Slashdot Mirror
Obama Calls Today's Ubiquitous Gadgets and Information "a Distraction"
zaphod was one of several readers unhappy with the sentiment expressed in President Obama's graduation address to the students of Virginia's Hampton University, writing: "According to Obama, 'information becomes a distraction' when it comes to iPads, the Xbox, etc. (All items he admits not knowing how to use.) He's basically saying we are getting too much information too quickly, and from 'unreliable sources.' Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views."
CNET has a slightly different, less critical reaction, focusing on the differences among the actual devices named; they note that the Xbox is not an iPad.
you know, when St. Obama gave vague feel-good speeches and didn't have to make any decisions.
cffrost calls whatever Obama likes a bunch of stupid bullshit.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
black president! :-)
Perhaps if his administration had the transparency he promised on the campaign trail, it would be easy to get the information people are seeking from credible, reliable sources.
Whether the President and his administration like it, this form of information sharing is very likely here to stay. Perhaps the best reaction would be to embrace it and use it as a positive differentiator from other administrations.
Quiz: True or False -- On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your middle name?
'information becomes a distraction'
I think it's more accurately stated that 'information can be a distraction' but, you know, it can also be a very useful tool both in learning and communicating. Everyone can have a Facebook account and everyone can read blogs but the programmer that spends much of his time reading reading blogs about programming and uses Facebook only to keep up with his friends periodically is going to outpace the programmer that spends 90% of his time on Facebook and 5% of his time reading movie reviews on blogs.
So, by and large, it comes down to -- surprise surprise -- responsible time management. Yes, too much information via the internet and mobile devices is a double edged sword. I cannot keep up with the papers on arxiv but if I learn to manage my time and quickly recognize which papers are worth my time then it is very valuable to an academic. Or I could spend my time playing Farmville. Both occupy my time and can be distractions.
Information is a very powerful tool, no matter how much you want to blame the method and frequency of delivery it's ultimately up to you what you do with it. I read transcript and honestly I thought it was closer to this dualism than the summary lets on.
Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views.
I don't think so. He actually encourages reading both sides:
This development can be both good and bad for democracy. For if we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we will become more polarized and set in our ways. And that will only reinforce and even deepen the political divides in this country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.
For once the Slashdot summary seemed to be even more politically charged and biased than the actual politician. The correct message is to manage your time well and exercise caution. Sound advice actually.
My work here is dung.
Apparently he didn't consider Xbox a distraction when he was running in-game campaign ads on it.
That was then, this is now. After all, you can't trust media to be "accurate" if it isn't state controlled, like in China. Now. Before, you couldn't trust the media *because* it was state-controlled. Like HuffPo. Oh, wait...
-=Maggie Leber=-
who can't let go of his smartphone.
He meant that as information becomes decentralized, the government cannot control its distribution. The Users become the Producers and Creators, and also their own Network. Dissent can become viral, and that buffoon Robert Gibbs can barely stamp out a cockroach let alone an Internet meme. The best education also entertains, and the most effective dissent begins with satire.
"It's OK to enjoy your Bread and Circuses, Americans," Obama concluded his speech. "Just be sure that they are government issue. Thank You and Good Night."
Is this the same man who couldn't/wouldn't be separated from his blackberry?
I was intending to watch it but then I got a tweet from my bff and had to update my Facebook page and status on Foursquare.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
"What Jefferson recognized... that in the long run, their improbable experiment -- called America -- wouldn't work if its citizens were uninformed, if its citizens were apathetic, if its citizens checked out, and left democracy to those who didn't have the best interests of all the people at heart."
Right on, and that is precisely the problem we have right now: most of the citizens do not care. People are not just unaware of the issues facing America and what their government is doing; they seem not to care about any of it at all.
Palm trees and 8
It's always "aliens have invaded", or "nuke goes off in major city", or "Duke Nukem is still not available"...
Playing their damn hoppity-hip music way too loud on their iWalkPods, and will they please get off his lawn, he ain't going to ask them again.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Bill Gates talked about Information Fatigue years ago when Microsoft was trying to bring together disparate information systems with their backend server tools.
Here's an article from 2006
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2006/05-17eim.mspx
The idea was that it wasn't too much information coming in that was the problem. Rather it was too much pure data and "dumb" information being presented to users. This led to users getting too wrapped up in filtering this information themselves and spending too little time with the data that they truly needed.
Pascal once wrote "The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter." Cutting through the vast amount of unnecessary data to get to important intelligence is time consuming. Obama is right, but he's also a decade late.
I agree there's no reliable information and alot of disinformation saturating quality information on the internet.
To me it's a shame seeing "online newssites" or the online version of paper news are following the sensationalist online buzz-kindof attitude instead of bringing quality and authenticity.
You can very well disagree, as information needs to be free but it gets hard to filter out relevant and solid information and one doesn't always have the time to take an intersection of information.
Take this simple example: Moonlanding.
On youtube alone I would get claims of it being faked, structures being found on the moon, ancient spacetravelling civilisations, Nibiru, a 10th planet who is floating around, a theory our Astroid belt is actually a remnant of an impact with earth and Anunaki visiting our planet thousands of years ago, the deeper you dig, the further there's misinformation.
Now, as the critical minds of the average slashdotter knows to seperate or "make an educated guess" on which information is correct, the median intersection will not be able to do so.
There is, in my view, a need for trustable information without it being controlled by a government or an entity with simular interests.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I agree with Obama's sentiment. We are entering an age where we are being bombarded with information 24 hours a day, beyond our ability to consume it. It is a real problem that is only getting worse. We are going to turn into a society of ADD junkies hooked on useless information.
Hey, for once I agree with St. Obama. I realize that geeks are never going to admit it, but there is a price for our geekery. How many of us are distracted, and have short attention spans. Let's take a moment to think about...
Hey look... an ipad....
W
The speech writer was a bit off their game that day from the sounds of it. There are way to many writers currently confusing message with medium, and gadgets with tools. If the user is focussed or disciplined, it all becomes much more about what they are trying to do. So no, Obama, our brains are not rotting from too much ibox. Maybe if the Obama administration made some proactive legislation around data privacy, rights to anonymity, restrictions on advertising in public commons, rather than slinging mud around about simple living, just because the wifey gardens.
Waiting for the other shoe to...
Did he announce this using twitter?
The ducks in the bathroom are not mine. [http://www.27bslash6.com]
He's the President of the USA but cannot work out how to use an iPod or xBox?
And this is coming from the man who "accidentally" let it slip, whilst he was campaigning for the Presidency that he had an iPod of his own.
Does his wife have to put music on it for him? Or his children maybe?
A lot of expensive and finely crafted bullshit hits the news on frequent occasions and often the revelation that it is a lie is often much later, towards the back of the newspaper or in a few blogs.
The ultimate of course is the WMD "intelligence" from a PR firm but of course there is plenty that all sides of politics would be disgusted by.
Good questions to ask about extreme views are who is paying for it, who benefits, and why isn't it on the BBC or other overseas news sources?
You really need a better news source than a coke addled ex-DJ who is advertising whatever view he is paid to push each week.
