Chris Hardie's Weblog

I'll be speaking this Saturday the 17th at a free event held at Morrisson-Reeves Library, on "The Internet as a Political Tool" - how the Internet continues to change the world of politics and what it means for local citizens. The talk starts at 10 AM in the Bard Room. If you're interested in politics and technology, please come and join the conversation! For more information, you can check out the flyer on the Morrisson-Reeves website.

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Last week, the Palladium-Item - Richmond's daily paper - launched an updated website. Here's my initial review:

Good:

1. The site clearly continues the paper's commitment to encouraging conversations and interaction between people who track what's going on in the community. As I did in 2006, I commend them for this.
2. The abuse reporting system in the forum is more robust. As I understand it, if a particular comment is reported as "abusive" by three or more people, it will cease to appear in the conversation thread. In the past, users could report abuse but action had to be taken by an administrative user.
3. The system for recommending stories published on the site allows users to see what's interesting to fellow readers.
4. With their new blogging system, any user can create a blog. While these user blogs aren't featured like the ones maintained by the staff, they are a good platform for a kind of conversation that's a little different from forum posts.
5. The use of customizable profile photos (or whatever image a user chooses) alongside posts gives the conversation the potential to feel a little more personalized and authentic than when there were none.

Bad:

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The "pros and cons of a global distributed network" edition:

• Do you depend on Gmail or Google Calendar? Did you know they're not ready for production use yet?
• The Rockridge Institute, a progressive think tank (THE progressive think tank for many) abruptly closes its doors because there wasn't enough money coming in. But as a part of their exit, the description of "The Big Job" to be done is compelling, and so life goes on.
• I love a good idea I've never heard of before, and this place has lots of them
• Can you survive for 24 hours without your computer? I didn't think so.
• One of the best YouTube videos I've seen in a long time: An Engineer's Guide to Cats
• The Palladium-Item will be updating its website this week - and once again wiping out any archive of past reader discussions in their forums. I can't decide if this is a blessing or a shame, and it's probably both. I hope the new beginning represents a new mode of conversation, but I won't hold my breath.

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It was frustrating but not surprising to see today that CNN has joined the list of mainstream media outlets who have adopted the harmful framing offered up in the debate about the U.S. borders, by beginning to use the label of "illegals" in their reporting. It may seem like a relatively small difference between that and other commonly used terms, but I find it to be a particularly dehumanizing one.

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One of the funniest parts of browsing the Internets is when I come across the funny stock photos of professional people in various professional settings, used by site owners to put a "human face" on their web presence in the most generic way possible. It began with using the headshot of the attentive and waiting customer service representative to show you that "operators are standing by now," and it's just gone crazy from there.

With the photo here, I don't even know what the hell is going on. It's like the creepy older guy is trying to arm wrestle with the maniacally screaming younger dude over who gets to use the laptop, while the two women totally ignore them and instead grin broadly at the hamster dancing on their screen. But I'm like "creepy older dude, BACK OFF!" Why does he need to lunge into younger dude's space like that, using his fingertips as a push-off to further invade? And why won't either of the women help younger dude? This is some messed up stock photography. What was the photographer yelling at them? "Pretend you went to the office holiday party and took Ecstasy!"

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I think one of the more dangerous ideas prevalent in our culture is that "you can't do it yourself, so you always need to buy something or pay someone to do it for you." As our society becomes more and more dependent on complex machines, systems and skill-sets that fewer and fewer people understand, individuals become less and less equipped to have any real control over their livelihood. When those who do have the control and power aren't available or have different priorities or cost too much...well, things can get bad.

I had a moment of awakening about this a number of years ago when I was sitting in a local hair stylist's chair having my hair cut. On my recent visits I had been observing the process more closely than prior haircuts in my life, and partly out of resentment for the $15 I was paying per 10-minute haircut, partly out of an engineer's curiosity, I starting asking questions about where her equipment came from. Together we concluded that she was using a trimmer I could get at a local store for about $20, and therefore that the main value she brought to the process was the ability to see the whole of my head to trim it when I could not. Ah-ha.

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The feeds reminder and redux edition:

• I've been updating my list of local blogs and bloggers in Richmond and Wayne County, Indiana. Check out the new additions, and if you have any blogs to suggest or corrections to make, please let me know.
• My page of custom RSS feeds doesn't have a whole lot going on these days, but one feed I've started actively maintaining again is a Kicks96 / 930WHON News feed. As one of the few other newsgathering entities in the area, it makes a nice complement to the custom Palladium-Item news feed (which is usually updated earlier in the day than the one they provide). Since Kicks96 doesn't publish any RSS feed themselves (why, in this day and age, oh why?), I hope you find it useful.
• Remember that you can use ProgressiveWayneCounty.org to get easy access to a consolidated feed of local progressive bloggers and local news feeds.
• Despite not feeling Twitter, I can't help but highlight a link Thomas Kemp posted in the comments: TwitterLocal will help you find people Twittering in your area so that you can...I don't even know.
• And finally, in the theme of aggregating useful information into one place, check out LegiStorm, a site that makes information about Congressional reps and their staffers available all in one place, including salaries, trip records, and what other organizations they are affiliated with. For example, it notes that on a recent trip to Boston, Mike Pence (R - Indiana, 6th) had some unusually expensive hotel charges - $476 for one night. I hope he got a mint on his pillow.

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Well, you know my criteria for good April Fool's Day jokes. Here's what I've kept track of so far for the day:

• I had a little fun with the users of the Palladium-Item forums who like to post anonymous rants. It resulted in at least one phone call threatening legal action against me and started at least one conversation about the nature of privacy on the Internet, so I consider that a mild success.
• Jim Hair, photographer and community activist extraordinaire, announced he and his wife Vicki are moving back to California after he accepted a position there. Funny on a number of levels, but mostly so because of what they've invested in Richmond.
• Jean Harper is at least fantasizing about a good joke, though I'm concerned about her allegations that members of the Earlham College swim team are promiscuous. Wait, does Earlham have a swim team? Ahem.
• Google's got it going on with a new kind of wakeup alarm, plans for colonizing Mars, and a way to never send an e-mail that's late.
• Lawmakers in Congress are "criticizing" oil industry executives for not investing in renewable resources - jolly good show!

What else ya got?

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• What kinds of information the NSA is collecting about your communications - it's not paranoia if they're really after you. And they have really cool PDAs to do it with.
• The Feminist Review - bloggers calling patriarchy as they see it
• Geni - free Web 2.0 enabled online genealogy software
• The Onion nails it again: You know what's stupid? Everything I don't understand - "God, all the people, places, and things I haven't made the least bit of effort to comprehend should just die already."
• Get up to $15,000 for a project in your hometown - I love seeing this kind of use of the web.
• Some E-Cards - for when you care enough to hit send

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I spend a lot of time on this blog and elsewhere encouraging people to avoid ceding too much power over their lives to the individuals who would claim it for the wrong reasons (or in many cases, claim it at all), or to institutions and organizations that may not truly have our best interests in mind. But despite my own wariness of those things and of participating in a superstar celebrity culture, it's still pretty hard to ignore the excitement and intrigue that follows around a former President of the United States. This is amplified when he appears in a place quite unexpected, like Richmond Indiana.

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