Tonight, my status as a chairman of an SDForum Special Interest Group got me invited to the annual SDForum Visionary Awards ceremony at Heidi Roizen's house (pictured at left in glorious VGA detail).
This was really an impressive event, with a high ratio of interesting and personable people. There were even some successful entrepreneurs in attendance, judging by this vanity plate at right.
A highlight of the evening was chatting with Walt Mossberg, the veritable Mohammad of tech reporting, who has been the tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal since 1991. Tonight, all manner of enterprising salesmen were busily bringing their mountains (or molehills) to him. Walt held forth on the strengths of the Apple design philosophy, on the shortcomings of the mobile carriers (a.k.a. "the Soviet Ministries"), and on opportunities in the dusty and uncomfortable space between HDTVs, DVRs and DVD players.
Since Walt covered the Washington beat before setting up shop as the tech guru he is today, and has lived in DC for 30 years, I asked him to speak to any interesting innovation he's seen in the political campaigns this season. He professed not having seen anything interesting so far, and asked if I had come across anything novel.
I told Walt about my own experience looking for information about the candidate I most wanted to learn more about. Since he wasn't one of the top three Dem or Repub contenders, there was very little that could be learned about him from the mass media. I explained that I much more often find videos I'm interested in watching on YouTube, and that these videos make for much better sharing that a simple newspaper article or webpage.
At this point, Walt asked me, "So are you a Libertarian? Is Ron Paul your man?" I was taken aback by his bold guess, but then again Walt is a smart guy. I was pleased to admit that he guessed correctly, and we went on to discuss how mass media TV really isn't a good way to try to get oneself informed nowadays, and that reading online or watching YouTube videos is often more informative.
All in all, Walt didn't see anything terribly noteworthy in the technology employed in the campaigns so far. I personally believe that the degree to which consumers can use the YouTube platform to do an end-run around network television and the mainsteam media is going to define the next year and a half of campaigning. I have a suspicion that the campaign war-chests that have been absolutely powerful (and corrupted absolutely) in the past will turn out to be insufficient to channel-stuff candidates' messages through all available channels.
This revolution will not be televised.
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