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FoxTrot agrees: your Senator needs an iPodThe December 30th FoxTrot comic hits on the very idea IPac ran with two years ago: sending iPods to Senators. Back in February 2006, Senator Ted Stevens mentioned the iPod he'd gotten for Christmas in a hearing, and to educate Senators on the many legitimate uses of digital technology, IPac launched the Your Senator Needs an iPod campaign.
It was a stunt as much as anything, but it generated awareness of the digital divide between citizens and elected officials who barely understand the technology they are legislating. The humorous nature of the campaign was the very quality played up by Sunday's FoxTrot, in which Jason sends iPods to members of the U.S. Senate this Christmas for exactly the same reason IPac did. A small excerpt of the comic (click to read the whole thing with punchline):
 posted on Jan 2, 2008 2:26 pm (comment) Your Senator Needs an iPod But Senator Stevens, the 82-year old committee chairman from Alaska, surprised the audience by announcing that his daughter had bought him an iPod, and suddenly Stevens had a much greater understanding of the many ways innovative technology can create choice for consumers. Content industry representatives at the hearing found themselves answering much tougher questions than they typically receive. When I read about this in ths news, I immediately, thought, wouldn't it be great if more Senators owned iPods? Someone should give them to the Senators on the committee! Rather than wait for every Senator's daughter, over the weekend the team at IPac put together a campaign Your Senator Needs an iPod to raise money to buy a video iPod for the campaigns of Senators who work on legislation affecting technology. We're going to pre-load each one with examples of the cultural richness made possible by sharing and collaboration - public domain content, Creative Commons content, and audio messages about the importance of balanced copyright policy. It will be engraved with the words "listen to the people." And it will arrive at each Senator's campaign office with a letter of explanation and a list of all the people who helped pay for it. The campaign went up Tuesday with a link on Boing Boing, and quickly spread through the blogosphere with links on Fark, Engadget, Ars Technica, Digg, and many other blogs, especially Apple enthusiast blogs everywhere (makes sense). So far, we've raised enough for 4 iPods and are almost up to a fifth.
posted on Feb 2, 2006 7:46 pm (comment) IPacToday, as technological development continues at a breakneck pace, America is poised to evolve into one of two possible futures.
On the one hand, we could experience a bread-and-circuses America, where a small number of companies build technology, create works of cultural expression, control the media, decide what ideas are important, and make decisions over our daily lives. Individuals shop, consume entertainment and infotainment, and absorb marketing messages which incite them to shop some more. Or, we could build a participatory America, where people are not just consumers but citizens, creators, and tinkerers. Scientific minds who took electronics apart as children build the next great technological invention in their garages. Creative geniuses write the next great American novels, plays, and movies from their homes. Bloggers and amateur documentarians educate people about local world affairs with a wide variety of indivudalized voices. Entrepreneurial individuals start successful businesses in their own local communities. And involved citizens everywhere participate in civic and political discourse with their fellows at local clubs, bars, churches, and playgrounds. We once were a nation of builders, but society has moved more and more toward a nation of buyers. The Internet holds great promise to rekindle the participatory spirit, and many of today's most successful technology companies were started by hobbyist entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, intellectual property laws are becoming more and more restrictive, vague, and overbroad, putting creativity and innovation beyond the reach of individual citizens and requiring creators to fight costly legal battles just to exercise their legal rights. That is why some colleagues and I have started IPac, a nonpartisan political action committee dedicated to preserving individual freedom through balanced intellectual property policy. IPac will support elected representatives and candidates for public office who fight for these principles:
posted on Sep 29, 2004 12:39 am (comment) | Blog ArchivesMost Popular Tags |
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