Obama wasn't calling out particular devices. 5 years ago it would gave been "laptops on wifi, iPods, MP3 players, Cellphones with net connections, Playstation and Nintendo mobile" Yes both iPods and mp3 players :) adds that presidential touch.
In any case he's warning an at risk group of university students to focus on their education rather than being distracted by always on media and Media.
These speeches aren't always 100% addressing the greatr society. Sometimes they specifically address the physical audience.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This was a graduation address, not a state of the union speech. He's not laying down policy here. He's speaking to a very specific audience (graduating students) about a very specific topic (transitioning from school to the workforce). This was not the preamble to new legislation, nor should it be misconstrued as such.
IMHO, Eisenhower's Council on Youth Fitness was a far more intrusive condemnation of how we spent our leisure time than this.
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
It's only a distraction if kids do not get taught how to effectively manage all of this information. Can't figure out why most classes in school revolve around memorizing repetitive mind numbing facts instead of getting into the theory. In todays world it's about knowing how to research and analyze information from the internet and other data sources.
www.newviewmedia.com
I gotta run and get my popcorn for the 'discussions' on this topic. Let the political ego nukes fly!
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
the Truth becomes a distraction.
No longer can government officials just hide behind friends in the press (print/broadcast). Very much how blogs turned up the heat on big media in 2004 it was a signal that many in government failed to see, that is, we the people can watch you, we can report on you, and we will.
Hence the little "trial balloons" floated about going after blogs and their commercial associations (reviewing products, people, etc). Anything to get some leverage on the new free voice. Can't wait for the changes to election laws going after blogs.
Nah, the blogs are grassroots and grassroots are the one thing DC is having a problem with. Trying to counter with their SEIU fake gatherings to offset Tea Partiers got exposed by blogs, not the news media. Face it DC, you can lie through the press but the press won't be our main source going forward.
It also works well for the leaders of other countries, namely Iran. Technology may for the short time give the regular person the upper hand until it can regulated into oblivion
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I know that most governments are corrupt and all that, but did Obama really say anything wrong this time? He was addressing a group of students when he said that information overload and quickly accessible information can be distracting. You know what? He's right. I'm a student. I find video games, TV shows, Slashdot, overclocking forums, Linux forums, email, telephone, new software, Facebook notifications, to be hugely distracting. I would go so far as to say that I am mildly addicted to new, bite-sized pieces of information. It doesn't help that I already have ADHD - but the Internet and other computer-based media go a long way in keeping me off-track.
I would call Twitter, blogs, Facebook, etc. unreliable in the sense that you're hearing only part of the story from one person. They might be putting their own spin on it to support their own beliefs, or they might be drawing conclusions which are valid given the knowledge they have but which are not when all the information is taken into account.
"According to Obama, 'information becomes a distraction' when it comes to iPads, the Xbox, etc. (All items he admits not knowing how to use.) He's basically saying we are getting too much information too quickly, and from 'unreliable sources.'
More reliable sources include politicians??? I'd much rather learn from a fictional X-Box game. It's much more likely to be based on the truth.
It should be illegal for any politician to pass laws about things he has no fucking idea about. If he hasn't used that class of gadget he should just shut his fucking mouth. I had high hopes for your president, but I have to say they're in ruins.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
...Wow, did half of the posters here even read the article? Obama's not pro-censorship, he's not arguing that x-box's, twitter and facebook should be taken away:
"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,"
"some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction," in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.
What Obama is saying, is that in this day and age of massive media coverage you shouldn't always believe what you read. He's encouraging the students to find alternate sources of information, to actually investigate something before spouting off and further propagating the Chinese Whisper... You know, basically what most of the people replying to this article did.
Niggers every&where hapless *BSD By the politickers
is here, and here is the paragraph that people are taking issue with:
What I find interesting is not the assertion about the devices, and information becoming entertainment — that's been true since at least the beginnings of edutainment and of news as entertainment almost twenty years ago. For me, the interesting part is the first sentence: "And meanwhile, you're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank that high on the truth meter." It seems to me that throughout history, the times when truth has been the major component of the information we are given have been few and far between. For example, the news media in the US, despite their pretensions to objectivity, haven't been particularly honest at any time in their history. Even in WWII, the war correspondents left out more than they said, and that was probably the height of objectivity in the news. Heck, the news media was in great part responsible for fomenting the Spanish-American War (google "yellow journalism"), reported the propaganda of Saddam Hussein as news in order to maintain access, and spent years trying to talk us into a recession (note the tone of economic reporting under Bush vs. that under Obama, and compare that to the actual statistics).
In other words, the real requirement we have is not to shut off the flows of information, or even to tilt at the windmill of trying to ensure that all the information we have access to is truthful, but to armor ourselves with scepticism, basic statistical knowledge, and deep historical knowledge so that we, individually, can sort out the truth from the lies, distortions and agenda-driven propaganda we are faced with.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
The last decent presidential speech writer was Peggy Noonan
While her WSJ editorials are often riddled with religious crap, she was a hell of a speech writer for Reagan.
"His name was James Damore."
I agree with him on this one. Sort of...
We are getting distracted by disinformation from bloggers who crave web hits over actual journalism. We also don't place enough value on actual journalists (you know the trained professions) who go out in the field and research the report, and their editors who fact check the story (*cough*) before it is placed on the web or in print.
We live in an echo chamber. Where if it's linked by three bloggers then it must be true. Where if it's similar to what you wish were true then it must be true.
My only beef is that he didn't mind the unsubstantiated "information" that benefited his position and allowed him to win an election with nothing more than a "Yes We Can" slogan.
Live by the tweets and blogs, die by the tweets and blogs...
I think it would be more accurate to say that we are distracted by technology (games, tweets, etc.) instead of actually trying to learn something... Really, how many teenagers are actually using technology to learn something beneficial? Really?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Information overload is killing us and our productivity. All the electronic gadgets and communication in the workplace keep us from getting our jobs done and are causing enormous stress (which is shortening our lives).
http://www.cio.com/article/169200/Information_Overload_Is_Killing_You_and_Your_Productivity
"The report ("The 'Too Much Information' Age: What CIOs Can Do About It") cites Accenture research that demonstrates the deluge and resulting confusion: 42 percent of IT managers complain that they are bombarded by too much information; 39 percent say they can't figure out which information is current; 38 percent say they need to weed out duplicate information; and 21 percent say they don't understand the value of the information they do receive. "
Googling shows lots more links for - Information Overload Productivity
Never trust them (those in power) even if we elected them to CHANGE our system.
They hate these new devices because they don't control them yet. Look at totalitarian states all around the world, all politicians' DREAMLANDS because they control every facet of information and the minutiae of everyday lives of their subjects. I don't care if your politician is Ron Paul, Ronald Reagan, or Barack Obama. They all dreamed of a place they can control us from. That is why in our society we have to keep them in check. We have to let them know who is boss and that they are chosen to SERVE US. If they can't get over the yellow press, the "rumors" the "false information". if they can't calibrate their message to appeal to the mass of us, that is THEIR problem and not ours.
Barack Obama, your Chavez is showing. At least we know how to recognize it, we learned it in the time frame between 1763 and 1789.
