Edge.org – Live in NYC Tuesday

John Brockman and contributors Douglas Rushkoff, Paul Steinhardt, Helen Fisher, and John Horgan discuss What Are You Optimistic About?: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better. Spanning a wide range of topics What Are You Optimistic About? is an impressive array of what world-class minds have weighed in to offer carefully considered optimistic visions of tomorrow.

January 29, 2008 7:00 PM
Manhattan – Columbus Circle
10 Columbus Circle
New York, NY

Now We Get the Real Clinton

I have to admit, I was pretty much as fooled by Clinton as anyone back in the 90′s. Yes, he was a jerky husband, but he seemed to be really smart, to understand global relationships, and to be able to foster a strong economy.

Now that he has become the front man in a smear campaign against Barack Obama, I find myself thinking and saying the kinds of things about Bill Clinton that Rush Limbaugh used to say on the radio.

My wife and I watch the debates, and get nauseous at the misrepresentations and attacks. Not that Obama has proven particularly resilient at defending himself, but this sort of intentional fact twisting is more reminiscent of Atwater’s techniques than it is the herald of some new focus on important social policies. Really, it’s shameful. It’s Giulianesque.

Perhaps the rationale of the entire strategy is supposed be something like this: We, the Clintons, are going to lie about Obama just to give you a little preview of what the Republicans will do. No, we’re not telling the truth – that’s not the point. We’re simply *pretending* to be really mean to demonstrate Obama’s inability to fend off the kinds of ruthless attacks that will come if he wins the nomination. Meanwhile, we are also showing how dirty we are willing to play to win the election (thus all the talk of “this is the fun part” and “we’re just getting started”). The Democrats will need to be as dirty as the Republicans, and we Clintons are ruthless enough to get the job done. After all, winning is the important part, right?

Or something like that.

But if a guy like McCain wins the nomination, oh boy, the shoe will be on the other foot. The NeoCon’s NeoCon is anything if not honorable in his engagements. He fights war the old fashioned way, and will make the Clintons (if they win the nomination) look so dirty by comparison that many many Dems will vote for him instead of the old regime. It will mean more war, less attention to the economy and social services, and an even more aggressive neoconservative posture abroad.

JaseZone

First, apologies to the hundreds of people who have received emails seeming to come from me, inviting you to join something called JaseZone. Until I received your complaints, queries, and bouncebacks, I had no idea JaseZone existed. This episode has led to an interesting exchange with the company, though, and renewed fears that artificial Internet traffic may further cripple the real stuff. And I hate to think of people whose first contact with me or my work is a fake invitation to a social networking site.

I had a brief email exchange with JaseZone, who kindly removed my “user page” from their website. They said that they wouldn’t have created a user page for me without my permission, but also insist that their email verification would make it impossible for anyone else to have done this, and that it is impossible for their server to have been hacked (unlike every other server in the world). The only other possibility is that I have split personality, and did this without my knowledge.

But then, other somewhat prominent cyber-community people must have split personalities as well! On JaseZone I found pages for:
-Wired Founder Kevin Kelly,
-Berkeley researcher Danah Boyd
-Long Tail author Chris Anderson
-Harvard Business School guru Andrew McAfee
-Apple Founder Steve Jobbs

and so on.

Now, these aren’t fan pages at all – like the pages for William Burroughs on MySpace – but pages pretending to be created by the user in question as a way of developing his or her social network. We know this, because the pages invite others to the site by email, using the actual person’s email address in the replyto field.

The straightest inference to draw would be that JaseZone created these pages and invited people to the site using their names. But the people at JaseZone say they make no money off any of this, don’t create faker pages for users, and have no motive to do this. They are a small company that helps people with sports clubs. I’ve offered to help them figure out what happened by looking at the IP addresses of the page creators, or the email addresses that were used to verify them, but they insist that their site was not hacked and are quite miffed that I would even suggest such a thing.

So where do all these meticulously created profile pages come from? Your guess is as good as mine.

In the meantime, if you do get an email from me inviting you to JaseZone, sorry – but it ain’t me. If you get one from Steve Jobs, I suppose it’s real.

The Last Testament

The final single issue of Testament comes out next week. The last collection, complete with notes, will be following by summer. It’s been quite a ride, and the end came a bit sooner than I might have liked in an ideal world, but the story definitely reaches its conclusion.

