A tweet from Mike Krempasky a short while ago asks:

Seriously. How can reasonable adults STILL toss “Nazi!” insults around in casual discourse as if it doesn’t diminish real horror?

It got me thinking about an e-mail I received from Micah Sifry once. In a post I wrote for TechPresident, I had included a reference to the Democrat Party. He wrote asking why we Republicans insist on dropping the “ic” from the end of the word. He suggested it was juvenile.

I agree. I think it’s totally juvenile, but it’s something Republican operatives are taught early in their political career and it sticks with you.

Between Mike’s tweet and Micah’s old e-mail, I came to a conclusion. We need to agree to a truce. Thus, I propose the following.

We, the Republican Party pledge to never again drop the “ic” from Democratic when referencing your party. In exchange, you, the Democratic Party, will acknowledge the real and legitimate offense inherit in comparing political rivals to a regime that tortured, starved, and killed 6 million people.

Political differences are legitimate and reflect divergent viewpoints on world events. Discussion of issues and participants in political debate should not be punctuated with juvenile remarks or insults that diminish the horror inflicted on millions by the Nazis.

Refering to Republicans as fascists and Democrats as dirty hippies is still perfectly acceptable.

I think it’s a fair compromise and takes a small bit of childishness out of politics. Do we have an accord?

P.S. Follow me on Twitter (and let me know to follow you)

I’m not a future theorist, but I like to play one on the Internet. I was recently asked to participate in a survey of technology professionals that explored future theories based on current technology. The form indicated the survey was confidential, so I will not divulge the entity conducting it or the exact questions. What appears below is paraphrased based on the actual survey. I thought it would be fun to explore some of the topics because I think it will make for an interesting post to preserve – sort of a prognostication on things to come.

Question 1: The mobile phone will be the primary internet connection. Telephony will be offered under a set of universal standards and movement around the country and around the world will not be an issue. Those without Internet access now will comprise a significant portion of Internet users in the future.

My prediction: Since the 1996 telecommunications act, interconnection rights between telecom carriers in the US have been a significantly contentious issue. I see little to make me believe domestic carriers, let alone international carriers, will solve that problem in another 12 years (the forward projection in the survey). While I agree that more people will have access exclusively via their phone, I don’t think the phone of the future will look anything like the phones of today. Something like the LimePC with a full Linux OS on a small handheld device will be merged with a traditional phone and connected via Bluetooth to an earpiece for communications. The idea of having to hold a phone up to your head will be completely replaced by hands free technologies.

Question 2: Copyright-protection technology will increase dramatically by 2020 due to efforts by content owners, elected officials and network providers. Copyrighted material royalties will be instantly collected and enforced through internet service providers working with authorities. Free speech/Fair Use claims will rarely be successful.

My prediction: While the lock on content is likely to be true, the mechanisms of enforcement are not. ISPs would fight tooth and nail any requirement that they be held responsible for policing their networks. Even working with the MPAA, RIAA, and others on protecting content, the network providers will not be able to manage the process of guaranteeing collection of copyright royalties and enforcement of rights – especially given the huge growth in entertainment media. Suggestions to date that ISPs be asked or required to do so have met with fierce opposition. There is also a strong likelihood that copyright and patent laws will be reformed. Depending on the makeup of the Congress that tackles that, it could become more favorable to corporations or less.

Question 3: Our notions of privacy are altered and people share much more personal information online. People are freely trade anonymity for benefits gained through data mining. People have become more responsible for their own actions, but facing the consequences of past indiscretions no longer does as much damage to a person’s reputation. Investigative reports on reputation corrections are a trend in media.

My prediction: While I think there is a growing trend toward openness and transparency reflected in people sharing information on social networking sites, I think it is unlikely to be as open as described. Most Facebook profiles today, for instance, are viewable only to friends, not to the public. I don’t think that’s likely to change. What people share will not change dramatically, but the depth of that sharing will still be dependent on trust. I also think the idea of media investigation of such things is a bit of an overreach. The media has enough fun with the celeb debacle of the day, they won’t focus on clearing the debacles of the past. Unless our culture changes it’s voyeuristic tendencies, we’ll always look for celebs to fall and revel in their decline.