Now to be down-ranked into oblivion by the enlightened leftosphere...
The Apple iPad, it doesn't burn at 451 degrees but by golly we'll figure out a way to eliminate it's subversive information delivery capability!
Oh, and BHO... The Xbox is an entertainment platform. Maybe the Whitehouse should mandate what games are played on it, like:
The Healthcare Bill: Acquiesing your personal freedoms to the bueracracy 2011. Learn how to avoid fraud detection by the Healthcare Police. Work your way up from menial claims clerk to head of the HHS, or in Death Panel mode, decide who gets the life saving operation and who doesn't!!!
Sounds like a lot of fun. maybe even more than Madden NFL 2011.
Of course what was written above is just a warning and not a foretelling of events to come.
US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media.
- translation: it used to be that you got your 'news' from the government approved controlled sources such as news papers, TV, radio and such. What is happening now is that the Government cannot realistically control all of the ways people communicate anymore and it is a problem, since the diversion of the fake news is no longer the only source of 'information' that is overpowering all other sources.
"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter," Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.
- translation: there are too many difference dissenting voices that those in Power do not like you to hear and do not want you to listen to.
"With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.
- translation: with all this technology, which I as a lawyer see as obstacles standing on the way of having total control of information and think needs to be regulated into oblivion but I still didn't figure a way to do so, it is hard to keep your attention on the only sources of 'information' that I approve of. Obviously it is not right that some believe that in today's America, the only reliable news-sources are satire channels where the actual truth is reported in such condescending yet pleasurable way that it attracts both, the serious people hungry for information and the more numerous general public just looking for some entertainment.
"some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,"
- translation: I am going to equate everyone who I do not approve of, so the crazy people who say I am an African born Muslim are seen in the same light, as those who say I am a corporate whore.
"All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."
- translation: Goddamnit! I can't take it anymore that people actually are aware of what the Government and specifically the White House is doing on actual issues, I can't have it, it's preposterously difficult to do one thing and pretend to do the other because you just know it, the audience can get the actual story behind the 'news'.
"We can't stop these changes... but we can adapt to them," Obama said, adding that US workers were in a battle with well-educated foreign workers.
- translation: but don't you worry, we'll get right on this problem, we'll come up with something to stop the alternative news from coming out, from information being spread in non-approved manner.
You can't handle the truth.
Back in the day (no earlier than 10ish years ago) it was far more challenging to obtain information. I'll pick a particular example: I was trying to learn how to play guitar. The only ways of doing it were either going to an instructor or buying a book (or both). Both of these represent data, not information. Data is just a bunch of stuff, information is a conclusion you draw after a careful examination of the said stuff. Further more, in smalls town like mine there were only a handful of instructors and almost no books. Therefore all all data was carefully filtered and sorted before assimilation and turning into information. Nowadays there's a plethora of ways of learning how to play the guitar, but it comes as information - "here's how you play Sweet Home Alabama, put your fingers here and here and then there and there", for instance. As kids these days are simply being given conclusions, not prerequisites, they seem to have totally lost the appetite for putting thoughts together and learning something from that. I've observed quite a few of them (I've two young cousins and my mom is a high school teacher and shares insights about her pupils), they've all exhibited the same symptoms.
when they are at their best they are incompetent boobs, and at worst corrupted tyrannical assholes
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
So, is his blackberry that he can't live without distracting him?
Jason-Palmer.com
And this got into slashdot? Well, Obama is right. We're receiving too much information! It's trivial knowledge, and not limited just to new technology.
There's no counter-argument in that critique. It's only some idiot trying to cause bad reputation. Zero information content.
and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views"
in obama's defense, calling talk radio and blogs as "mediums that tend to disagree with his political views" is like describing the ebola virus as "organic matter that tends to disagree with your right to live"
talk radio and political blogs are seething venomous pits of propaganda, whether from right or left, and are not valid sources of anything. nevermind the laughable idea they offer polite respectable disagreement to your political views. is a ranting lobotomized alzheimer's patient infected with rabies a "disagreement with your political views"?
mindless partisan hate (left OR right), which is all talk radio or political blogs are, is are completely useless. echo chambers for people who have turned off their minds. completely unthinking, loud, tired, endlessly rehashed pointless drivel. talk radio and political blogs are septic systems of the mind, and are not valid reactions to anything anyone says or does, whether right or left. the less talk radio you listen to and political blogs you read, indeed, the clearer your mind. reading a blatantly left wing or right wing blog probably instantly (temporarily) lowers your iq
in such a respect obama is 100% correct. if gw bush said the same thing, he would be correct to. because it doesn't matter the source of the observation, because the observation is not an attack on the right or the left. if osama bin laden told you it is important to wash your hands after using the toilet, does the source of that observation make the statement immediately suspect? no: its important to wash your hands after leaving the toilet, even osama bin laden recognizes this. therefore, it is equally true what obama says about talk radio and political blogs, whether said by him or sarah palin about left wing blogs. left OR right wing: talk radio and political blogs are poison to the mind
so obama's observation is completely valid. talk radio and political blogs are not coherent sources of impartial information. talk radio and political blogs are mental filth and they destroy civil society by turning it into a race to the bottom of mindless attacks and smears
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Clearly, he has plenty of time to piss and moan about what people choose to do with their leisure time, and it's much more important to lecture us on that rather than focus on the oil spill in the gulf, or the wars overseas, or our hemmhoraging job market, or any other less important thing in this country.
This, coming from a guy hooked on a Crackberry.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
"Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views."
What is this bullshit? Sounds like someone's still bitter about losing the election.
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
Didn't Obama announce his VP candidate via Twitter first? Probably leaving thousands of bloggers and newsrooms constantly refreshing their feeds?
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
... refused to give up his Crackberry upon entering office.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Seeing as how this was a graduation speech, apparently these particular kids weren't too "distracted".
Maybe this would have been a better speech to give to kids in detention or summer school...
And this is all from the man who forced the NSA to come up with a way for him to keep his Blackberry? Isn't that the ultimate form of being constantly connected?
My gadgets serve their purpose. If I choose to "waste" time, that's my problem. If I didn't have a gadget to distract me, I would find something else to distract me. Often times, when I'm stumped and knee deep in code...a good distraction jars loose the best ideas of the day/night. I wouldn't expect a politician to understand that though.
I agree with you that we have allowed the internet and entertainment media to distract us from our daily lives, but I believe that this is only half the problem posed by entertainment & informational technology.
The other half of the problem, as Obama perhaps tried to allude to but didn't quite fully specify, is that when we permit ourselves to be overloaded with information, but lack the expertise to evaluate its validity and worth, we are easily manipulated by lies, half-truths, and biased points-of-view. That's why we need news and media experts to help sort, highlight, and evaluate the information that we lack the expertise to do ourselves; they help identify for us what is important.
Think of it like Antique Road Show without the experts. Information is like the stuff that we collect in our attics. We need content experts to help us understand and recognize the value of what we possess, as well as convince us to throw away the things that aren't worth anything. Without the experts, we become informational pack rats; we possess everything, but know the value of nothing.
