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Edited on Tue Jul-26-05 11:56 AM by calipendence
... at least through the end of today. Hope to not have to have it through November, but it will stay up if it comes to that!
Here's a couple of ideas that I have that might require a lot more infrastructural work and larger scoped efforts, but I think might be other ways around our controlled media.
The problem isn't with the availability of ideas. We probably have more freedom of putting out ideas on the web, etc. than we've ever had in our nation's history.
The fundamental problem is who are the gatekeepers (or traffic cops) that guide people to their sources of news, and how do you get within that scope of gatekeepers to allow people more choices and give them more control over what they want to hear, based on what provides the best and most in depth information and who they trust to direct them to it. The right wing is looking to be the controller for all of these gatekeepers, controlling the mainstream news networks, most or all of the radio (Clear Channel) and tv stations (more consolidation with the likes of Sinclair, Pappas, etc.), cable outlet and even efforts now to control satellite radio and TV services too (DirectTV owned by Rupert Murdoch, and rumors of XM being owned by him too).
People are also inundated with spam, telemarketers, billboards, etc. every place they go and block a lot of other information out trying to come in through other ways.
How do we get through? We have to find some way of becoming a new gatekeeper that people will seek out and accept and one that they feel a bit more in control and doesn't intrude on their valuable free time.
Here's a couple of ideas on how to work within these constraints:
Idea 1:
Starbucks is a "blue" company, according to many organizations like buyblue.org, etc. They might be persuaded to help out here. They are also *THE* predominant coffee house chain in the U.S. that is in almost every community. They are also where a lot of people spend a lot of free time to drink a morning coffee, read a newspaper, talk to friends, etc. There's an opportunity here folks.
- If one could find a very inexpensive kiosk type of device that would interface into the internet and attach itself into an inexpensive table (tables that Starbucks would own), perhaps we can convince them to become more of the cybercafe type of business. That would be part 1.
- The second part is to build a kiosk-like very user-friendly front end that doesn't require a lot of "techie smarts" to use, where you would have a huge part of it be an enhanced Google or Yahoo-like news interface that would look for news from *all* sources on the net. But this service would add more multimedia sources too so that it could almost be alike an interactive TV setup (perhaps the multimedia would be accessed through metered access with a user depositing quarters or the like into the kiosk machine).
- The software running this would go beyond just a basic keyword search for news, but also use Ebay-like user profiles that would help users obtain information that fits their desire for information, political bent, etc. It would also allow them to rate the information and the sources of the information so that you could have fellow viewers (who have similar profiles to your own) rating news for you instead of the "traditional" gatekeepers rating your news for you based on their criteria of satisfying advertisers, political contributors, etc.
- If this kiosk like environment becomes popular enough, perhaps there later might at some point be "channels" coming through the web, interactive cable, or satellite TV service at some point.
If you could get this user experience to start really generating more news that can quickly have a person informed during their morning coffee session, and get to the point they feel they trust it more than they trust the "mass media" that is pummelled to them through cable or over the air media sources, then that's where democracy wins out! That's where the people *take back* our media.
Idea 2:
This idea isn't so much on news media, but information to help people make informed buying decisions on how they spend their money in a business setting to do things like "buy blue", not buy products made outside of the U.S., not buy products made with sweat shop labor, buy products from companies that make decent products that fellow consumers rate highly.
You have another "blue company", Costco, with a lot of clout in the marketplace too here. They might be helpful as a starting point to get this sort of service started.
- Perhaps on each cart that people go into the store with, you have mounted a small and inexpensive electronic device with a scanner on it and a wifi connection. Perhaps this would also set off an alarm if it goes to far from the store (outside of the parking lot) to help with theft prevention for the store too, but that wouldn't be it's main purpose).
- Have a scanner attached to it that would scan barcodes of any product in the store.
- Customer would select from an interface (which they might do through the web offline, or perhaps some way in the store) where they would indicate what measurements of a product are important to them to help them make buying decisions. These could be things like whether the company making the product is "blue" or "red", competitively priced (both at the store and against other similar products), made in the U.S., etc.
- If customers feel they have a tool that helps them leverage and optimize their buying power that much more, they will be more inclined to seek out Costco (helping Costco and incenting them to put more money into these devices), and will help them use their buying power to make sure that the companies that are currently throwing their money around Washington are more apt to listen to their interests, if they know that they are being measured more when people are buying their products and services. Ultimately it is taking corporate money out of the politics equation, but in the interim, perhaps influencing corporate campaign financing will at least have partial beneficial effects.
- If this program is successful enough at drawing customers away from other businesses like Target, etc. to Costco, they might be incented to buy into this service themselves, and this could be a common consumer empowerment tool every place.
Anyway, those are my two ideas. But I think Becky is on the right track, which is to find other ways to be "the gatekeeper" to people out there to get their information.
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