Gore invented the internet.  Bush discovered myriad internets when most of us only knew one.  Would any other politician in Washington prove themselves to be so l33t?

Welcome to the John McCainternet.  Just yesterday, he was asked about his vice presidential search.

"You know, basically it's a Google," he said to laughter at a fund-raising luncheon when asked how the selection process was going. "What you can find out now on the Internet -- it's remarkable."

Sorry, Mac, they were laughing at you.  If anybody had ever said that phrase to me, I would be concerned they'd suffered irreparable damage to their cerebral cortex.  Way to try and be hip and savvy, but instead remind people of the fact that you're several times older than the internet.

Oh, maybe he was using thegoogle!

To be a grammar Nazi, the proper sentence structure would be:

• Noun: You know, basically it's a Google search.
• Verb: You know, basically it's just Googling.  (Note the use of a gerund, you septuagenarian relic)

It's comforting to know he's opposed to net neutrality even though he's clearly baffled by the concept of a basic search.

Fortunately, some lefties out there have drawn up plans for dropping a Google bomb on McCain.  Not that he'd ever see it.

One visualization of the internet

Mark your calendars for OneWebDay (Sept. 22nd), a holiday celebrating the internet and organize localized activism on its behalf.  The folks organizing the invited me to write a blog entry as part of a blogger parade leading up to the event.

The internets are still in their infancy, and they're going to undergo major changes over our lifetime.  As it changes, activists are hoping it will remain "free."  But nobody agrees on the definition of free.  The geek community believe keeping the net free requires government enforcement of the principles of net neutrality, which I tried and failed to 2log about previously.  Some libertarian types believe that keeping the internet unregulated and subject to the whim of free markets is the definition of free.  (For the record, I fall somewhere in the middle.)

The important takeaway from this is that the internet is a highly personalized experience.  Each person's definition of the internet is shaped by the specific way he or she uses it.  It can be used to read, write, or 'rithmetic.  It's become a powerful channel wherein it becomes all things to all people.  To me, a free internet is the one which most efficiently provides the most people with the experience they seek.

My use of the internet is probably different from 99% of the other internet users.  My experience with the internet most closely resembles that of a gearhead.  I like looking under the hood.  I like understanding how it works on the packet level.  I like tinkering.  I like finding the hiccups and building tools to fix them.  I like building things from scratch (spam filters, blog software, assorted web gizmos) when perfectly good solutions already exist.  I like creating a fully independent island within the ever-fluctuating sea of the hypertubes.

Running a small, independent web server as a hobbyist, my freedom on the net is probably the most threatened by upcoming changes to the internet.  Increasingly, the amount of work necessary to run a website is more than a single hobbyist can handle.  SEO, fighting spam, backend maintenance, data analytics, and performance optimization are just a handful of the challenges I wrestle with.  More crop up daily.  Increasing governmental regulation threatens to dump legal liability onto my plate.  If AT&T gets its way, I'll likely have to pay extra money to connect my machine to the information superhighway.  The hobbyist like me will eventually drown, and my experience with the internet may eventually become impossible.

Can this experience be preserved?  Maybe.  Can the open nature of the web allow me to share my experience of how I've taken advantage of the open nature of the web?  Yes.

I found it encouraging that the economy is not trashed everywhere.  Wikipedia has this map... red means the country has an economic slowdown, blue means economic acceleration:

If you happen to be living in Bhutan, Namibia, or Belarus, times is great!  The wealthiest 1% of these countries are even lighting cigars with one dollar bills.  I suspect some of these countries are benefiting from one-off events that have helped them.  While most of Southern Africa is doing poorly, I expect Namibia is seeing an uptick from the Brangelina baby effect.  Similarly, the favorable dollar to corpse exchange rate is doing wonders for Democratic Republic of Congo's dead body based economy.  Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the old saying is true... as goes Greenland, so goes the world.

After eight years of being pummeled with the Bush Doctrine, we've gotten used to ignoring the rest of the rest of the world in favor of USA, USA, USA.  Futura at cFAP has made a beautiful chart showing the job losses by state:

Really bad news for Michigan, which has dropped from 20 jobs to 17.  Of course, the Latin root of "Detroit, Michigan" is "Detritus, Mishegoss," so there was at least some forewarning built into the name.  Arizona's losing jobs, but most of those were probably McCain campaign staffers who either lost their job after Election Day or croaked.  As usual, Alaska has no idea WTF is going on.

The real bad news for the economy is that it looks to get worse.  Why?  Because Winston has passed along this online word puzzle which looks to halt the productivity of all white-collar workers for at least the next week.  CURSE YOU, ADDICTIVE ONLINE FLASH GAMES!

The Internet has made the crucial error of exposing me to textsfromlastnight.com, which is hilarious reading.  It provides a series of (mostly drunken) text messages without comment.  My favorite so far is:

(512): You surviving the open bar?
(1-512): Super asto ex polenta omaha botad

I decided to take a gander at the old iPhone to see if I had any text sequences that were up to snuff...

(917): At least the number of my age is lower than Radhames Liz's ERA
(347): Tears.  Tears.

(917): I gots to roll @ 7.  But I will see you lata on for the fightings?
(347): Will try for 6, 6:15...but no promises.  It's all on the clown!

(917): Whats yer six?
(347): Arriving soon!!!
(917): Boom. Jamz. Afterburners. Thrillx.  Lobsters.

(425): Crumb dumblies?
(917): Oh yezlies--12:15?

What you peoples got worth sharin'?

Is anybody else weirded out by these blogs where people tell you how you should go about getting a job?  I mean, if I could get paid to sit around and theorize about how people get jobs, I'd do it too--except that I don't think that really relates very closely to most peoples' experience of hustling their resume all over town.  Also, a lot of these people pitch themselves as having "been through it all" when it comes to jobs--does that sound to anyone else like code for "I've gotten fired a bunch of times?"  And if so, is this really someone you want to take advice from?

As near as I can tell, the advice that people like this have for job-seekers is to keep the advice-givers in business by purchasing their books or attending their seminars and workshops.  When their advice is not to pay them to tell you what they think, they often advocate harnessing the potential of Social Media, without ever offering any specifics as to what is actually involved in said harnessing--or, really, what is to be gained.  A friend recently pitched me the idea of a social networking site for artists, whereupon professional artists from a variety of fields can connect and brainstorm--the hook being that various Well-Known Actors and Directors have already signed on to the project.  Can anyone explain to me what the point of such a thing would be?  Say you are Well-Known Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is talented and successful.  Every week, three to five directors contact you and/or your agent in hopes that you will appear in their next project.  Why the balls would you eschew this situation in favor of relying on a website where--get this--strangers who are less successful than you from anywhere in the world can send you their crazy-pants idea for a screenplay?

Don't get me wrong--there are plenty of awesome sites out there which utilize Social Media in interesting and productive ways.  But this actor site, and countless others like it, strike me as the product of money-hungry entrepreneurs who are just looking for ways to convert this whole Social Media movement the kids are Twittering about into a sleek new project to sell to venture capitalists while the iron is hot--that doesn't make it a good or useful way for people looking for work to find it.

Also, you kids and your Internets get off my lawn!  Me and Stodgr are trying to play a nice angry game of croquet.

Today, 2log marks a tragic passing of a beloved figure

Goodbye, Compuserve

"Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy."
-- Albus Dumbledore