And when ignoramuses start to throw around information that they don't understand, we aren't empowered; we're misled.
The other problem I am becoming more concerned about is people building bubbles of information and opion which does not include outside POVs.
What I mean is that people read blogs, watch TV shows etc., which only serve to reinforce their current world view. Whether that be to the left or right in the political spectrum. Or opinions on scientific research, or religious groups.
Recently I went to a precinct meeting of my $PoliticalPartyofMyChoice. I then volunteered to serve as a delegate to the county caucus. In this situation I was forced meet with, in real life, people I did not agree with. Even in the same political party there can a wide variety of points of view, biases, misinformation, lack of good information, undiscussed issues of concern to you etc. Speaking to people face to face without the shroud of the internet forced me to think about things and review some of my biases and positions. I had argue (in the classical sense of the word, as in "to debate") some of my points and allow myself to be educated.
It was actually was a good experience due to that. I would recommend it. Put down the iPad and XBox, get out of the house, and get involved face-to-face.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I recently moved to a place where the quality of dialup I had in 1991 is considered broadband. Occasionally a text gets through on my iphone but I can't hold a normal call. I have a verizon 3g card but it drops connection when I get up for coffee. There is no cable TV or broadband service. I have to drive 3 miles to get out of the valley I live in to get cell phone service with AT&T which will allow me to place a call and finish it.
I've never felt more alive.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
But Apple said 1984 won't be like 1984.
Whoever wrote that summary needs a hard kick in the head and a ban from Slashdot, shit like "Of course, he's referring to talk radio, blogs and other mediums that tend to disagree with his political views." should stay in troll comments not on the front page.
This /. article could have been a good discussion about information and its possible overload on human connectedness, in the sense of getting important news/information, how to filter through it and avoiding extreme views.
But thanks to the troll summary we get none of that, just extreme views, people who pretend to know what Obama is thinking and discussions that have almost no connection to what he really said. Basically falling into the trap he and others before him have warned about.
If I didn't know better I would think I was reading a Fox news forum.
Well, considering the mountains of lies and obfuscation coming out of Obama's mouth, his press secretary's mouth and other mouth pieces of his administration, he is an authority on the subject of "unreliable sources".
How about that report that our Health and Human Services Secretary sat on that showed the health care bill was going to cost more than was being promoted? Just one of many instances of bull crap coming out of those in power in Washington D.C. (note: I include Democrats and Republicans in this, they are both equally responsible for the current mess this country is in).
This is why I sympathize with Obama. I know exactly what it's like to have people over-parse and over-analyze your words, when they'd just understand if they had some common sense. For fuck sake, he's making a flowery commencement speech, not policy.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
He's proven himself to be a liar and is just another cog in the system,
as were the last few dummies in the White House.
I voted for Obama, but I sure as hell won't make that mistake again.
Fuck him.
Maybe he is just concerned about the up coming trend to writing doctorate theses in lolcat.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
All of the comments he makes can be applied just as easily to television, books, periodicals, radio, and film. All this is, is Obama demonstrating the Douglas Adams rules of technology acceptance
Maybe he's talking about Information Overload which is indeed a problem.
Think about those managers that are completelly Blackberry driven (those that almost always give the highest priority to their BB, even in meetings) and now consider the quality of their decision making: for people that get so many e-mails and are so on top of things, they usually are surprisingly uninformed and unthinking in their decisions.
Maybe Obama's statements should be read as:
- President of the USA says that nowadays people have too many things pulling their attention and receive too much low-value information
and that has negative consequences with regards to their knowledge and wisdom.
instead of:
- Well know Democrat politician tells people what they're doing wrong.
You know, even though he's the lider of a political party in a highly politically polarised nation, he's still the fucking president of the US of A and he didn't got there by being stupid. Maybe he's capable of an informed opinion ...
<RANT>
It pisses me off to no end that me, an European, have to be then one pointing out the he's a man that has succeeded in getting elected to a highly coveted position, which few can achieve and that maybe his non-political opinions, at least once in a while, should be heard instead of dismissed outright because of his political affiliation
</RANT>
Then he should make a flowery commencement speech, not a campaign stump speech. Or do you disagree?
Since none of you read the speech, let alone the article, here's a handy link to the text of the speech. AGAIN. The AP took 2 lines from it, and ran a story based on that.
http://www.buzzstation.net/2010/05/obama-michigan-graduation-speech.html
If I had any mod points I'd bump you up. The parent does exactly what Obama complained about: he takes a politically neutral subject and contorts it in such a way that "information overload" all of a sudden becomes "liberal media conspiracy." Gotta love how he insinuated that the evil liberal media was in cahoots with the terrorists. He really exposed himself with "Taliban-type attack." He probably meant Al-Qaida, but they're all brown, so what's it matter?
Gotta love how he claims that you can use statistics to lie and spread misinformation. You don't have to use statistics. Accusing the media of conspiracy for not covering certain stories more in depth is so logically absurd that he must be intending on spreading misinformation himself. There's a much easier explanation: incompetence. But not on the media's part, on the part of the reader base. People care more about stories about Pandas having sex than they do about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict so the media invests more time and money covering Panda stories. The BBC, which tends to support Obama more than most American media outlets, actually does cover stories such as Oslo more in depth rather than just gloss over them. This seems to indicate that the ineptitude of the American media probably has more to do with our culture than some conspiracy between Obama, terrorists, and Ted Turner.
The fact of the matter is that if you get your daily news from Sarah Palin or Ariana Huffington's blog, you're not getting reliable information. The internet is full of unreliable information from all angles of the political spectrum, so it's doubtful that Obama was seeking to silence political opposition with these comments.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
...that he advertised/campaigned using virtual ads in video games. I guess he didn't feel that they were a diversion if it helped him get into office.
Just like Aldous Huxley said it would be.
If your breath didn't smell like death, I would kill you with a machete, fire ant hill, and gasoline and a lighter. However, since your breath is terrible, I will blow you up with the said Hindenburg. Amen.
If I were you, I would commit suicide by dousing myself in gasoline or AA jet fuel and lighting it. Just sayin'!
you don't even try to appeal to moderation. and you in fact deny me the right to moderation. you will only see my words as leftist. you insist everything is right or left. and you in fact attack me in a contrived way based on my sig, creatively reasoning and inferring my radical leftyism. the only way your mind will process is my words is as "the enemy"
in other words, you are a hopeless partisan, and you are what is wrong with this country, right or left
i am a moderate. i really am. but since you won't see my statement as a moderate one, since you insist what i say has to be partisan (the limitation that defines your perception of reality does not define my reality, or any reality, darling) i guess i'll just have to go back to my communist muslim socialist fascist president's feet then, i have a lot of dick sucking to do in the name of emperor palpatine. right?
zzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is weird coming from a gadget freak, but people really are bomarded by way too much information at once. I can think of a lot of examples:
I'm not some Luddite who thinks we need to go back in time - we just need to learn as a society when to turn down the huge amount of noise coming in. Some noise is good, but when it means you can't sit still for 20 seconds, something has gotten out of whack.
Get ready Americans.
Just wait and you will see... you voted for this wolf disguised with a sheep's skin.