I just saw Zeitgeist, that online documentary about the Bible, terrorism, centralized economics and RFID chips. It’s pretty much the pessimistic version of the same story – but told in a non-fiction narrative. Still, the parallels are kind of shocking. Check it out if you can keep yourself from falling into the agitprop nature of its assertions about the mechanics of 9-11. (I still don’t need scenarios about controlled detonations to understand how the event ultimately fits – or was made to fit – into a bigger agenda.)

Here’s the description of the last issue, along with a particularly nice cover. Thanks to all who worked on this book, particularly those who were there from beginning to end: Liam Sharp, Peter Gross, Jonathan Vankin, Pornsak Pinchote, Todd Klein, Jim Devlin, and our fearless leader, Karen Berger.

In the final issue of TESTAMENT, human beings, led by Jake and his father, rise to the level of their gods, exploiting the creative power of the nanos within them. But there’s only room for one set of gods in this universe, and the Bible’s deities will not go down without a fight. Finally, as a new reality emerges, a child waiting to be born, holds the key to humanity’s next great story.

T-Shirts?

Now this is weird. An “I love Douglas Rushkoff” t-shirt, from Amazon.com.

I’m assuming these things are rendered on-the-fly for any author in their database, but when my friend Jeff Gordiner, currently on tour for his fascinating X Saves the World, told me he’d be wearing one of these for his readings, it all made sense in a post-post-ironic sort of way. Especially the fact that it’s on sale…

Voter Fraud?

I hate to admit it, and it could be from my own lack of sleep as my daughter loses her afternoon nap, but I find myself seeing voter fraud as the simplest explanation for the New Hampshire primary results.

Consider this compelling statistic on the difference in results between paper and computer polling places in New Hampshire. The paper polling districts correspond to the pollsters’ predictions. The computer districts do not:

News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government 09 Jan 2008
http://www.legitgov.org/

Where Paper Prevailed, Different Results
By Lori Price 09 Jan 2008

2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary Results –Total Democratic Votes: 286,139 –

Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008

Hillary Clinton, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 39.618%
Clinton, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 34.908%
Barack Obama, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 36.309%
Obama, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 38.617%

Machine vs Hand:
Clinton: +4.709% (13,475 votes)
Obama: -2.308% (-6,604 votes)

2008 New Hampshire Republican Primary Results –Total Republican Votes: 236,378

Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008

Mitt Romney, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 33.075%
Romney, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 25.483%
Ron Paul, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 7.109%
Paul, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 9.221%

Machine vs Hand:
Romney: +7.592% (17,946 votes)
Paul: -2.112% (-4,991 votes)

What About Day 1000?

Hillary Clinton now makes two main arguments for her candidacy:

1 – she will be the most ready on “day one” to start work as president
2 – she is best qualified to withstand the “Republican attack machine” in the general campaign.

Let’s say she’s right. I don’t particularly care about either of these two qualifications.

Yes, Hillary has spent a lot of time in the White House. And I’m guessing that on day one, no one is going to have to tell her where the closest bathroom is, how to lock the bomb shelter door, or even which of those guys in uniform is the one holding the case with the atomic bomb codes.

But what about day two? Or day a hundred? Or day one thousand? It’s the long haul I’m concerned about, not the decisions that get made in the first 24 hours. Whoever is president will be faced with a unique learning curve: determining how to reverse the course of an empire bent of fascism. I’ll make my decision on who seems poised to figure that out. The suggestion that Hillary already knows how to deal with the world’s crises only plays to her weakness, by suggesting that she’ll be using old tactics of previous administrations.

And while we’re on old battles, qualification #2 worries me more – not because I underestimate the “Republican attack machine,” but because defending against it is the second most important quality Clinton thinks a candidate should have. She’s already gearing up for Swift-Boat-style accusations – when, so far, hers is the only candidacy guilty of this kind of rhetoric. And while I hate to sound too optimistic, mightn’t there be a better way to deal with false character attacks than gearing up for them in advance?

Both of these qualifications are qualifications for running, not for leading. And like most of Clinton’s campaign choices so far, only push me further into the anyone-but-Hillary camp of the Democratic party. From a use-of-media standpoint, anyway, she seems determined to continue casting herself as the Tony Soprano candidate.