Obama.xml
Not that he can match Al Gore's politech savvy, but Barack Obama is bidding for the wired vote by making open file standards part of his platform. That's got to piss off Microsoft. More important, it puts computing and online living issues into the campaign. Why shouldn't they be? There are about 185-million internet users in the U.S. according to comScore. Let's have a tech-only debate covering the candidates' policies on spam, file-sharing, domain trademarking, online sales tax, ad-blocking, disruptive technology, and their personal content preferences.
1. It will likely be a watershed event when online rights get "airplay" on a major media outlet. Anderson Cooper does a special or something. Even Colbert can raise awareness, and online rights and tech policy is too relevant not to be a part of the debate.
Then again, the average voter only has so much mindspace, so if they don't have a significant stake in whatever it is, they won't care about the issue.
And since tech has done a good job of just explaining away crappy UI's and terrible user experiences ("we're getting the bugs out" or "it's in beta"), the average consumer probably feels their rights are "in beta" as well. The theory being that it'll all get worked out somehow.
Posted at 10:17AM on Nov 26th 2007 by superpixel