He is the Taliban Ambassador in the West.
Just wait...
that you are trolling me or trying to make a joke
no hate in talk radio or political blogs?
i will file you mentally as an attempt at humor, but you never know these days. there really are people out there who think there is no hate in talk radio or political blogs. so even if you are joking as i hope you are, please note that your joke is more tragic than comic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is why I sympathize with Obama. I know exactly what it's like to have people over-parse and over-analyze your words, when they'd just understand if they had some common sense. For fuck sake, he's making a flowery commencement speech, not policy.
You must have loved Bush!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
So, Obama, you don't like the informedness level of the public dialog? Hmmm, let's see -- is there anything that the most powerful person in the world could do about that? What say you fix the problem, instead of just whining?
See, the thing is I agree with the problem. The public dialog is shallow and vitriolic. But guess what? That is because of the way your party and the other big party approach winning elections. You are the ones who are encouraging shallow, vitriolic discourse.
The solution is not to tell us to change. The solution is for you to change. Here's a few suggestions:
1. Stop talking about your policies as if they are pure wins. Every bit of public policy has a pro and a con. Talk about the costs of copyright enforcement, or the anguish of collateral damage once in a while.
2. Stop talking about the enemy's policies as if they were pure evil. Every bit of public policy that is credibly advocated has some upside. And I'm not talking about damning with faint praise here -- show me you are really cognizant of the benefits your enemies are seeking.
3. Stop talking about just the effects. Every politician loves to tell me about the outcome of some proposed new law. Try encouraging a public dialog about the forces with which a law will interact. Encourage us to discuss and contemplate the causes for law, and various potential solutions.
4. Open the government, so we don't have to feed on punditry and news angertainment. Set up forums and participate in them. Take our views seriously. Remember you are our servant, you're supposed to be listening to us even if you think you are smarter than us (something I can completely understand -- I think I'm smarter than us too).
5. Use your spin powers for good. Washington DC is awash in flacks whose job is to make people think and act in certain ways. Take five people from your socio-manipulation staff and task them with whipping the public into a maelstrom of civic participation.
6. Find the common ground. Don't just pander to the base with the above. Right-wing people are just as pissed off with their party as lefties are with yours. Most of us on both sides are actually deeply patriotic people who would love to be united on a few things. Work with that.
7. Stop using the simple stuff for unification. Yes, yes, we all hate terr'rists and we all think health care is too expensive and we all wish the deficit were lower and we all (except about 20% of us that you seem to enjoy pissing off) love jesus or similar mystical being. Yawn. Meaningless. How about some of the principles that we cleave to? A little fire and brimstone passion for liberty(*)? Maybe some of the best bits of the free market like "an informed consumer"? How about getting us excited about the more subtle (and more bedrock) things that make America work?
In short, stop telling us what to think and start leading us to think.
The President whining that the public dialog is too shallow and divisive? Un-fucking-believable. It is significantly your fault, and there is not one single person on the planet with more power to fix it.
And ferfucksake don't give me that "I'm too busy being President" crap. Fuck that. Put everything else on hold until we fix the public discourse. It is the number one most dangerous thing we face. Like the Taliban times ten. If we don't fix how we make decisions, then making one or two correct decisions because you work real hard on them won't make a damned bit of difference.
* including liberty from government, not just liberty through government
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
moaning about Obama? At least you lot have GOT a head of Government at the moment.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is hard. What is the whole truth?
The UK recently had a telling case. A BNP politician (racist party) was canvasing and a fight broke out. On Have I Got News For You (British political comedy show) they showed the footage. The guy punched a dark skinned (probably Muslim immigrant but that would from that footage have been a presumption) in the face. Oooh bad. What they didn't show is the few seconds before that, when that guy spitted in his face.
Careful editing to show the BNP in a bad light? The BBC is famously anti-racist and no, this is NOT a good thing. The BBC is supposed, especially in election times, to be impartial and give equal time to ALL parties, including those they disagree with. This is important, after all the BBC which controls the state TV, is the state TV, could ruin any party that has in its agenda say the end of the BBC.
What makes it clear the Hignfy cast has an agenda other then fair and equal treatment of all parties is that when Prescott (labour) punched a guy who threw an egg at him, the cast pretty much applauded it. So it is okay to punch a white protester who attacks you, but not a Muslim? Talk about bias. You might agree with the bias, but it is still bias.
And that really is the problem with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The have shown the whole incident you would have had to basically spend 5 or more minutes in a comedy show to explain the full setting. Why did the argument start? Democracy calls on parties you don't like being allowed to take part in the protest. On the other hand, demonstrating against points of view you don't like is also part of it. Spitting on people is aggresive and you should expect to be punched, but if you are calling a person a waste because of his race you can hardly expect him not to react.
The problem is that how many people saw the incident only in the comedy show and not the full clip? Their point of view has now been altered by people with an agenda even if that agenda was only to get a laugh. And this is what we know about, how much else has ended up on the cutting floor of the news room? Maybe all the footage that showed the exact same ambulance in the middle east? Or the same childs body killed in different locations? How odd that was only found out later, not by the camera crew who after all had a close up look. Agenda or lousy reporting standards? And of course, I am now convinced these cases were wrong, and therefor all news from certain points of view is suspect so I now rather believe less official resources as well.
I am not suprised Obama is getting upset with all the crap "news" out there. Come on US, when you hear people claim about nazi death camps if healthcare reform is enabled, why don't you shoot the people claiming it for insulting your intelligence. Most countries in the world have social health care and no dead squads yet killing little timmy. In fact the most recent case of extreme medical behavior came from the US, where children in orphanages are forced to take part in medical experiments. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34817839637
Capitalists doing exactly what the nazi's did. Gosh, how could that be! This is what the Tea Party wants to be done to children, rather then allow anyone regardless of income to have medical care.
Truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And if you read any of this, how do you know any of which I tell you is the truth. I linked to facebook for a reason. If you want to check it, it will take you some effort. In fact to check all the claims in this post and the parent, you will have to do some digging. They are "true", but how do you know?
The press is the gatekeeper of democracy. If it starts to fail, democracy will soon follow. That boring paper with no page three girl that has boring headlines is the bastion of freedom. If all news becomes fox news or the daily mail, then the end of democracy isn't far away. And if twitter becomes the source of news we might as well kiss our asses goodbye.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What else are we meant to do with our lives? Just eat, work and sleep?
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Aren't they pretty much the same thing? Talk is cheap, and when you're smart sometimes it's hard to word things perfectly for the obsessive-compulsive crowd who doesn't understand your hand waving and generalizations.
Just like people take sound bytes of Obama and say "OMG HE'S A COMMUNIST!" this is no different. Unless policy changes arise from this, I don't really care. What he's saying is generally intelligent and has some merits, but nitpicking about specific points is just asinine. When he's making a graduation speech, he doesn't need to dot his I's and cross his T's just because some people can't look past the words and get to the sentiment.
And to the poster below who thinks I loved Bush: no. That's a false conjecture, though I gave him his benefits of the doubt as well. I voted for neither Bush nor Obama (yet).
