sorry for the irritation, i.
perhaps i should have labelled it: POLITICAL AD.
except that it wasn't.
well, not a PAID one, anyway.

la, anyway. let me try to explain why i posted this link. (like to keep my 1 of 2 visitors happy... ; ) (and full disclosure: i like this dean guy and even gave him some of my filthy lucre)

i happen to like the internet and i happen to think the internet is pretty groovy now and not as some kind of set of walled off gardens. (i've been a little peeved by the verisign hijacking of the .com .net domains... i don't really like it that when someone mistypes my website dealy, they get bumped to a verisign webpage! ick!) i also don't really think that "politicians" or "talking heads" or even "corporate greyhairs" or what have you, get it. about the internet or even technology at all. i think they're old and fuddyduddys and just don't get out much, mostly. and they mostly think of the internet as the same old same old with pretty new packaging for selling their stuff.

case in point: the politicos are all about extending the internet tax moratorium (sell sell buy buy!), but look at what happened to internet radio? (ah! we don't understand! filthy pirates!) pretty much got smacked down. like: the biggest problem that most musicians have is NOT that their music is getting COPIED, but that no has HEARD OF THEM or THEIR MUSIC. and don't even get me started on electronic voting machines, which aren't even something as complicated as the idea of the internet!

so: do i want politicians to start thinking and talking about the internet? yes. do i think that our current president couldn't email himself out of a paper bag? also yes. do i think that the measure of a candidate is not so much the 30/60 second soundbite they can get out in a debate, but the actual METHODOLOGY being used to run their campaign? yes yes yes.

do i think that the most important thing about the internet is the way it allows people from all over the frigging place to chat with each other and to SELF-ORGANIZE if they want to? YES!

and, so, i think that dean is running the kind of campaign which understands that the internet isn't television made new, but something with the potential for something really groovy to come out of it, unless some shortsighted mugwumps decide to hijack the thing. basically, there's a lot of that groovy self-organizing going on over there.

and so, i, I'm not trying to sell you on this candidate (does it seem like that?) but I am trying to explain my reasoning behind posting this link. (all of which i should have posted initially, probably, but i was too lazy...)