Assignment: Future

'The Nations' Airy Navies'

2011-12-23T00:12:00.005-05:00

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

"Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Locksley Hall

(The photograph above shows the wreckage of an unmanned U.S. Navy blimp after an August 1957 nuclear test in Nevada. Be sure to note the people gathered around the crash site. Image courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office via historian Brett Holman's Airminded website.)

Interactive Local 404: Can Labor and Management Be Facebook 'Friends'?

2011-10-12T18:06:00.006-04:00

"Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalist to quell the revolt of specialized labour." -- Karl Marx, 1847

A New York Times story about the United Auto Workers challenges that particular Karl Marx analysis. Reporter Nick Bunkley describes how the autoworkers union has been using social media to communicate with members during recent contract talks with Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. And it even points to ways that tools like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter may help management and labor communicate more effectively with each other.

"Through Facebook, autoworkers at plants in Kansas City, Mo., or Kokomo, Ind., have been able to voice concerns and ask questions directly to the bargaining teams, something they could not do in past years. Facebook helped workers at a Chrysler factory in Dundee, Mich., gather support before voting last month to join the national contract; they had previously been covered by a separate agreement that provided less job security."

When a UAW website crashed after it posted new Ford and G.M. contracts, the union turned to social media to get details to its members:

"While the U.A.W. worked to repair its Web site last week, it posted a summary of the Ford contract on Facebook, and received more than 500 comments in response. Since ratification meetings started, the moderators of the U.A.W.'s page for Ford workers have been busy answering requests to clarify sections of the contract language, sometimes responding within minutes.

"In several instances, the union used Facebook to rebut rumors being disseminated on plant floors or in the news media, rather than allowing them to spread unchallenged."

One section of the Times story focused on Art Reyes, president of UAW Local 651 in Flint, Mich., who described his active Facebooking during the contract talks as a generational imperative:

"Mr. Reyes represents a G.M. parts processing plant staffed entirely by entry-level workers, many of whom are in their 20s, new to the bargaining process and more likely to engage one another online than at the union hall.

"'They're used to expressing themselves on Facebook or on Twitter. Getting real-time answers is something they have an expectation of,' [Reyes] said. 'Nothing feeds the rumor mill like a lack of information.'"

And it seems the automakers took a similar view. In G.M.'s case, the company and the union actually joined forces to communicate with employees via Facebook. As Kim Carpenter, a G.M. spokeswoman, told the Times:

"There's a lot of different filters out there, and this enables us to communicate directly with the membership, and we think that's a good thing."

Having been at the table as a management representative for my employer during contract talks last year, I can't help but see -- and believe in -- the potential of greater labor-management collaboration. But that kind of collaboration can play both ways with different constituencies. The comment threads I scrolled through on the UAW-G.M. Facebook page seemed to be dominated by remarks, many in all-caps, from UAW brothers and sisters who were unhappy with parts of the new agreements -- especially frustrated retirees like the person who wrote this:

"JUST A NOTE TO ALL RETIREES,IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY WITH THE WAY YOU WERE LEFT OUT OF THE NEW CONTRACT,YOU CAN HAVE YOUR VOICE HEARD BY CANCELLING YOUR UNION DUES, CONTACT YOUR LOCAL UNION FOR INFORMATION ON HOW TO DO THIS. THANK YOU"

Or this one:

"It is a very sad time when retirees have to worry MORE about what the UAW will do to their pensions & benefits than the company!! They are supposed to protect the things we worked for rather then sell us out."

So, can the machines be employed by specialized labor to quell the revolt of specialized labor?

Providing a forum for unhappy constituents to share their unhappiness, and then actively responding to those comments and engaging the commenters is a social media tenet.

Another social media tenet is that the line between and among institutions and individuals is thiner and fuzzier than ever. That's as true for a union, a company and their members/employees as it is for, say, a government and its citizens, or a media company and its audience.

Whether that results in cacophony or symphony has more to do with the players than the instruments.

In the end, a machine ain't nothing but a machine.

(Photo up top was taken by John F. Martin on an assembly line in Flint, Mich. Chevrolet is the photo's copyright holder.)

Red Light Means... Stop and Remember When It Didn't

2011-10-09T15:06:00.005-04:00

Those new fangled traffic lights are quite a marvel, aren't they? At least they were 75 years ago.

