Sunshocked

Al Gore. Affable, amiable, genial… he’s charmed America with his 1337 Powerpoint skills and put us on the right path to addressing the looming menace of climate change. Moral to a fault, no one has ever questioned his motives. Until now.

At 29, I’ve lived longer than Jimi Hedrix, James Dean, and Kurt Cobain. I had almost given up on celebrity, but then I go and get named Time Magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year. All I can say, “It’s about frickin’ time.”

Yesterday was my website’s birthday. Not this website, the other one. It turned twelve—a long, long time in web years. What has happened since 1994?

Admit it. You secretly hate MySpace. Maybe not even secretly, maybe you wear the shirt everywhere. Still, you’ve been forced to respect it because it’s an unstoppable juggernaut with over one hundred million members. Well, let’s burst some bubbles.

Much is written about how incredibly dangerous the new media is. Wikipedia contains inaccuracies! MySpace is full of pedophiles! Craigslist is infested with scams! Of course, much of this is perpetuated by the old media, who are hardly without sin. In fact, a recent situation illustrated to me just how the ecology of new media is vastly more healthy.

I spent several hours today trying to get my new Comcast High-Speed Internet Cable Modem connected. The experience really drove home the point that these bozos are not who we want running the internet and just how important passing net neutrality really is.

The telecoms must be scared; they’re already fighting dirty. Consider, if you will, these three news items:

1. Hands Off the Internet, a “grassroots” website against network neutrality.
2. Tom Giovanetti’s OpEd in the Mercury News, “Network neutrality? Welcome to the stupid Internet.”
3. Sen. Ted Stevens’ already infamous “The Internet is a series of tubes” speech.