So I'm finally making my foray into the blogosphere. For a long time there has been discussion about how much of an impact user defined content would actually make. With so many people creating so many pages every minute, how can one actually get information from it all? How do I know if anyone is reading this or if I'm writing for my own self-edification? I guess my best gauge is the comments that other people make here, and therefore I'm asking my future readers to respond to me often and with zeal. One of my major goals with this blog is to generate intelligent discussion, and that is not possible if people are afraid to actually discuss (not that I expect any of you to be...I mean come on, this is anonymous after all.) I do however, request that whatever you post, you do it with thought. Very often I see responses to people's posts which are simply, "that's dumb." I've been around long enough to know that I may actually be dumb, but the discussion goes better if you tell me why. Now that I've laid all the groundwork, I should probably get to my first post.
I've been thinking about how amazing it is what we, as a society, find important. Now, I understand that I'm on the west coast of the United States, and not everyone will be from this area, but I think I watch enough national television to get a feeling for the populace of the United States. Am I the only one disturbed by how much of our national news is dedicated to entertainment? Or how much of our news is repetitive? Its either Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan or the same clip of the same collapsed bridge with the same information over and over again for three hours. Are those people really important to us? Is the collapsed bridge story so important that we should pester the rescuers for information instead of letting them do their job? What has happened to the way information is disseminated in this country?
On a similar topic, is disturbing to anyone else that major network news is able to have so much control over what we know about our world. The one that really gets to me is the current presidential election season. We have 8 democratic candidates and 10 republican ones. The disgusting thing to me is not the number of candidates, but what we know about them. The news focuses on what they say and what people our candidates shake hands with and what babies they kiss. Where is the reporting on their governing record? Where is the quality control? Why don't I know from the national news how much money each of the candidates has accepted from major corporations? Why don't I know about each of their voting records if they are/were in congress, or what has happened in their state if they are/were governors? Why is it that I know more about Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama than I do about Bill Richardson or Joe Biden or even Mike Gravel? Why is it that I know very little about any of the Republican candidates? Is it possible that our current media establishment will be able to select our next president for us simply by who they pay attention to?
These are all questions I don't have actual answers to, but I have a lot of thoughts. I thing that controversy sells more than fact, and that as a result fact is reported less often than opinion or strife. On that note, I would also like to comment on how much the internet can change that. I saw this article when I searched the results of the recent presidential debate (that's supposed to be a link, I'm not sure if this blog will accept html commands). Who has ever heard of Ron Paul? I have, but that's because I watch a lot of youtube. But in all seriousness, who has heard of this guy? When he gets this much attention he polls really well, and a lot of the things that he says makes a lot more sense than what the other candiades he's running with are saying, so why don't we know about him? I think its because he was a nobody going into this election season. Hillary Clinton, Rudy Guilliani, Barak Obama, and John McCain were all well known, and as a result we all started talking about them right after the last miderm election cycle. Also, Mitt Romney polls well because he got into the race really early and we've had a lot of time to talk about him. I'm beginning to think that between this phenomenon of watching the same subset of candidates and the early primaries that so many states are having, we won't be able to get to know all the candidates and make an informed decision. Am I the only one with this concern?
Like I said, any responses to this post are eagerly encouraged. I'd really like to know what everyone has to say about these topics.