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Some right wing tea-partying wingnut told me Obama had no interest in Jobs. I guess he was right. Sorry Steve.
when it comes from Obama's teleprompter
more like a paperweight!
ITT: Butthurt nerds
The UK recently had a telling case. A BNP politician (racist party) was canvasing and a fight broke out. On Have I Got News For You (British political comedy show) they showed the footage. The guy punched a dark skinned (probably Muslim immigrant but that would from that footage have been a presumption) in the face. Oooh bad. What they didn't show is the few seconds before that, when that guy spitted in his face.
Taking things out of context for humorous purposes is a pretty common technique. Did the _actual_ BBC news not show to entire sequences of events ?
it happened right under our noses and we missed the chance to study the phenomenon? time goes by so fast..
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I think he's right. We saturate ourselves with information out of novelty and convenience, in awe of our own ingenuity, and rather than being drawn together by the commonality it can present, we are instead pushed further apart, becoming our own little islands, a nation of archipelagos rather than a united landmass. It's less the technology itself and more the attitude and culture it creates, of presenting artificial veneers to the world which other artificial veneers ooh and ahh at so others will ooh and ahh at theirs.
I'm reminded of the lampoon that the animated film WALL-E presented. A whole ship of fat lumps all running around on self-propelled chairs, never actually interacting with anyone flesh-to-flesh. Or the artificial world presented in the movie Surrogates.
In other words, Obama starts debates on important topics he knows he doesn't know everything about. He even admitted so in said speech.
The fact that people are now debating the purpose of information technology in our lives is a good thing.
But misinterpreting the spark that started the debate is what annoys me. Steering the discussion toward what a Luddite he is, or how ridiculous the idea is, completely misses the point.
Sometimes people talk out loud and air their ideas just so they can refine them and make them better. Being someone who does that often, I find that to be a good thing. I think it's good to challenge your own ideas and to not commit fully until you understand the nuances better.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
As a 35 year old computer scientist, spending my career on distributed computing, I certainly appreciate the potential of ubiquitous communication and information processing. And I've also gone through my own reactionary phase where I had to learn how to shut off the email "information flow" and recover my balance, in the years when the chattering classes of the Internet were still inhabiting email lists and usenet. Having been raised and educated in Berkeley, CA, I also have had a steady exposure to activism over my life.
What Obama said is perhaps elitist, but makes perfect sense at a commencement exercise for educated young people. People have limited attention and intellectual capacity; deep learning, thought, and contemplation cannot be achieved when embedded in the constant chatter of the gossip circuit. To live up to your potential, you must find the time to develop your mind and do something with information you have received. The distraction of these devices is that they are often abused for instant gratification, for what is essentially passive entertainment where you just press the "feels good" button over and over.
Here is the elitist part. If an entire generation get stuck in the addictive phase of this technology, we could lose a generation of thought leaders. Perhaps we need to rescue those leaders, if they are not self-rescuing already. It is less clear whether it matters for the rest of the population, who were already enslaved to other forms of media and spent much of their lives in passive mode when it was just neighborhood or factory gossip, then when it was newsprint, then when it was radio, and then when it was TV... Obama is calling out a few bright sparks to emancipate themselves and develop their potential.
What is alarming is that so many people are willfully submitting themselves to a new, handheld form of the same dystopia depicted in the classic film Metropolis. But they've convinced themselves it's a revolution rather than a subjugation. They may spend their lives pushing buttons and dragging icons instead of pulling levers, but with the same frantic pace which strips away their humanity.
You can have my XBox when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
TL, DR;
Can this idiot keep from making comments on everything? Shit you say to yourself in the mirror while shaving in the am IS not news. Stick to "president" stuff please, all this fluff makes you look, yes, worse than Bush.
"A source close to the selection process said a central element in Obama's choice was Kagan's reputation for bringing together people of competing views and earning their respect. "
Sad that this kind of crap is an issue. How about finding someone that will honor and defend the constitution
you can have too many toys...
iPud denounces iPAD, iPhone, and IPOD Touch
Film at eleven
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
and then maybe the Obama's plan is to hire tens or hundreds of thousands of people just to flood the Internet with their presence and to DDOS somehow various channels where the information just maybe is capable of sipping through, who knows who is the moderator today.
You can't handle the truth.
Firstly, I don't know why people are so offended because he used the iPad as an example of a device used for entertainment.
Secondly, I don't know why we all pretend to be so high and mighty all the time. I will be honest, if I ever take my computer to class, it's because it is a boring class, and I need entertainment to stay awake. I observe over half of the classroom doing the EXACT same thing.
Obama is right, there are a lot of distractions in this technological age. He was almost congratulating them for being focused.
Of course, there's a big difference between "flowery" and "inarticulate".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...even an alcoholic knows excessive drinking is bad for you.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
the founding fathers were paragons of the highest virtues of western LIBERAL thought, perhaps the ultimate gifts of the enlightenment in europe, which was a liberal radical reaction to the traditional right wing cesspools of monarchical despotism and religious fundamentalism
and now, today, much as people who call themselves christians spread intolerance in the name of a man who was a prophet of tolerance, we have people like you, who treat the constitution as if it were a religious fundamentalist document. and such brittle fragile minds are the "right"
pfffffffffft
sir: the constitution and the declaration of independence were and are perhaps the most radically liberal, completely nonreligious and completely nonaristocratic statements of faith in the wisdom of the common man, in a thousand years (well, there's the magna carta) and perhaps a thousand more
what the founding fathers wrote has echoed around the world and found admiration and imitation in dozens of other governments worldwide. their notions have continued to evolve, and have helped clarify the dignity of man and elevate him out of slavery/ slaveholding status, in this country and others, and to introduce universal suffrage, the vote for women, equality for women. all liberal notions, all continuing to evolve
nothing at all like this low iq right wing notion that the constitution is like the bible or quran, dusty words to be obeyed, not thought about. that only a few closed minds have some sort of monopoly on its interpretation, and, the best part: interpretted according to reasons just as random and weak as the accusations right wingers hurl at "activist" judges. fools: there is no greater activist judge than antonin scalia... the "originalist"?! ha! now that's a good joke
the constitution is a living document, a living pact with the highest principles of man: equality and dignity for all in the eyes of their government. that you take this inexorably LIBERAL document and somehow posit it as a right-leaning document is cynical, craven, and completely intellectually dishonest. at best, you're simply confused, son: in the name of being right-winged, you've drank the kool aid and walk around holding aloft a document of pure liberalism as if it were some sort of sacred totem object
someday you should actually read the constitution and the declaration of independence and stop treating it like a religious object of veneration like the shroud of turin. in the actual words on those actual pages, in the actual thoughts of our much esteemed founding fathers: you find western liberalism, fool
hilarious
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Clearly Obama wants a disconnected, uninformed, ignorant populace. All the better to force through socialism...
I thought he was Mr."I gotta have my Black Berry".
Seriously this guy can't even avoid hypocracy and double talk on the most basic subjects. You just can't take anything he says seriously.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
You're surprised by this now? You haven't noticed all the Ron Paulogists and linux libertarians that swarm on every political story? (and some science now too, see climate change)
GO BACK TO RUSSIA, COMMUNIST!
