Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

At Art of the Mix: once I was dug up, I was sinking. Also at the iTunes store with the usual caveats about missing tracks. This was going to be the third mix to follow the ones I made this summer before and during the move, but I have one more to come that might [...]

BBC: James Brown has prostate cancer. That really sucks. He’ll recover, more than likely, but I guess the days of his doing splits on stage are definitely over.

I actually had to leave the VBB conference just now, but for a good reason—I have a phone interview in half an hour. I should be back for some of tomorrow’s sessions. In the meantime, look to these folks for conference coverage: Doc Weinberger, Dave, Rebecca, EthanZ, Jeff Jarvis.

A questioner points out that the Republican meetups are used to identify local candidates at the grass roots at least in New York. Another questioner points out there are existing social institutions for conservatives (e.g. churches)—might that explain skew in MeetUp results? Jeff jarvis asks Hoder what we should be doing to support international efforts. [...]

Pippa Norris: e-voting. She’s talking about remote voting, not Diebold, thank God. Compare with all-postal voting, which also eliminates polling stations. Advantage: convenience, reach immobiles, reduce costs, streamline administration… (really???) Problems: security, data protection, secrecy, integrity, accuracy, equality, reliability; social barriers including equality of access. In the UK e-voting was done side by side with [...]

Hoder talks about the influence of the Internet and blogging in Iran being largely social rather than political right now. But the former VP of Iran is a blogger—trilingual. Blogging can also route around media censorship. Interesting discussion—I’m going to have to go back and read his blog to catch up.

Tom Sander on MeetUp: 1. Meetup.com is succeeding in building social ties despite being in unsociable environment. 2. It attracted different users than expected. 3. Political meetups, which are relatively rare would be better if they focused more on social ties, and in the future we may get to the point where they’re not an [...]

Doc Weinberger is sitting in front of me, btw, and says he doesn’t know if there will be a backchannel. Anyone know? Update: asked and answered.

Joho the Blog: [VBB] Votes, Bits and Bytes: Will the Internet Draft the Next President?. I didn’t make it to last night’s kick-off but Doc Weinberger does a killer job of summarizing the opening panel, with some real eye openers, including Joe Trippi weighing in on the importance of the net allowing people to connect [...]

Charles Ogilvy hits the first note—making sure that we don’t leave society, and the unwired, behind with technology. Are we creating bloggers or lurkers? Are we exposing candidates or constructs? What role does the Internet play in society? Look at e-voting. Sometimes the pundits get it (i.e. predicting the vote) wrong (Dewey defeats Truman, e.g.). [...]

I’m here at the Harvard Law School for the Internet and Society 2004 conference. So far it’s “quiet… almost too quiet.” Most participants were shocked to learn that there would be no Internet access provided; I however seem to be able to get on the wireless LAN, probably from being registered at the first BloggerCon. [...]