Via Jon Link: Sarah Palin’s debate strategy flowchart.

Eh. At least she had a strategy. What’s McCain’s plan going to be for tonight?

Note: this cross-posted item is my contribution to our Banned Books Week recognition. We’ve been pitting books against each other, hoping to illustrate that there are always (at least) two sides to every story. Most of the other books were more social or political, but I liked this pair.

Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams tell stories of how the the internet’s unprecedented collaboration opportunities are changing the rules of economics. IBM, in one example, estimates the value of work done by volunteer software developers on Linux, the open source computer operating system built largely by people working for free, to be about one billion dollars, annually.

But Andrew Keen, in The Cult Of The Amateur : How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, worries that collaborative technologies like Wikipedia and YouTube are unfairly cutting into established economic models and destroying record companies, television networks, and other cultural institutions.

Both books praise technology, but differ on how it should be used and who should control it. Tapscott and Williams say IBM’s decision to embrace Linux and support open source software is saving the company $900 million/annually, while Keen argues that experts should be given more control over what is published online.

Further reading:

• A debate between Andrew Keen and David Weinberger, from WSJ.com.
• Listen online as Andrew Keen, Xeni Jardin, Larry Sanger, and Clay Shirky discuss Cult of the Amateur on KCRW’s To The Point.
• NPR interview with Wikinomics co-author Don Tapscott
• Eric Raymond’s paper, The Cathedral vs The Bazaar, discussing how massive collaboration makes open source possible.

bbw2007, Wikinomics How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Wikinomics, Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams, The Cult Of The Amateur How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, Andrew Keen, technology, internet, web 2.0, debate, banned books week

David Rothman points to a Daily KOS story that points to a MyDD story titled “Aristocratic Right Wing Blogosphere Stagnating.” What’s the point? Of the top 40 political blogs, more than half are ‘liberal,’ and more importantly, they support community involvement — including basic features like comments — that the conservative blogs shun.

of the five most trafficked conservative blogs (over 200,000 page views per week), only one [...] even allows comments…

[...]

Community moderated blogging platforms [...] have provided us with an excellent means of finding new voices, and these are the voices that are generating the accelerated growth in the liberal and progressive blogosphere when compared to the right-wing blogosphere.

Chris Bowers may have a point. He’s certainly got the numbers and I suggest taking a look at the links above to get the full weight of the story.

Though I’ve had my own frustrations with comments here, I keep them open because I believe that honest debate is the center of democracy. I keep them open despite my concerns about the tone of comments in stories like this, and despite the comments from conservative snipers in a number of my political stories. Republicans are working hard to stifle debate in our traditional news media and our universities, it’s no surprise they’re doing the same for new media too.

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