| Politics has always been a fundamental part of the online community – especially if you believe Al Gore’s assertion that he invented the Internet – but the past year has seen online activism stretch further into the real world than ever before.
The Internet community has been buzzing for months over the U.S. government’s Total Information Awareness program, which is intended to monitor everything from medical records to e-mail logs of every citizen in the United States as part of the hunt for terrorists. Critics say the program allows the government to spy on its own citizens and steps deep into Big Brother territory.
In December, San Francisco Weekly columnist Matt Smith suggested that people start phoning the home of the man in charge of the program, John Poindexter – a Reagan-era Iran-Contra conspirator – to show him what privacy invasion is all about. Smith says the column was intended to be ironic, but when his suggestion hit the Web, some amateur researchers soon gave the whole world access to Poindexter’s home phone number, address, an aerial photo of his home and details about his life and family.
Poindexter was forced to disconnect his phone and, thanks to the Internet, those opposed to Total Information Awareness illustrated their point – whether you agree with them or not – in a way that would have been virtually impossible before the Web.
Online activism also allowed for the creation of junk mail vigilantism in 2002 (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write). Frustrated by the exponential increase in spam over the year, online users of Slashdot (Slashdot.org), the online technology community Web site, tracked down a Detroit-based spammer, who was reportedly capable of sending out a billion junk e-mails a day, and signed him up for thousands of junk mail lists – the old-fashioned, delivered-to-your-doorstep kind. The spammer was so angry about the mountain of junk mail that kept appearing in his mailbox that he threatened to sue, thereby creating some delicious irony. A similar movement to gather a million junk-mail CDs from AOL and send them back to the company’s door has gathered steam.
American columnist Arianna Huffington has also tapped into online activism in her push to combat American drug and terrorism propaganda and the Bush regime’s environmental stance. Prompted by her outrage at American government television commercials making a dubious link between drug use and terrorism, Huffington is using a Web site (www.DetroitProject.com) to raise money for her own commercials linking drivers of gas-guzzling SUVs to terrorism – she says they increase the U.S.’s reliance on foreign oil. Like the Poindexter issue, Huffington's movement has its critics, but the Web site has already gained enough money to buy air time on several high-profile political television programs.
But the use of the World Wide Web as a political tool was also the source of some embarrassingly low points recently, inadvertently helping to put an end to the biggest Internet trend of the past few years. Liberal-leader-in-waiting Paul Martin recently launched his own blog (there’s another sentence I never thought I’d write – www.PaulMartinTimes.com), thereby unofficially turning the massive blogging trend into a parody of itself.
Everyone, it seems, had to have a blog in 2002 (blog is short for Web log, a series of short, frequently updated posts arranged in chronological order). The most popular blogs come from some strange sources – for example, ex jump-suited actor Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher of Star Trek: The Next Generation, has basically created a new career for himself with his blog.
If you think the idea of a stodgy old politician like Paul Martin trying to appeal to the Internet generation by posting mundane details of his daily life online is ridiculous, you’re right. Martin's blog is only a few weeks old, but he’s already managed to talk about half a dozen Christmas parties (the political kind, not the fun kind) and his family vacation, and has posted several pictures of himself hobnobbing and trying to look young. What's worse, he namedrops, backhandedly talks politics and uses a dumbed-down tone that is, presumably intended to make him seem approachable and likable.
To his credit, Martin doesn't pretend he's Web-savvy. He admits he only learned about blogs a few weeks ago when his staff suggested the idea to him and says he originally "thought it was something that might climb out of a swamp." But when a guy like Martin jumps on a trend like blogging, you know it’s already dead.
And that’s a look at politics in the Internet world – effective and infuriating at the same time. Just like the real world. |
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