John McCain vs. My Grandma
On the issue of web savvyness or even just a rudimentary understanding of modern technology, my 92-year-old grandma Mildred beats the pants off John McCain.
From today’s NY Times:
He [McCain] said, ruefully, that he had not mastered how to use the Internet and relied on his wife and aides like Mark Salter, a senior adviser, and Brooke Buchanan, his press secretary, to get him online to read newspapers (though he prefers reading those the old-fashioned way) and political Web sites and blogs.
“They go on for me,” he said. “I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need.”
Asked which blogs he read, he said: “Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously. Everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics.”
At that point, Mrs. McCain, who had been intensely engaged with her BlackBerry, looked up and chastised her husband. “Meghan’s blog!” she said, reminding him of their daughter’s blog on his campaign Web site. “Meghan’s blog,” he said sheepishly.
As he answered questions, sipping a cup of coffee with his tie tight around his neck, his aides stared down at their BlackBerries.
As they tapped, Mr. McCain said he did not use a BlackBerry, though he regularly reads messages on those of his aides. “I don’t e-mail, I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail,” Mr. McCain said.
Maybe a president shouldn’t be bothered with all these digital timesucks, but wouldn’t it be fun to put McCain alone in a room with an iPhone and watch what happens?
And that is what’s great about the internet: it allows pompous blow-hards to connect with other pompous blow-hards in a vast circle of pomposity.— Bill Maher
Standing ovations, the word genius, and the word friend are overused.— Jeffrey Tambor (via marco)
Twit-lebrities?
I just overheard Jason Calacanis suggest (via his UStream.tv channel) that celebrities Paris Hilton and Kobe Bryant will soon be Twittering.
I have one friendly question for you Jason. Are you insane?
I’m willing to admit I might be wrong about this, because who am I to try to understand what’s going on in the brilliant minds of Paris, Britney and the like. But it seems to me that a service like Twitter would have little value for top-tier celebrities. Understand that one of the largest challenges these people face is over-scrutiny of their private lives. We don’t see many celebrities rushing to blog or participate in social networks, outside of faux-celebrity or promotional profiles maintained by interns at their respective agencies. While I once enjoyed the fact that Heather Graham was my friend on MySpace, I never really believed she was behind the curtain. And while I’ve never asked a celebrity myself, I imagine most of them value privacy above almost everthing else.
Furthermore, services like Twitter are popular in part because they enhance users’ social lives to varying degrees. At best, they provide a more efficient means of creating, sharing, managing and filtering real-world connections. At their worst, they provide a way for otherwise lazy or socially-inept people to feel some sense of community without getting off their ass. Do celebrities really need any of this? Do they have a shortage of social options? If Scarlett Johannson or Conan O’Brien decide they need more friends, is it really a problem for them to expand the posse? It may be hard for them to develop natural relationships with people who can look past the bling, but Twitter won’t help in that department. As for self-promotion (the other big reason people use Twitter), that’s not really a good match either.
Most importantly, despite my taking the time to write this post, I don’t really care if Paris Hilton twitters and neither should you. My biggest beef with Twitter and many other social apps is that they are so damn focused on ego - case in point, Twitterholic.com. Is this the nerd equivalent of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people issue?
People are self-obsessed, plain and simple. So when you create a platform based primarily on connecting people, you get a lot of self-important garbage. This may prove to be the fatal flaw of social media, unless…
Developers and content creators - please learn to focus on connecting ideas and content, not people! The sites and applications that have figured this out (and there are quite a few already) should be around for years to come.