Question 4: Social tolerance has advanced due to the internet exposing people to other views and cultures. As a result, violent crime is down, as is sectarian conflict, bigotry and hate crime.

My prediction: Highly unlikely. The very idea of “tolerance” is a myth. Tolerance is simply the oppression of subversive paradigms by believers in the dominant paradigm. What most define as tolerance is simply acceptance of their behavior, adherence to their concpet of others “bad behavior”, and condemnation of it. At no point does either side bother to explore why they feel the need to judge others. They simply score others based on how close to their own norms the other comes.

As an example, you can dislike homosexuality without committing crimes against homosexuals. The current notion of ‘tolerance’ precludes you from disliking it or at least certianly precludes you from gving voice to that feeling. If you do, you are labeled a homophobe. You must accept it simply because someone else says you must. That’s not tolerance.

True tolerance would be, “I don’t like you being homosexual, but accept that you are. You don’t like my aversion to your sexual preference, but accept that I am uncomfortable with it.” That does not exist in the current definition of “tolerance.” Unless and until we move toward a political paradigm built on “I do what I want and you do what you want and that’s it” we’ll never see an increase in tolerance and a decrease in other ill effects.

Even a cursory look at the question reveals the logical fallacy. “Tolerance advances due to the understanding of others culture.” That would imply that in addition to religious believers becoming familiar with and accepting homosexuality, homosexuals would all need to understand and respect the religious traditions that shape others. They would have to understand that in the eyes of the devoutly religious, they are evil and they would have to accept that. That is not likley to be accepted by proponents of “tolerance.”

The definition of tolerance above implies a gradual shift of everyone toward a commonly held belief system. That is exceptionally unlikely.

Question 5: People interact more in virtual space. Organizations and people will have a presence in the “metaverse” and/or the “geoweb.” Most internet users will work and play in virtual worlds. “Real life” is a blend of offline and online living.

My prediction: The promise of virtual reality has been the stuff of science fiction almost since the advent of computing technology. The principal reason it has not become more prevalent is the competing models and universes employed and the graphic limitations. As computing power increases and graphics and input devices improve, use of these worlds for practical applications will evolve.

As an example, something like Second Life can be used to conduct virtual press conferences, but the avatars and limitations on direct interaction leave them feeling lifeless. Imagine the same press conference if your PC included a webcam that could detect your facial gestures and movements. That press conference would become a completely different experience. If the person hosting the conference appeared uncomfortable or their motions belied their words, it would be closer to “real life.”

As the technology improves and the avatars look, react, and behave like the real person, you could create virtual conference rooms where we could log in and meet with people around the world without ever leaving our desk. We could bring all our senses to the table because the avatar would covey the same emotions as a face-to-face meeting.

One other limiting factor is the number of virtual worlds. If they were standards based and I could move seamlessly from a Second Life press conference to an EverQuest adventure, to a virtual representation of a tropical beach to a virtual conference with colleagues, that becomes more inviting than having to contstantly log in and out of different applications.

While the use of such technologies is likely, I would quibble with the timeframe. It may not be in the next 12 years, but certainly it is coming.

Question 6: Talk and touch are common technology interfaces. People talk to their computing devices in public and full-size virtual keyboards can be projected on any flat surface for “private” communications with your devices. “Air-typing” on keyboards visible only to you is common.

My prediction: This is highly plausible. Just a few years ago people who used wireless headsets with their cell phones were looked at as obsessive compulsive types by those “tethered” to the handset. That is changing with Bluetooth technologies that let you keep both hands free while conducting a call on a phone in another room. The use of virtual keyboards, personal viewing devices (like the MyVu), and other methods of interaction with the computing platform are certainly realistic.