Back then, Jam Handy was to instructional films what Walt Disney was to early animation. In 1937, Chevrolet hired Handy to produce a short film explaining "automated signal lights." The devices were just in their second decade of use, and there was still astounding variation from place to place. "Even now," the film's narrator said, "traffic engineers are working with safety councils toward a national standardization of the traffic signal system."

I found Handy's nine-minute movie in the Prelinger Archive after a friend shared a link to an edited version posted by The Atlantic. For me it was yet another reminder that most commonplace technologies -- the once-complicated tools we now use almost absentmindedly everyday -- were once disruptive and confounding, too. As Atlantic Cities editor Sommer Mathis puts it:

"It's easy to forget that at one point in our history, there was no national standard that red meant stop, and green meant go -— many cities operated their own unique versions of automated traffic signals, some with four colors, and others with only two."

Actually the use of red and green signal lights pre-dated traffic lights. Credit for adapting the color-coded signal system used by railroads for automated traffic management goes to William L. Potts, an inventive Detroit police inspector who also gets credit for another innovation: the first police car equipped with an experimental radio.

Will wonders never cease!

Something Just Clicked: A Date With Destiny?

2011-10-07T08:33:00.007-04:00

"Computers and society are out on a first date in this decade and for some crazy reason we're just in the right place at the right time to make the romance blossom."

-- Apple co-cofounder Steve Jobs in 1983.

That was the year before Jobs' company introduced the Macintosh -- "the computer for the rest of us," as it was promoted at the time. The original asking price for the Mac: $2,495, or $5,440 when adjusted for inflation.

Jobs (1955-2011) "was arguably the best ambassador ever between androids and humans," wrote Linton Weeks, my coworker at NPR:

"When Jobs died Wednesday at 56 after protracted combat with pancreatic cancer, the world lost a valuable shuttle diplomat between computers and tablets and gadgets and animated robots, and the people who so desperately long to relate to them."

Linton added: "He is not gone. He will not be forgotten. His soul is in the machine."

The image above is from Jobs' presentation in January 1984, when he publicly unveiled the Mac. And the quote up top from 1983 comes from author Steven Levy's 1994 book, Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, The Computer That Changed Everything.

This Just In: When 'Completeness' Sinks a Good Story

2011-09-21T23:30:00.013-04:00

Page one of the April 16, 1912, edition of the New York Times is among the most iconic newspaper fronts ever. A large photo of a giant steam ship appears under a three-line banner headline. The first line reads:

TITANIC SINKS AFTER HITTING ICEBERG

That may be the front page that shows up most in the history books. But the far-less-remembered front page from the previous day's Times is the one that most suggests what the future of news would look like 99 years later. And it may even offer a little inspiration to the news editors of today -- especially in their struggles to seamlessly take in and integrate the continual flow of news links and social information from around the world.

These days, eye-witness videos and accounts posted in Twitter-length dispatches give far-flung journalists almost immediate access to firsthand information. Those details are often skimpy and sometimes unreliable -- but not more so than the preliminary and even "blurred" radio reports the Times used to tear up its front page late one Sunday night a century ago.

When the Times staff finished updating the April 15 edition, the calamity in the frigid Atlantic was still unfolding. The editors had just enough information about the sinking ocean liner to rush the story into the paper under a rat-a-tat "this just in" headline:

NEW LINER TITANIC HITS AN ICEBERG;
SINKING BY THE BOW AT MIDNIGHT;
WOMEN PUT OFF IN LIFE BOATS;
LAST WIRELESS AT 12:27 A.M. BLURRED

This was news as it was happening -- events still in the present tense. A disaster was clearly underway, even based on what little had been heard directly from Titanic's crew by 12:30 a.m. -- nearly two hours before the infamously "unsinkable" ship went under.

The information the Times had to work with that night was based on radio communications monitored by a remote wireless station operated by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company on the southern tip of Newfoundland. Marconi radios were the international Twitter feed of their day.

One short article boxed atop the next morning's front page laid out the story moment-by-moment -- almost like a contemporary live blog. The headline -- LATEST NEWS FROM THE SINKING SHIP -- signaled the incremental nature of the information. The text started at the beginning with the initial distress signal sent by Titanic's radio operator -- "C.Q.D." -- and continued chronologically:

"CAPE RACE, N.F., Sunday night, April 14--At 10:25 o'clock to-night the White Star line steamship Titanic called 'C.Q.D.' to the Marconic wireless station here, and reported having struck an iceberg. The steamer said immediate assistance was required.

"Half an hour afterward another message came reporting that they were sinking by the head and that women were being put off in lifeboats.....

