The suggestion in this article that the Internet is capable of creating something which approximates to a community does not take into account that the Internet is mainly focused on the transient and the latest fad. It has its uses, no doubt, but all forms of expression feed on each other. The Drudge Report, dreadful though it is, has led me to reading an article in "The Scotsman" in which Dublin-born Samantha Power, described as Barack Obama's key foreign policy aide, told the Scots journalist interviewing her that Hillary Clinton is a "monster", a word more suited to a serial killer or a tyrant responsible for genocide. A monster is somebody brutish and not fully human, cruel and wicked. Such a careless and insensitive use of language is indicative of a general coarsening of language which has been abetted by the Internet. It encourages lazy thinking when Wikipedia becomes the Holy Grail of Knowledge, it saps originality and it promotes crude cliche. The printing press in Guthenburg had a profound stimulus on intellectualising Europe, leading to the Reformation, but the Internet may have a de-intellectualising effect on the world in its reductive, comic-book level of information. The Internet, on the other hand, may be the starting-point in any quest but it is not the "fait accompli". Radio, television, newspapers, books and the Internet can be conducive to analysis but the Internet in isolation makes for mental starvelings.

An appearance on American Idol for Obama at the least. He can 'hope' Paula Abdul doesn't pitch face first into the table.

Manjoo is in his element here, and it shows.

Excellent, informative piece, well worth the time to read it.

I wondered when I first saw an Obama Girl video (on MSNBC) if she weren't a Clinton plant. I still wonder, but in my "demographic", I may be all wet.

Were I Obama, I'd ask her to stop. If she didn't, I'd know it was sabotage...

"...Such a careless and insensitive use of language is indicative of a general coarsening of language which has been abetted by the Internet. It encourages lazy thinking when Wikipedia becomes the Holy Grail of Knowledge, it saps originality and it promotes crude cliche. The printing press in Guthenburg had a profound stimulus on intellectualising Europe, leading to the Reformation, but the Internet may have a de-intellectualising effect on the world in its reductive, comic-book level of information. The Internet, on the other hand, may be the starting-point in any quest but it is not the "fait accompli". Radio, television, newspapers, books and the Internet can be conducive to analysis but the Internet in isolation makes for mental starvelings...."

Yes, yes, and yes....guilty as charged on nearly all counts but all this may be irrelevant as we all [spearheaded by those who are extensively using this new medium] may be marching--or, should I say merging--toward a new type of conciousness. If we intuitively get what everyone else in our particular cyber community is thinking...indeed, if everyone is there for just such a consensus, where is the need for the preciseness of expression needed in a pre-cyberised world? The mosh that younger Gen-X'ers and post Gen-Xers use to communicate with each other doesn't stop them from understanding each other and often forming a consensus about behaviour, individuals [parents, siblings, friends, classmates] and events in their daily lives. There may not be a fully formed uber community on the web, as yet, but you can see where, through the developement of, say, many Face-Book communities, etc, this is heading.

I'm afraid you may be looking at this from the perspective of an old media weltanschauung

Sidebar: damn, isn't this deliciously ironic? Whoever thought, upon reading "the Medium is the Message," in the Sixties, that McCluhan would become passe?

The "problem" for Obama (or any other candidate in the New Age) is that they can no longer control the message through traditional means. The answer is that they have to "be the message". And that means either telling nothing but the truth, or lying a lot more effectively than anyone has ever had to at this point in history.

It's always rather amusing when we act so surprised that we were right all along. Mathematicians have been talking about self-organizing systems for years, and now that we have impressive evidence that they were right it's a huge shock. The reality is that the old system - artificial heirarchies and barriers to socialization - was broken and couldn't be sustained. Something was going to come along and change things. If it wasn't the internet it would have been the collapse of civilization through one mechanism or another, but we were always going to return to relatively small, internally logical yet transitive social structures at some point. Right now we are like lottery winners who don't know what to do now that some of our problems have been solved, but we'll damn sure find a way to spend the money.

I think (as an old fogey now) that there's a natural tendency for those over 30, say, to start to distrust groundswells of support among 18-29s. I know, I know, you know everything and we are idiots, attached to "old politics" and blah blah blah.

I particularly hate that at least some Obama supporters keep harping on "the partisan politics of the last 20 years" as the fault of both the Republicans AND the Clintons. I know you're running against Hillary, but do you really want to discount the legacy of the ONLY Democrat that has been elected presiden in the past 20 years, and the most successful Democrat since FDR (arguably)?

Yes, the Clinton administration squandered it's mandate at the beginning (but in a lot of cases by pursuing "progressive" causes like gays in the military) and set up the backlash of 1994--but the partisan bickering, the constant attacks on the Clintons, etc. were Republicans and MSM generated. Anything achieved in the last 6 years of Clinton's term (e.g. welfare reform) by necessity required bipartisan cooperation. And the man left office reviled by the media, but popular with the average voter.

So basically, if "new politics" requires asking "wouldn't you rather have JFK in office?" rather than "are you better off than you were eight years ago?" you can count me out.

The other main problem I have with the "new politics" lectures I keep getting from young'uns is that it assumes that you can keep it up while being hit like a pinata by the Republicans in the general. All the "new politics" keeps reminding me of is John Kerry's apparent inability to get down and dirty to refute his swiftboating. At the very least running for a long time against the Clinton machine will toughen Obama up for the punishing general election.

So, I'll stop rambling long enough to say, Obamabots, that "new politics" sounds a lot like "I'm naive" and good luck to you with that (and get off my lawn).