Question 7: Next-generation research will improve the current internet, not replace it. The original internet hasn’t been replaced by a completely new system. Search, security and reliability on the internet are better, but crimes and mischief are still common.

My prediction: In 12 years it is unlikely that a wholesale shift in the underlying technology of the Net will take place. The basics will remain with dramatic improvements in speed and capabilities. No system will ever be crime proof, so crime and mischief will never go away.

Question 8: Professional and personal time is not separate and distinct. Knowledge workers in developed nations have eliminated boundaries between work and personal time. People work when called upon to do so and take care of personal activities when convenient.

My prediction: While personal hours are definitely blending with work hours, it is unlikely that corporations will willingly relinquish the idea that they are paying for your time and expect you to spend specific hours doing what they ask, where they ask, in a way they ask. That’s certainly not willing to change in 12 years. If business attitudes shifted that fast and that dramatically, the idea of the neck tie would have gone the way of the DoDo years ago. It is likely that people will spend more of their ‘personal’ time working, it is unlikely that they will spend more ‘work’ time on personal issues. It just doesn’t fit into the corporate ideology of the US.

So that’s the end of the survey. I’d be curious to hear your opinions. Feel free to leave a comment with your answers to some or all of these.

Someone sent me a link to the YouTube video below and suggested I take a look at about the 35-36 minute mark. I admit, my curiosity got the better of me and I tried to skip ahead, but the gremlins at YouTube would not allow it. I ended up watching the whole thing. I was surprised to hear my name mentioned at about the suggested frame. This is apparently part of the Authors@Google series in which book authors chat with Google employees. Garrett Graff was discussing online politics.

The question in which I was mentioned had to do with this Washington Post article in which I said most online campaigns really aren’t moving the ball forward. The question was whether Garrett agreed with my assertion. I’ll let you watch for yourself the discussion and his answer. It’s good, so I recommend you do.

Let me, however, elaborate on the original question I was asked and the reply. I did not mean to imply that campaigns weren’t doing interesting things. Mindy Finn with Romney’s campaign did some really good work on the “create your own ad” effort. Obama’s people have done an amazing job of fundraising online. There are some novel online efforts being undertaken.

What I meant, more specifically, was there does not appear to be any effort to convert that excitement and energy into actual votes. Most of the GOTV work being done is still being done offline. Take for instance this note I got from Hillary’s people.

I’m writing to you because Hillary needs you now more than ever. As I write this email, Team Hillary volunteers here at headquarters are on the phones talking to voters. Can you pitch in for Hillary and join us at the phone bank for at least two get-out-the-vote shifts between now and March 4th? Reply to this email to let me know when you can do your part.

Every night this week a senior advisor to Hillary, including Harold Ickes, Terry McAuliffe, Guy Cecil and campaign manager Maggie Williams, will join our volunteers for strategy discussion of the path to victory. Which night will you volunteer this week?

We need help every day. Our shifts are:

10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
2 p.m. – 6 p.m.
6 p.m. – 10 p.m.

Reply to this email to let me know when you can pitch in for Hillary.

We also have a critical need for volunteers this weekend. Can you pitch in this Saturday or Sunday? Please reply to me and let me know when you can help out!

Obama, Thompson, and Romney all gave me tools that allowed me to make such calls any time it was convenient for me. The technology really isn’t very difficult to create or manage. You allow your user to log in, get a script and numbers, make calls and complete a survey form, and report back the same data they would report back if they were sitting in your HQ.

The Hillary model, which looks like the same model Bill used in 1992, assume I have four uninterrupted hours to spend in your office. It also assumes I want to drive there, find parking, arrange for a sitter, etc. etc. It doesn’t allow for me to participate on my terms on my schedule.

This was something we understood in 2004 and was the reason we pioneered online call tools with the Bush campaign. We made a half-million contacts using our online tools. That was over and above the millions made in the traditional way.

Had Clinton’s campaign spent some time building such a tool instead of figuring out how many Drudge clones they could make (ahem, ahem) they could have empowered their supporters to get involved when and how it was convenient for them.