Then he should make a flowery commencement speech, not a campaign stump speech. Or do you disagree?
Please quote which parts of this commencement speech you think sounded like a campaign stump speech.
1) And politics isn't just as distracting, if not way more?
2) Fixed that for ya:
"He's basically saying we are getting too much information too quickly, and from 'unreliable sources.' This is going to be the government's excuse to start exerting excessive control over people, starting with technology"
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
Hey Circle:
who is Rifqa Bary?
Without a political blog, you would have had no idea, because the 'mainstream' media you trust so much would not have covered her story.
The blogs do what the press used to do: hold people's feet to the fire. You don't like it, because it requires you to do something with your mind besides brag about how much smarter you say you are while staying uninformed (and putting on airs of impartiality). Perhaps, Mister IQ, you need a refresher course in capitalization and grammar - as your post would suggest.
BTW, for those of you who don't know and are interested, Rifqa Bary is a Muslim girl, around 17 at the time of the story, who says that her father was physically and otherwise abusive to her and made death threats, and she left her own home. She was sheltered in Florida, I believe, by a church group, and the parents hired a lawyer who made up a set of arrangements, then they fired that lawyer after she was ordered to return to Ohio by a judge. One blogger in particular, Pam Gellar, traveled to the court proceedings at her own expense, and documented both the actual court proceeding and the misleading reporting on the subject. I don't say that every claim of abuse by a minor is valid, but given the many documented examples of mistreatment of women in Islamic culture, shouldn't a minor be given the benefit of the doubt, especially by the so called mainstream press? Forget about your own politics for a minute - if you knew of a child whom you strongly suspected was being abused, and you found her claims credible and gave her safe haven with your family, would you want to be vilified in press reports for doing such a thing? Why is it now acceptable for a media corporation large or small to take a vested interest in publicly attacking someone, before the case is even heard in court, based on a political agenda of bashing church people and shielding Islamic culture from criticism? And I'm an agnostic by the way.
What happens if the blogs go away, and the elitist media machine you agree with ever smears you? Who will get the truth out?
that's all I have, I use it to peruse slashdot, groklaww and a few other sites while reading.I don't care of other people have nothing or if they have ten iphones.
As for Mr, "I can't live without my blackberry", he can just shove it up his ass.
'
This just in: Global Thermonuclear War was narrowly avoided today, after President Obama missed a call on the red phone because he was too busy reading slashdot RSS feeds on his iPhone.
You mean the truth is finally emerging past all the crap propaganda? It just seems you are one of the few left who don't see the lies, and copious amounts of lies too.
Will all the well meaning new programs and ideas, I'd say more bits are spilled by this president than any other. Yes, we can all read about the impending default of the U.S. faster, he has a point there.
Tell you what, you balance the budget, and I'll stop checking up on you 2x/day, Mr. Obama .
i have no doubt the anecdote you just wrote above is true
but i can find just as many anecdotes on the web that serve radical leftist agendas too. would you like an anecdote from a radical lefty blog that proves a belief of yours wrong? oh, its a lie then, right?
which is the whole problem: if its not from a prominent news organization with a reputation to uphold, its just a random unsubstantiated story. after all, no one ever lies on the internet... right?
but you won't accept that as an argument against blatant political blogs with an obvious agenda, because you don't actually care about the truth, you care about pushing your agenda
which again would be fine, everyone has an agenda. but what some people will do in service of an agenda is intellectually dishonest. for example, you have no problem calling any unsubstantiated bullshit that supports your beliefs as the "truth" and anything in the mainstream media that might challenge your beliefs as "elitist"
this kind of reactionary adherence to propaganda that only adheres to your beliefs is the sign of dangerously closed mind. it says volumes about your own intellectual failures, it says nothing about reality, and it says nothing about mainstream media except that you don't like mainstream media because it challenges your opinions. you can't deal with the fact that something reported as the truth from the mainstream media might actually be right, and therefore your opinion is wrong, and therefore you have to reject the entirety of mainstream media as "elitist"
did you ever notice how the far right calls the meanstream media left wing and the far left calls mainstream media right wing? maybe that says more about the far right and the far left than the mainstream media itself? ;-)
but you're probably not even reading me anymore. i'm challenging your opinion. this is very tricky business with you. you've probably just labelled me an elitist socialist muslim communist, or whatever scary word that basically means the same thing that "poopie head" or "boogie man" means to a second grader, and you've moved on
because you have the monopoly on the "truth". you don't need me. you know, someone tha tmigth actually challenge your opinion and make you think. you trust random assholes on the internet with "amazing" stories in the service of a transparent agenda, rather than mainstream media. awesome!
pfffffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In other words... Obama is saying get your head out of VR Land and the internet tubs and get yourself a good paying RL job.
Wouldn't this mean he wants >>LESS people to be dependent on the gov?
Here's what concerns me: "...And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work..."
Here's a man born 1961 - he's 49 years old.
This is not a senior citizen. He'd have been a senior in high school when home computers just started to appear. He'd have been going to college throughout the heydey of video game arcades, and gone to college and worked on his advanced law school stuff with discussions of the NES amongst his peers.
Yet he could exist through all of this - so focused on his progress, so OCD about whatever he was doing - without noticing videogames?
Moreover, he could be a young adult through this whole period, and reach the highest political office in the land (so clearly no dummy, whether you agree with him or not), and not only be ignorant of really quite common technology completely, but be able to toss out the chuckle-line of 'none of which I know how to work'?
Seriously?
Think about that. I know this is a tech-obsessed audience. But I'm 43, and while I occasionally put on the rose-colored specs of 'ah, the simple life before computers', I don't SERIOUSLY imagine that I could be nearly as productive, entertained, and informed as I am today without these devices.
Honestly, this is the sort of statement that comes out of some ancient Senator that's been holding his seat since Reconstruction.
No kidding that his viewpoint is dismissive; I'm only shocked that so many people are talking here about what he said, and not recognizing how insulated and detached a 49-year-old American man would have to be to make such an absurd assertion.
-Styopa
Obama's advice is good advice to anyone who really cares about the world. To anyone that REALLY cares about the world, as so many of the good folk on here seem to say they do, two notions are likely important – civic engagement and democratic participation. Obama’s editorial speaks to the fact that these devices do nothing to facilitate these values (nor any other values of this kind it seems to me). Ipads and Xboxs are value neutral. What is not neutral, however, is the content on them. If the content on these devices is largely comprised of fingertip entertainment and viral social novelties, like facebook, then the devices, by extension, will inevitably distract from the theory and practice of values like civic engagement and democratic participation – the values we like to think we care about. Moreover, when media of this kind is made more accessible it makes it harder to convince the increasingly apathetic people that investment in initial civic education should be valued to begin with. In short, devices like the Ipad produce a compounding circle of eroding social goods, and there is a perfect historical example of this at work. In the early days of TV it was heralded as a revolutionary educational device and “a tool of democracy”. Yet what is the net result of TV 50 years later? The NET result seems be couch potatoes, social disenfranchisement and political apathy. It wasn’t TV itself that did this, but the content on it. To be fair, the stuff on TV is not all bad and the people that value the actually educational and democratically participatory content are often very vocal and active. But it does not change the fact that TV has made the majority of us care less about the kind of values that Obama’s editorial was concerned with. TV has, on the whole, made people lazy and distracted. It matters not the nature of the media device, save for degrees of accessibility. But if the device makes content more accessible that ultimately distracts us from the theory and practice of our highest civic duties and social concerns, then we might say the device is evil – or at least contrary to the good. It’s nice to have toys, and I say let our toys be as frivolous and novel as ever. But when frivolous play and flippant novelty take the place of substantive context rich information, civic engagement, and participation in our democracy, than anyone with a social conscience has reason to be weary of Ipads and xboxs and the distractions they bring.
