoring of citizens without a control entity behind. I guess surveillance state is the term used in certain literature.
Members of the green party set up a parliamentary petition against the law (and governmental behavior). You can sign it online on their website.
Helge is using his wiki to support the petition and is providing tools – you might have noticed the page peel in the upper right corner here – and information for an online demo. [via helge.at]
Update: the Austrian parliament in action, by Maschek (in German language):
The EU finally agreed last Friday on a financial program for Galileo, the European Satellite Navigation System. 1.6 billion EUR leftovers from previous agricultural funds (was 56.3 billion EUR in 2007 total), plus another 800 million EUR from research funds (approx 3.8 billion EUR in 2008 total) will be allocated to build Galileo (cf. EU budget). Approximately 1 billion EUR has been already spent on the project. According to the new time frame, we should see 30 satellites up in the orbit by 2013.
However, noteworthy is the new tendering procedure: it’s split up into 6 different segments. One bidding company can only be accepted as lead in max. 2 segments. Then, each segment volume must be be reassigned to subcontractors by at least 40%. This procedure should avoid that only large companies are favored and that small and medium-sized enterprises benefit from the 2.4 Galileo billions too.
Galileo seems now back on track again. Let’s see how long it’ll last this time… [via geobranchen]
Great to see that the Free Burma action made it up to EU’s commission!
Margot Wallström, the EC vice president, or her PR person, posted a Free Burma picture on her blog too. This post definitely counts more than any other super A-list Technorati high ranking SEO mastermind blogger because it comes out of a direction which obviously can put pressure on certain governments.
If you think about applying for GALILEO contracts, you should have in mind that qualification is not as relevant as the location of your company’s headquarters. I would recommend to open up at least a P.O. box in every European country, because at the moment you can’t tell which national politician will win the game on GALILEO’s budget re-distribution.
Fact is, that the political statements around GALILEO become more absurd every day. An Overall success story of European project management!
Sadly enough some of our politicians see the diversity of this continent as threat rather than as potential and I bet they would love to ethnically “clean house” if only they could. [via Google LatLong]
Not surprising, participation in social networks strongly correlates with social origin. The following charts about a recent Facebook poll (clever polling btw, Facebook knows the basic information as age, gender, etc. of users who respond to polls) shows that Facebook is mainly a young white thing. Well, originally it was developed as and a good part of it still is a college student network.
Whereas in that case I’d rather say that white can be substituted with the term “(upper) middle class”. Without being aware of any detailed research, I suppose the overall picture about the Web 2.0 audience here in Europe wouldn’t differ a lot from this basic Facebook poll results.
So, the question popping into my mind was: are social networks increasing the Digital Divide instead of narrowing it? Are social networks an exclusive toy for (upper) middle class people?
One of the most compelling arguments for Web 2.0 are the low barriers of entry. So, where is everyone? Or maybe it’s because members of a family of six sharing a 50sqm apartment have other things to worry about than updating a blog.
However, I’m quite convinced that being familiar with social software (blogs, wikis, networks, etc.) will be a crucial requirement for future work environments. Just like as it’s now naturally to know how to perform a Google search or handle Email correctly. Thus I think it’s time for politicians to start a discussion about how to bring this knowledge to socially disadvantaged people. Students and other well-skilled people will learn this anyways over the next years…
Last night we attended a great talk given by Amy Walters (political analyst for CNN) about the upcoming US elections and the ongoing democratic primaries. Because of recent private changes I got somehow involved into US politics. Even though I’m just an observer from outside, it’s interesting to watch the political process and how the political landscape of the US seems to change (oh, there it is, the “c” buzzword!) right now.
Whereas in that case I’d rather say that white can be substituted with the term “(upper) middle class”. Without being aware of any detailed research, I suppose the overall picture about the Web 2.0 audience here in Europe wouldn’t differ a lot from this basic Facebook poll results.