DISQUS

If you want to know hwat happens when baby boomers start utilizing new media, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_3WjOExUho&...

What's interesting about this old Davidson alumnus' video blog post about U.S. health care reform on YouTube is that its is exponentially more substantive than any of the political candidates' videos about health care on YouChoose '08. http://www.youtube.com/youchoose

I haven't checked out your sites above, but my experience with YouTube so far is that the web, while expanding the reach of political messaging, hasn't necessarily yet improved the quality of debate and the depth of policy information...

As I post this comment, I wonder how many of my friends and casual contacts will be alerted that I have done so through FriendFinder or Spokeo? I guess I will keep this post clean.

Wait a sec, that's actually a point I'd like to make. One upside of Spokeo and similar services is they add an element of transparency, and personal accountability, to the web that users have previously escaped. Anonymity on the web, and anonymity in general, as numerous psychology studies have shown, can lead to pretty inhumane and unethical behavior.

I may be some kind of social radical, but I don't think that everyone has an inherent right to total privacy.

That being said, the bottom line is that, when I communicate, I do have the right to know who will likely hear/read/react to it.

Plus, I do not think the general public (with the intense individualism that pervades the U.S.) will stand for these types services as they exist now, just as Facebook became mainstream, the public demanded that it integrate extensive and sophisticated privacy controls over the news feed, etc.