That was the point that I was trying to make in the Post piece. It’s not that campaigns aren’t doing anything jazzy with technology, it’s the fact that very little of it is meant to empower voters. Romney’s create your own ad effort was a great example. Give people stock footage, audio, video, images, etc, and let them be part of your creative team. Give them walk lists, call sheets, and other tools to mobilize voters and let them do it.

Where the campaigns this year have fallen short is they gave us tools without showing me the best way to use it. If I hand you a hammer, nails and a saw, you could eventually figure out that you could cut down a tree and make something. If I gave you the same tools with a guide to woodworking from raw materials, you’d be much better off.

My vision of campaign 2008 in December of 2004 was dramatically different from what has been. While it still may come to fruition, I’m not seeing much evidence that it will. It should, by nature, have been Obama, Paul or Thompson who pulled this off. I’ll explain what I had hoped to see.

Imagine a completely different campaign. Imagine a campaign that invested heavily in both the mobilization tactics and the microtargeting acumen of the Bush campaign, with the grassroots groundswell of the Dean campaign. Imagine taking a national database of registered voters and creating a sense of ownership among your online activists to reach low-propensity or non-voters. Here’s how it would work.

A campaign invests in microtargeting to determine what their typical supporter looks like as a function of consumer behavior, issue preferences, etc. The campaign buys consumer data for every citizen of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc that matches their model. Not just voters, mind you, but every single citizen that fits the mold.

Online activists are given tools like online phone banks, walk tools and handouts to go door-to-door reaching out to other voters who support their guy. More importantly, though, they match the consumer data for unregistered voters against their voter data to determine who is NOT registered to vote. An intensive campaign is run among online activists to reach them.

When activists are engaged, but nobody else is (say January through October of 2007) the campaign has their people working to register those people. The activists are brought in at the ground level to begin building what will be a long-term relationship with these folks. Geotargeting will allow the activist to find people located very near them, and reach out to them not just as a campaign volunteer, but as a neighbor – as someone who shops at the same grocery store, whose kids go to the same school.

The campaign would ask those volunteers to “adopt” those non-voters and urge them to a) drop off registration forms, b) follow up to make sure they get registered – which the campaign would verify by tracking voter registration additions against it’s internal database of targeted non-voters, c) deliver news and information about the campaign, and d) get them to vote in the primaries/caucuses/general.

We had, with the Bush campaign, developed tools along two separate lines. We called them all “Virtual Precinct”, but they were comprised of either your friends and family (to whom you could e-mail info) or targeted voters living near you (to whom you could walk, call, etc). This year, I had expected to see the two merge as campaigns used microtargeting, geotargeting, and online activism in synchronicity.

You have given your activists incredibly powerful tools to build the campaign. By explaining the goal, building a community, empowering them to be involved, and fostering a sense of ownership in the outcome, you have given them the instruction manual and a way to judge their success.

In addition, you could have volunteers in states with late primaries reaching out to those with early primaries – not in the way Howard Dean attempted with outsiders identified by their neon hats tromping through town, but via phone, e-mail and mail. Personal messages of support for a candidate delivered with passion by a voter in the comfort of their surroundings, are more effective that any stale script repeated over and over by an underfed, underappreciated volunteer jammed into a tight space with 85 other people on phones two feet away.

Think of it as the difference between telecommuting and working in a sweatshop.

That’s what I had expected to see and that’s where I think campaigns are still missing what’s possible. Campaigns in 2008 are, for the most part, still stuck in the mold of the 1980s and 1990s.

We can buy groceries from home and never have to go to the store. We can buy any product we want from Amazon, Buy.com or others and have it the next day without ever leaving the couch. We can play video games with friends we have never met a half a world away. We can engage in whatever pursuits we choose with others who share our hobbies regardless of where we all reside.