"The Marconi station at Cape Race notified the Allan liner Virginian, the captain of which immediately advised that he was proceeding for the scene of the disaster.....

"2 a.m., Monday.--The Olympic at an early hour this, Monday, morning, was in latitude 40.32 north and longitude 61.18 west. She was in direct communication with the Titanic, and is now making all haste toward her.....

"The last signals from Titanic were heard by the Virginian at 12:27 A.M.

"The wireless operator on the Virginian says these signals were blurred and ended abruptly."

The Times has posted a PDF of the full story, along with an accompanying front-page "write-through" summarizing what the Times had learned. That story was written in a more traditional inverted-pyramid format -- with as much who, what, where, why and how crammed up top as a sentence could hold. It began:

"HALIFAX, N.S., April 14.--A wireless dispatch received to-night by the Allan line officials here from Capt. Gambell of the steamer Virginian states that the White Star liner struck an iceberg off the Newfoundland Coast and flashed out wireless calls for immediate assistance."

But the adjacent "tick-tock" -- the Titanic "live blog" -- clearly did a better job conveying the drama and uncertainty of that night's events.

There are lessons in this for today's digital editors. Too many of us in online news still depend too heavily on a newspaper-like convention of completeness to tell breaking news stories -- as if we were somehow editing our homepages to be sold on street corners and thrown from trucks onto doorsteps and driveways. But instead of delivering completeness we often end up providing a simulated thoroughness -- a "completeness falsity" that can unintentionally and artificially overstate what we know and understate what we don't.

We post long, scrolling stories that top with the facts as we know them, even when we know them to be incomplete, if not misleading.

We "weave in" updates, challenging users to click on headlines that often read remarkably like they did before the story was updated. Then we ask the readers to hunt through a thousand or more words of text again for any newly added quotes or details or background. These stories seem to be written and edited for one-time visitors.

We also carefully segregate our conversations with our audience and our sources from "the story" itself, even when our audience and our sources are the same people, and even though social media channels like Twitter and Facebook make those conversations far more public than our sites are designed to integrate and convey. Tools that help sift and present selected social media posts, such as Storify and Storiful, have started to change that, but most of us still have a ways to go in how we showcase this material.

None of this is to say that dependable old-fashion prose no longer has a place in breaking news. But leaning more heavily on other ways of telling the immediate story can free a news site's prose writers to focus on meaning, explanation and implications -- angles that tell readers where stories are going, rather than trying to keep up with an ongoing event.

On election night last November we tried to do a bit of all that on the NPR website. Instead of just linking to a live blog from our homepage -- headline, blurb, click -- we actually turned the homepage into a live blog, which ran side-by-side with links to a more traditional overview and related analysis, a balance of depth and immediacy. (The screen shot to the right shows the top of our 3 a.m. election homepage. Click to enlarge)

Most of us in the breaking news biz are still trying to come up with new designs and presentational metaphors that put all the pieces of our coverage together in a way that captures both the significance and drama of the events we're covering. The work of bygone "newspapermen" from our industry's past may help point the way.

The New York Times coverage of the Titanic's sinking reminds us that even newspapers once knew how to break the conventions of the completeness falsity -- especially back in the "extra, extra," "Sweetheart, get me rewrite" era of competition and multiple daily editions. Tapping those deep-seated instincts again will serve us as well in 2012 as they did in 1912.

(The grainy image atop this story shows an enlargement of one small part of the Times' April 15, 1912, front page, as described here. The complete caption reads: "WHITE STAR LINER TITANIC. Largest Steamship in the World, Which Has Hit an Iceberg on Her First Voyage Here." The Times has posted an interactive version of that day's edition on its TimesMachine. Two articles from the April 15 edition also are among those linked from the Times' Titanic topic page.)

Updated: Corrects link to TimesMachine page in kicker above. Fast fingers sink ships!

Orbital Mechanics: Plunging Into Space Station Toilet Repairs

2011-07-13T21:24:00.002-04:00

"That's the great thing about spaceflight. One day, you're doing the most outrageous thing humans have ever done -- spacewalking. The next day, you're fixing toilets and packing boxes."

-- Astronaut Michael Fossum, after Expedition 28 cremate Ronald Garan successfully repaired a toilet aboard the International Space Station.

CBS News has a full account of Wednesday's extraplanetary plumbing job. The "Orbital Outhosue Team" logo above appears on the wall over one of the station's two commodes -- a $19 million Russian-built toilet system delivered by the crew of the STS-126 mission in November 2008.

