Technology and democracy: combating distortions
By Reilly Capps, staff writer
Daily Planet
Thu Jul 31, 2008, 08:02 PM MDT
Source: http://www.telluridenews.com/news/x223021242/Technology-and-democracy-combating-distortions
Telluride, Colo. -
Cynics say we’re living in a time of unprecedented lies and spin. After all, five years ago, a president distorted the facts and led us into a war. Not enough people questioned the administration’s “facts” about WMD and aluminum tubes, not to mention the idea of “pre-emptive war” during its “War on Terror.”
But is all that true?
If you look strictly at the numbers, we’re living in a world where more documents, histories, and general facts are available than ever before. There exists on the World Wide Web an archive of virtually everything ever said by virtually every top official in the Bush administration, and anyone determined enough can go through and sift out the fudges (someone counted 935 lies about Iraq).
It might, in fact, be getting harder to lie. Journalistic plagiarizer Jayson Blair got tripped up by LexisNexis. A Google search here revealed a town manager candidate’s alleged criminal past.
One of the Web sites aiming at opening the floodgates of information and letting information flow freely is Archive.org.
The founder of that Web site, Brewster Kahle, will speak at the Telluride Tech Fest at 3 p.m. Saturday. The Tech Fest is a gathering of technology-minded researchers and entrepreneurs, and the theme this year is “Democracy and Technology.”
One of the best ways to help democracy with technology is by giving voters the best access to the most information.
“We want universal access to all knowledge,” Kahle said Thursday, by telephone, from his office in San Francisco. “We believe that’s the opportunity of our generation.”
Archive.org has a library that all but a few bricks and mortar libraries would be jealous of. You can read 450,000 scanned-in books, and his 200-person army of workers is busily scanning in 1,000 more every day, he said. Works of philosophy, history, government, novels.
“It’s the Enlightenment idea that this country was sort of founded on,” Kahle said. “The idea that the individual is worth investing in — universal education and the modern library system came out of that. We see ourselves in that tradition.”
Sarah McClain, who runs the Tech Fest, brought in Dan Pearlman to talk about “Democracy at the Supreme Court,” and will be showing a movie by Keya Lea Horiuchi called “Considering Democracy.” Kahle and Archive.org could be part of the backbone of participatory democracy in the future.
“That’s a large part of what democracy should be,” McClain said, “is access to knowledge and be able to make your own decision.”
Kahle gives this example:
Archive.org has old press releases from the Bush Administration on file. There’s one from 2003, issued at the time of the “Mission Accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier in San Diego. It read “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.” After it became clear combat hadn’t ended, the White House went back into its own press release and quietly added a word: “President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.”
But thanks to Archive.org’s archiving, watchdogs caught that change, and stopped a little bit of historical airbrushing.
It’s not all seriousness at Archive.org. There’s every concert ever played by the Grateful Dead, and video of Final Fantasy and “Sex Madness.”
Still, Kahle sees his mission as very serious, and echoes the late Peter Lyman, one of the great thinkers about the internet.
“Now knowledge has an address,” Lyman said. “You can go and build on it.”
While kids used to learn from secondary sources, from textbooks and such, now kids and adults can go to the primary source.
“That’s very exciting to see the actual things,” Kahle said. “Lets go find out what Nike is saying.”
Along with all this democracy talk the Tech Fest is bringing back the Tesla Coil, that crazy Frankensteinian electricity generator, on main street Friday and Saturday nights.
By Reilly Capps, staff writer
Daily Planet
Thu Jul 31, 2008, 08:02 PM MDT
Source: http://www.telluridenews.com/news/x223021242/Technology-and-democracy-combating-distortions
Telluride, Colo. -
Cynics say we’re living in a time of unprecedented lies and spin. After all, five years ago, a president distorted the facts and led us into a war. Not enough people questioned the administration’s “facts” about WMD and aluminum tubes, not to mention the idea of “pre-emptive war” during its “War on Terror.”
But is all that true?
If you look strictly at the numbers, we’re living in a world where more documents, histories, and general facts are available than ever before. There exists on the World Wide Web an archive of virtually everything ever said by virtually every top official in the Bush administration, and anyone determined enough can go through and sift out the fudges (someone counted 935 lies about Iraq).
It might, in fact, be getting harder to lie. Journalistic plagiarizer Jayson Blair got tripped up by LexisNexis. A Google search here revealed a town manager candidate’s alleged criminal past.
One of the Web sites aiming at opening the floodgates of information and letting information flow freely is Archive.org.
The founder of that Web site, Brewster Kahle, will speak at the Telluride Tech Fest at 3 p.m. Saturday. The Tech Fest is a gathering of technology-minded researchers and entrepreneurs, and the theme this year is “Democracy and Technology.”
One of the best ways to help democracy with technology is by giving voters the best access to the most information.
“We want universal access to all knowledge,” Kahle said Thursday, by telephone, from his office in San Francisco. “We believe that’s the opportunity of our generation.”
Archive.org has a library that all but a few bricks and mortar libraries would be jealous of. You can read 450,000 scanned-in books, and his 200-person army of workers is busily scanning in 1,000 more every day, he said. Works of philosophy, history, government, novels.
“It’s the Enlightenment idea that this country was sort of founded on,” Kahle said. “The idea that the individual is worth investing in — universal education and the modern library system came out of that. We see ourselves in that tradition.”
Sarah McClain, who runs the Tech Fest, brought in Dan Pearlman to talk about “Democracy at the Supreme Court,” and will be showing a movie by Keya Lea Horiuchi called “Considering Democracy.” Kahle and Archive.org could be part of the backbone of participatory democracy in the future.
“That’s a large part of what democracy should be,” McClain said, “is access to knowledge and be able to make your own decision.”
Kahle gives this example:
Archive.org has old press releases from the Bush Administration on file. There’s one from 2003, issued at the time of the “Mission Accomplished” speech on the aircraft carrier in San Diego. It read “President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.” After it became clear combat hadn’t ended, the White House went back into its own press release and quietly added a word: “President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.”
But thanks to Archive.org’s archiving, watchdogs caught that change, and stopped a little bit of historical airbrushing.
It’s not all seriousness at Archive.org. There’s every concert ever played by the Grateful Dead, and video of Final Fantasy and “Sex Madness.”
Still, Kahle sees his mission as very serious, and echoes the late Peter Lyman, one of the great thinkers about the internet.
“Now knowledge has an address,” Lyman said. “You can go and build on it.”
While kids used to learn from secondary sources, from textbooks and such, now kids and adults can go to the primary source.
“That’s very exciting to see the actual things,” Kahle said. “Lets go find out what Nike is saying.”
Along with all this democracy talk the Tech Fest is bringing back the Tesla Coil, that crazy Frankensteinian electricity generator, on main street Friday and Saturday nights.
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