But despite all of that, campaigns stil force us to go to their office, to use their phone, to drink their old, cold coffee and eat their leftover doughnuts. Campaigns are still about me doing what they want, when they want me to do it. They miss the simple fact that there is no better spokesperson for the campaign than a single dedicated supporter talking to their friends, neighbors, and family in comfortable surroundings.

Update: Apparently the Clinton campaign actually does have an online phone bank tool. That actually makes the plea for me to appear in person even more confusing. I have not, at any time, received an e-mail asking me to make calls using that tool. I, as a would-be volunteer, was sitting here untapped. I could have made countless calls into states that voted earlier, and states that vote after Virginia. The campaign, however, never mobilized me to use the tool they built. Instead, they waited until after my primary, and until it was almost too late. to ask me to make calls at all.

Any time you have to choose between two sides in an ever-escalating public relations war, you run the risk of permanently damaging a relationship that may have been built up over years. That’s the unfortunate situation I find myself in lately. I’m caught in the middle of a very ugly, and very personal fight between two people and find I’m being forced to choose a team.

As a result, I feel I must be very upfront and very vocal now that I have made my decision…. You can count me solidly in the Sarah Silverman camp. I think that Sarah is way out of Jimmy Kimmel’s league, and that he never had any business dating her. Howver, I also think she makes better videos.

You can compare this to Jimmy’s cheaper knock off.

It’s sad, really, that Jimmy a) doesn’t have the originality and has to copy my girl, but b) he also got the sloppy seconds and had to settle for the horse-faced Affleck.

Ben is, I might add, still desperately looking to make a movie that doesn’t suck. I would like to point out for his possible benefit this one little observation. If not every movie sucks, but every movie Ben Affleck is in DOES suck, there may be a common denominator worth exploring. I’m just saying.

So now that I have that off my chest, I feel better. It’s kind of a sad day for me. When Kimmel was on The Man Show, I thought he was funny. Unfortunately, it now appears that his success, much like Affleck’s, was based on the coat-tails of his partner in crime. Adam Corolla was, in retrospect, carrying the hapless Kimmel.

I made a point earlier this week about the GOP Valentine card missing the mark on trying to reach the GOP base. In watching them closely over the last few days, I am starting to see a larger theme emerging, and it makes me very nervous about our chances in November if Barack is the candidate.

Today the RNC released the Barack Obama Spend-o-meter. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because in 2004, the RNC released the John Kerry Spend-o-meter, and in 2000, the RNC released the Al Gore Spend-o-meter. I can’t find a reference to 1996, but I am fairly certain the RNC rolled it out then, too. That was the when the Internet was in its toddler stage, so perhaps it was only shown to the press.

This is indicative of the larger problem the GOP has with Obama. This is a young, dynamic, charismatic guy who hits a chord with people and really connects. In response, the GOP has picked a candidate beacuse “it was his turn”. We’ll dust off the every-four-year playbook and count on it to bring us to victory one more time.

The trouble is, Hillary has been working from our playbook. Everything she has thrown at Obama is right from “Republican Campaigns for Dummies” – he’s not experienced, he’s unelectable, he’ll take all your money, he’s black (I’m being facetious, but they did try it). Yet no matter how many of our plays she calls, she can’t seal the deal.

Do we honestly think that we’re so much better at running these plays that we’ll have a dramatically different outcome? Newt Gingrich doesn’t seem to think so. On Fox News last night he pointed out the strength of Obama’s appeal and commented that the GOP may be in trouble if it tries to run the same old campaign.

I think he’s right. If the RNC’s grand plan to beat Obama is to dust off the greatest hits of the last 40 years of campaigning, they’re going to be in trouble. This guy is running a different kind of campaign, and the old models aren’t going to win it.

That said, if Hillary’s the candidate, I think that model works fine. You’ll have two people who are re-running the same campaign we saw in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. It’ll be just like old times. For that reason, I hope I’m wrong and Hillary gets the nod. We know our tactics work on that battlefield.

Obama, however, is playing by a different set of rules. If he’s the guy, we need to step up our game.