We all know how the Internet started, right?
After Al Gore lost the 2000 election (or after it was swiped from him, if you’re a rabid donkey), he grew a beard and went underground–literally.
Armed with a pick-axe, Gore created the serious of interconnected tubes where the wires were laid.
‘It’s like a web,? he declared, debris clinging to his beard, as he fused the final wires together. ‘It shall be good for democracy.?
He said the same to his journalism students at Columbia University soon afterward, though he failed to mention his tubes would prevent them from earning a paycheck some day.
Thus, the Interconnected Web was born, allowing for the transmission of all sorts of information, though, at first, it was mainly the domain of pornographers and lonely-hearts.
Then, came chat rooms and blogging.
Then, finally, in its more mature phase of development, came social networking sites.
They’ve come a long since I was in my early 20s way back at the beginning of the Naughties. Friendster and MySpace catered to mostly hipsters and perverts, or both. Way back then, the sites were a forum for young people to post party pictures.
Capturing and posting pics of you and your homies hoisting pint glasses at a bar, making funny faces, is the type of achievement my generation strives for. And the sites provide free delivery all over the world.
They are a little like newspapers that only report the goings-on of you, you and you. I wasn’t surprised when media mogul Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace. Money was to be made somehow. Legitimacy was sure to follow.
Now, sites like Facebook and Twitter have gone mainstream. Every media product is linked to them somehow these days. From CNN down to, ahem, The Review (check us out on Facebook!). Grandmas and grandpas have profiles.
And now, local governments have gotten into the act. Orion Township is Twittering and Facebooking its way into an uncertain future. They’ve also launched a new Web site, advantageorion.com.
With GM still not committed to keeping The Plant open, Orion is unbuckling itself from old Rust Belt mentalities (the belts are rusty for a reason, right), and trying to find some answers on the Interwebs.
Is this what Gibb and gang should be focusing on?
I’m not sold on advantageorion.com.
And it’s not even because at the unveiling of the site at the most recent town hall meeting, there were four Matt Gibb’s looking out at the audience, one flesh and blood, and three on the screen.
All the information that they’re trying to get on the new site could be folded into the township’s regular Web site. Why have a second one? Why not save some money and redesign the township’s current Web site, which looks like it’s from 1995?
I do, with a half-clap, applaud the township for having a presence on Facebook and Twitter as progressive.
But it should be said those two free sites shouldn’t be information-gathering replacements for your local newspaper.
If the only information you get comes from the government’s mouth, then it’s propaganda. Democracy cannot exist in such a way.
Gibb says its a way to market the township, to get the word out how great it is to live, work and play in Orion, etc.
That’s fine. Orion is all those things.
But soon, if it hasn’t already, people will find marketing indistinguishable from journalism.
Is that how the Interwebernets were supposed to enhance democracy, Mr. Gore?