I mean, gaming is meant to be a distraction. It's meant to pull us away from our daily grind. But I have to say that we definitely got a president who's a lot better than other candidates in terms of how he views gaming. When people get poor grades in school and people are there to play the blame game (no pun intended), Obama says it's the fault of the parents. FINALLY! Clinton was against violence in video games. Who would've known what would have happened had SHE gotten into office...
Fucking iPads, how do they work???
Did you cut and paste those cherry-picked partial quotes directly from Faux News or what?
What Obama said in reaction to the Gates incident was extremely polished and nuanced, and you've completely misrepresented it. I read the entire transcript, did you?
Here, let me give you a translation suited to your apparent intellectual level: Scary Black President Man say "black people scared of po-po, but maybe we be happy some day". Do I need to dumb this down more? You could try the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report, they both cater to the mentally deficient.
Interesting conversation, with the usual outbursts from haters, apologists, [insert direction here]-wing wackos, and conspiracy-fetishists, most of whom don't seem to have given real thought to anything other than "how do these statements compare to my pre-conceived beliefs".
Given a little context and consideration, I think the president made a few valid points, albeit perhaps awkwardly. First of all, anyone here should know that the internet is full of bad information. (Exhibit A: this discussion.) I think most of us realize that limiting one's input to sources that match our particular prejudices is a road to ignorance. Furthermore, in the years I've been alive and aware, I have from time to time had first hand knowledge of some matter that was reported in the press. In every single case, the article or feature got critical details wrong, not to mention approaching the story from a slanted viewpoint, intentionally or not. Let me repeat that: Every single case.
Apple and Microsoft, of course, might cringe a bit at having their products linked with excessive distraction and information distortion, but that's a marketing and profit concern, not a factual disagreement. They want to sell these devices, hopefully to people who will use them responsibly, but in great numbers regardless.
I won't trouble myself to refute the silly claims people make for any politician's intent. President Obama, and his predecessor, and the one before that, and presidents back as far as I can remember draw forth every possible opinion on every word or facial tic they reveal. Somewhere people got the erroneous notion that the president of the U.S.A. can wave a magic wishing wand and force his personal wish list into reality. Empirical evidence suggests that more often than not, presidents don't get what they wanted. And rightly so.
I did find the quoted passage in the slashdot story summary to be terrifically slanted, as it posited "what the president really meant" rather than what the man really said. But that's one person's opinion, to which he is fully entitled.
So, with that all said, I will now rise up on my soapbox, and take it upon myself to correct the president, and provide greater clarity to this audience.
If you believe everything you read, you are dumb. If you spend all your time reading crappy reporting or slanted opinions, you will become dumber. If you spend more time actually thinking than the time you spend shooting pixel zombies and tweeting your cat's intestinal health events, you will be more productive, and better able to contribute positively to the society in which you live.
On the other hand, sometimes I think people are happier being stupid and misinformed, because, let's face it, it's easier.
WALSTIB!
Xbox and PlaySataion are information sources? When did that happen?
Like many others, don't care to take any advice about information from a person who has demonstrated a closed mind. Done...
But everyone who watch the comedy NEWS show also watch the news? Have they watched that news segment?
Comedy sticks longer then a news report. How is Reagon, Thatcher etc remembered? Their news images or their spitting image dolls?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Obama is showing his ignorance, too bad, he has some major players in his cabinet that are more aware of technology then this, he must not be listening to them....or too distracted by other things then to figure out the benefits of such statistical networking tools such as facebook, myspace and twitter.
Normally when despots want to take over a country, they go after the opposition media first. They're finding it a bit harder in a country like the U.S. than they imagined.
Oh, look! I can see November from my front porch!
srsly, Obama just told the world that he's totally over his head in his job.
Currently he's blaiming it on tech, next he'll start hitting his wife.
Then the kids.
If he was Clinton, i'd say just smoke some pot and relax, but he's not. (oh ya, and inhale this time. lol)
lol
really though, i find new gadgets a bit confusing also, but not confusing enough that I think i'm going to get good information about life on the xbox.
It's a video game console dude.
i mean, wtf?
Your old, new stuff is scary, get with it. And have your kids show you have to use them, they probably figured it out within 1 minute of picking up whatever it is.
Be seeing you...
No one is using Clinton or Carter as an excuse for failure though.
Bush is gone. Bringing Bush up all the time to apologize for Obama's failures becomes a weaker and weaker argument every day. And it was really weak to start with.
1. "With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation," Obama said.
This is referring to the "information", which I understand to be the INFORMATION that one receives from browsing the web, get news feeds (from any source out there), watching videos (again, from any source), etc.
2. He bemoaned the fact that "some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction," in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.
I understand this to mean anything that did not come from mass media (i.e.: TV), is a "crazy claim".
3. "All of this is not only putting new pressures on you, it is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy."
I think that kind of pressure is good. The pressure for real information to get out there, information that is true or partially true, but ignored by the mass media. In fact this is putting pressure where it should be, on our politicians to start behaving...........
Real men don't need signitures!!!
He has people to read his e-mail... seriously.
+++OK ATH
Our harsh lives, fraught, as they are, with danger, trials and tribulations?
you can't imagine that without government regulation in the areas you cite that people would be more free?
can you imagine that there are other limits on your freedom than what the government does?
perhaps corporations? are their activities a limit on your freedom? do they need to be regulated?
how about poor health? is that a limit on your freedom? do you nnot deserve freedom from crippling or impossible costs to maintain it?
how about roads, schools, simple law enforcement? or is the only threat to your freedom from the house senate or white house? what about the highway robberyman? is he a limit on your freedom?
you have an extremely limited grasp of reality if you believe that freedom is only limited by the government. mostly, your freedom is limited by other people. not least of which the whims of an aristocracy that your supposed "freedom fighting" empowers, at the expense of the common man
but you don't see that do you?
your words serve the moneyed few, they do not serve the common man. that really is the truth. try to understand someday how a classist social structure works and limits the common man. then maybe you will truly understand what freedom is
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Dinegrating technology and it's uses is a thinly veiled attempt to overlay the "public service" meme onto the young people he was addressing.
To say one particular mode of living is "correct" for everyone is wrongheaded. Far better for these graduates to explore their own way of living - not because it is any better or worse than any other, but because it is their own. From such insight true progress is made.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Thanks everyone for having a great discussion on this, its nice not having to read thru a flame war ;)
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