The Struggle for White House 2.0

You may have heard about the arguments going back and forth about whether or not President Obama gets to keep his BlackBerry and e-mail while president. Seems crazy in 2009 to cut the President off from the forms of communication that we're all so accustomed to, but both Clinton and Bush did it - it's standard.

Obama objected, though. After expressing a desire to keep his beloved smartphone and e-mail privileges in the White House, a debate erupted about the possible ramifications of a wired president. Would all of his mobile communications be made available to the public in the same manner that all written correspondence is required to be? What about all of the possible security concerns?

But Obama, like so many of us, understands the benefits of living in a wired world. When asked about his desire to keep the device, he has stressed the importance of staying connected to friends and family out in the real world, away from the bubble of Washington and the White House. To the new president, e-mail isn't just a matter of convenience; it's a necessity in his decision-making process.

It’s puzzling why it took so long for the experts to look for a solution to the technological blackout in the White House. We, the Internet Generation, would have immediately began finding or developing the technology to “make it work” (a la Project Runway’s Tim Gunn) years ago.

For now, Obama seems to have won the first battle in the war to update the White House. Reports say that he’s getting a fancy, BlackBerry-like smartphone... now dubbed the BarackBerry. Now we’ll just have to wait and see if the campaign that revolutionized electoral technologies can modernize their new digs in the White House - next stop, WiFi and laptops!

If only they had cell phones at Tiananmen

With all of the hype surrounding the iPhone this week, I figured it would be appropriate to blog about how cell phones are being used for a political purpose on the other side of the globe.

Protesters in Xiamen, China used text messages to coordinate a protest against the construction of a chemical plant in their city. Circumventing the censoring capabilities of the government, environmentalists sent text message blasts to town residents warning them of the dangers of a chemical plant, and coordinated a protest on June 1 and 2, turning out 8,000 and 10,000 people respectively.

Even more impressive was the way journalists used their phones to cover the event:

'Citizen journalists carrying cellphones sent text messages about the action to bloggers in Guangzhou and other cities, who then posted real-time reports for the entire country to see.

'The second police defense line has been dispersed,' Wen Yunchao, one such witness, typed to a friend in Guangzhou. 'There is pushing and shoving. The police wall has broken down.'

Just goes to show how technology can empower the people. The possibilities for democracy are endless. I couldn't help but to think about how a movement like this could ultimately be used to start a revolution in a countries like Iran, where young people are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way their government is treating them. As the people of Xiamen have shown, where information flows, democracy follows.

Polls & Cell Phones

As of February 2007, more people have cell phones than fixed telephone lines, both in the United States and internationally, and more than two in three Americans have a subscription to cell phone service. However, most political polls still exclusively use fixed telephone lines, and now supporters of 2008 presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-Texas) are claiming that their candidate's performance in recent polls--he hovers around one percent among self-identifying Republican voters--is a result of pollsters undercounting voters who use cell phones rather than land lines. The online magazine Slate argues that this reasoning is fallacious: the cell-phone-only crowd tend to be poorer, liberal, and younger. However, Rep. Paul's communication director claims it is the tech-savvy libertarian youth that overwhelmingly support Representative Paul.

The Pew Research Center has conducted research investigating the cell phone/landline which has illuminated some interesting discrepancies: the average difference between landline and cellular-only samples is 7.8%, but only 48.5% of cellular-only users are registered voters, as opposed to 83.3% of the landline users survey.

What's on the Minds of (CA) Youth?

A new poll of 600 California residents ages 16 to 22 commissioned by New America Media, found family disintegration and neighborhood violence more distressing to California's teens and young adults than global warming or war.

The survey is one of the first to track down youths -- notoriously difficult survey targets -- solely by cell phone. It found that they are inwardly focused -- on their future marriages, parenthood, homeownership, education and communities.

To see how CA youth size up, read the article about the poll here.