Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Repetition Machine

It's interesting how this election has turned into a huge swarming experiment in social media. As I watch the coverage unfold, partly to keep myself amused in the lulls, I"m going to aggregate the various sources and tools I'm using into a new blog called Repetition Machine.

This is partly because in the last three hours I've found myself watching five different US news networks, listening to 6 different radio stations, browsing 3 or 4 different newspaper websites, using del.icio.us, digg, facebook etc etc. Such is the hunger for information. Or maybe I'm just informationally dysfunctional or deranged. Maybe it's just a substitute for 'being there' whatever that means. Maybe it's because there's only me and the family here in this lonely old house in Scotland to share talking about the election with. Where is 'There' anyway? But this has been a hypermedia election and really is the greatest show on earth right now.

A kind of virtual newsroom. Earlier this week I posted a video clip of Gil Scott Heron's "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" to my facebook page. But thinking about it I"m not so sure. This is no revolution in the Marxist sense but it is a revolution in some ways, in how politics is conducted. It's just a shame that so much of what is said is virtually content free, and still panders to the usual suspect platitudes. What is "Change We Need" anyway? But Obama's campaign has touched on a powerful emotional need for a sense of connectedness and community that has been woefully absent through the Bush years. Anyway, for more rambling like this, head over to the Repetition Machine.