So yesterday we ranted about the old guard media. While we were hammering out that post, Barack Obama was, as you know, giving a speech in Berlin. There was a lot in there that we've heard before: skinny kid, funny name, goat herders, army cooks, coming to america, Kansas, Kenya, etc.
But near the end he slipped something new in there:
Now the world will watch and remember what we do here...Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe?
There's a blogger in his campaign who has his ear. And that's a very good sign. It also makes sense. Obama understands the power of networks. He started off as a community organizer. During the primary he leveraged the internet to reinvent campaign fianance (click on this very cool pdf for a graphical depiction of the reinvention). He knows that the power of this country lies in its citizens. As more and more of those citizens share their wisdom and talent with others through tools like blogging software, sources like CNN will be forced to change or die. Having a president with blogger advisors will not change the health care system or cure the economy or the environment. But we're convinced that having a strong blogging culture is a step in the right direction.
