I was a guest on the Jeremy Taylor Show on 1320 am radio in Lawrence. Our planned topic was “What will happen next in politics and media and our personal lives after the very prominent rise of online social-interactive media in campaign 2008?”

Among my points:

  • It will be interesting to see how the Obama administration uses OSIM in governing and gaining support for policies, programs, and projects in a different or similar way than they did for winning votes and raising money for the presidential election. I suggested that it would be a mistake to overdo OSIM–that is, if all those who had given their text message address to the Obama campaign received a note from him daily, there would be a significant turn-off of interest and enthusiasm. Like all weapons in politics or war, OSIM outreach must be used prudently.
  • Second, referring to my previous post on a “slow blogging movement,” I wonder whether we will reach a saturation effect, with instantaneousness, interactivity, and the confusion of information and misinformation that is sweeping over us. Just as for the “slow food” or “localivore” movement, will people want to reduce the amount of stuff being thrown at them and seek out higher quality and even slower venues of news and political information?

Since Mr. Taylor and I are both World War II buffs, we also spared a few moments to discuss the movie “Valkyrie.” I noted that it is intriguing to speculate how much history would have been changed if some of the new communications technologies existed in previous eras. In the Valkyrie case, imagine the impact of instant messaging on the plot to kill Hitler!

Actually, you could make a case that there was text-messaging in the Third Reich….

 

Originally posted January 31, 2009 at PolicyByBlog