Clearly, the Etch A Sketch is the winner. Clearly. …though I’m kinda grateful for the iPad since it’ll lower netbook prices.
At this moment, I am at the Newseum, in Washington, watching Sec. of State Hillary Clinton deliver a very tough and (so far) very tightly reasoned speech about what she presents as the next great global battle of ideas: ensuring that the Internet remain a tool of openness, opportunity, expression, and possibility rather than of one of control, surveillance, suppression, and division, plus terror and crime. Details and assessment some time later today, but I have the sense while listening that this is an event and a statement that will be studied and discussed for quite a while. From “Hillary Clinton’s “Internet freedom” speech” via theatlantic.com
James Fallows
James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and has worked for the magazine for more than 25 years. He has written for the magazine on a wide range of topics, including national security policy, American politics, the development and impact of technology, economic trends and patterns, and U.S. relations with the Middle East, Asia, and other parts of the world.
Fallows grew up in Redlands, California and then attended Harvard, where he was president of the newspaper The Crimson. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1970 and then studied economics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He has been an editor of The Washington Monthly and of Texas Monthly, and from 1977 to 1979 he served as President Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter. His first book, National Defense, won the American Book Award in 1981; he has written seven others. He has worked as a software designer at Microsoft and from 1996 to 1998 he was the editor of U.S. News & World Report.
The world needs more pure journalists like James Fallows. #respect
The relevant point is that the company’s operations had long since been sensitive to public concerns, and it could move smoothly into a media spotlight with a clear understanding of its own objectives, and without fear that the world would end if it did not win all the points in the telecast. Such an approach, in my view, is far more sophisticated than conventional public relations.
[...]
The media, after all, live on information, and “others” can influence the outcome by providing accurate material. It is a corollary, of course, that “others” have a right to keep at arm’s length media agents who have a record of distorting facts to fit preconceived notions of high drama.
Circa 1981.
Can’t get off The Atlantic. Thanks, Jim Norris.
Ok, wait, I should back up.
In case you’re living under a rock, Nexus One launched today. Nexus One is the Google phone. Nexus One comes with GoogleVoice pre-installed. Now, Google Voice does everything a regular mobile number does and more, as you can see from this chart: Continue reading
My head hurts.
A few weeks back, Marissa Mayer talked about how she believes a more intuitive (personalized) search is the future, and calls this future search engine, ‘omnivorous.’ I do not know how or why Google chose the word omnivorous, but the first thing that popped in my head was a T-rex – yes, the very extinct dinosaur – crawling around the Internet, devouring everything it (Google) loves. And no, I am not still drunk from New Year’s.