Techdirt. Stories filed under "answers" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "answers"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 8 Nov 2011 09:17:46 PST We, The People, Are Sarcastic And Not Easily Mollified By Bland Political Non-Answers Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111107/18294916672/we-people-are-sarcastic-not-easily-mollified-bland-political-non-answers.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111107/18294916672/we-people-are-sarcastic-not-easily-mollified-bland-political-non-answers.shtml We, The People petition site is definitely an interesting experiment in an attempt to be more open in governing. However, as we discovered last week when we mentioned the petition against SOPA/E-PARASITE, many people believe that the administration is not really taking the whole thing seriously. In particular, there's been a fair amount of anger over the bland, political non-answers given to issues raised in the petitions. That's resulted in a petition to take the petitions more seriously, as well as a slightly more sarcastic response (found via Ars Technica), in the form of a petition demanding "a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition."
We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.

Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.
While extremely snarky, it's a pretty good way of making a point. While the press may be mollified with boring standard political emptiness, the public is pretty damn sick of it. It seems like the public really yearns for just a bit of authenticity out there, and that's not what's coming back. Unfortunately, petitioning for authenticity just doesn't seem likely to get much of a result.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> yearning-for-authenticity http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111107/18294916672 Fri, 15 May 2009 19:33:00 PDT The Value Of Twitter As Compared To Google Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090515/1437004901.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090515/1437004901.shtml bash Twitter, but for those who have learned how to use Twitter well (as opposed to many who use it poorly), the value of it is quite impressive. I now spend a lot more time using Twitter to find news than I do my feed reader -- and that's amazing to me. However, I think Mark Cuban actually has made the strongest point, noting that in many ways, Twitter is becoming more useful than Google. This isn't to say that Twitter is "killing" Google (x killing y stories are lame), but that many people are finding information via Twitter now, where they used to find it via Google.

Cuban gives an example of trying to buy a car, where there may be a lot of value in being able to message a guru on the type of car he wants to buy via Twitter (or, better yet, finding a few of them). I know I've found Twitter to be useful in this manner. A few months ago, I was looking for a new backpack for my computer -- and I had very specific requirements (such as the ability to carry both a laptop and a netbook at times comfortably). It was quite difficult to come up with a Google query that made sense for such a thing, but I could ask it easily in 140 characters and plenty of people could easily understand it, and then provide thoughts and recommendations. It comes back to two points:
  • Having real humans respond to a query works well for more specific queries that simply aren't well automated.
  • Perhaps much more importantly, real people can better offer recommendations or explanations than an automated query on Google, which simply seeks to find data or answers.
Basically, what Twitter is enabling is an entirely different form of information gathering online: via conversation, rather than via data dump. Each has it's place, but the reason many of us find Twitter so compelling is that it's opening up tremendous new possibilities to enable useful information flow that simply wasn't possible before.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> it's-growing http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090515/1437004901