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| Wednesday, January 24, 2007 |
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Except you don't live as long 
| | I was just overheard to have said "60 is the new 20". |
Big (screen) steps
| |  What comes after television? That's a question I've been asking at every Consumer Electronics Show. The answer, of course, is not just "more TV" but bigger and better TV, with better sound and higher resolutions, made possible by digital sources, processing and displays. In other words, computing and networking.
So does TV become just become a suburb of computing, or does the reverse happen? The TV folks imagine the latter. But the former is inevitable. Our job is to make the inevitable happen sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, we get to watch Big TV metasticize — and to enjoy what we can of it. |
Frankenstein vs. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
| | Mark Fitzgibbons examines S.1., an ethics reform bill working its way through the Senate. In it he makes vividly clear the need for bloggers to become interested in the sausage factory of lawmaking: |
| | Let me interrupt here to explain what this complex mass of statutory language means by way of a brief example. "Bob" who blogs only on Saturdays for his site, "Oppose All Tax Increases," is likely to be hit hardest because his research and writing takes up more than 20 percent of his time for his blog, and his blog is read by more than 500 people. He sends two emails to Congress opposing tax increase legislation. Boom, he¹s a lobbyist. Since bloggers were not expressly exempted, they certainly fit within the "new" definition of lobbyists who must register and report quarterly. |
| | He's responding to Stephen Bainbridge's claim that bloggers would be outside the scope of the new law. Stephen responds here, saying Mark is wrong, and that If Bob's blog counts as an organization that can be the client of a lobbyist, shouldn't it also count as a media organization? |
| | Well yes, and that's why every new law (especially one so complex as this) is a garden where new species of unintended consequences can grow. Whatever your metaphor, the matter still requires attention. |
| | Bonus link. The problem is that this isn¹t about democracy. It¹s about the desire of some politicians to know ³who² is making life difficult from them. |
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