(Image: April 2009 NASA photo)

The Future of News Cliches 'Remains To Be Seen'

2011-05-05T10:55:00.005-04:00

While news organizations struggle to adapt to historic changes in their business, especially in the face of ground-breaking new technologies, this blog has learned that news cliches are alive and well -- and possibly more important than ever.

Among this journalist's least favorite news cliches: "remains to be seen."

That one is a trusty standby, especially among sports writers. Will James van Riemsdyk of the Philly Flyers find out if he's "aggressive enough to make a real impact on NHL games?" Will the four new crew members on Michael Waltrip Racing team make a difference? Will Tigers pitcher Phil Hughes's fastball survive an injury, "even if he returns as expected in six to eight weeks?"

The answers to these and many other questions on our sports pages "remain to be seen."

But sports journalists aren't the only ones who depend on this phrase like their morning cup of coffee. It also pops up in the work of those who write about science and technology -- journalists whose very beats are uncertainty.

A quick scan through some random recent science and tech stories finds that much in fact "remains to be seen."

Take a topic like energy: CNET wonders how people will use "smart grid" technology to monitor their home energy consumption.

"While home energy management will become de rigueur, which tools people choose to use to do that, whether it be a wall dashboard in the home or one's smartphone, remains to be seen."

An article in Pakistan's Daily Times quotes one energy expert, who says "the key thing" that China can "bring to the world is lower costs" for power derived from nuclear fission. Adds the newspaper:

"Whether China can eventually do the same for fusion remains to be seen."

The Chicago Tribune considers another alliterative energy source: electric cars:

"Rising gasoline prices could tip the economic equation in favor of an emerging electric vehicle market. But whether those prices remain high long enough to drive consumers to the technology in large numbers remains to be seen."

In a related story, Reuters looks at emerging technologies for charging those electric cars without obtrusive power cords:

"The electric car market is so new that whether consumers will have to pay a premium for wireless charging remains to be seen."

One vehicle that operates without power chords is the space shuttle. And the approaching end of the shuttle program gave Sunshine State News a chance to review possible directions for human spaceflight, including commercially developed and operated alternatives to NASA's retiring shuttle fleet:

"Whether commercial craft will prove more durable and cost-efficient [than the space shuttle] remains to be seen."

Meanwhile, National Defense magazine points out that the Pentagon has been tinkering with a new space vehicle of its own, the X-37A:

"With budget pressures being one of the main topics of discussion at the conference, and the cost of each X-37B mission probably well more than $200 million, it remains to be seen whether the Air Force's reusable space plane is destined for more missions, or a spot in an air and space museum along with its older and larger predecessor, the space shuttle."

If we don't eventually see the X-37B in a museum, we'll surely read about it someday in a book -- or at least in a book-like device and app. But if the future of space travel is uncertain, the future of books is even more so. A Los Angeles Times blog post on the e-book business asks whether the cost-benefit analysis for publishers will be different from book to book and format to format:

"Exactly how the balance between print and digital will play out -- whether it will vary by genre, have greater impact on hardcovers or paperbacks, and whether there are other variables that may affect e-book-versus-print sales -- remains to be seen."

AdWeek also ran a recent item about an book-like online publishing service called Push Pop Press. The story ended by focusing on the development and design costs of customizing content for such highly interactive reading experiences:

"Reinventing content for iPads and Android-driven devices makes monetary sense for newspapers and magazines that can charge advertisers larger sums than online publication. But the clear path to increased revenues for publishers remains to be seen."

In fact, the path ahead is as dark and mysterious for device makers as it is for content producers. CIO Insight makes that point in a story about how Blackberry-maker Research in Motion "is trying to strike a delicate balance" with new gizmos that appeal both to business and consumer users:

"It remains to be seen whether RIM -- whose recently introduced Playbook tablet has to play catch-up to Apple's iPad and compete with a slew of other tablet contenders -- can pull this off."

And then there's the always unsettled social media business. CNN reports that Maria Sharapova and other sports celebrities are trying to convert their real-world popularity into online stardom. But. . .

"It remains to be seen whether social media can be harnessed as a separate revenue source."

The travel industry thinks there's gold in them social media hills, too. USA Today notes that Omni Hotels is now allowing guests to directly book rooms on the company's Facebook page:

"Whether this is a hit or not with travelers remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: It's a timely innovation."

Thank goodness one thing was clear, at least in that story. Because nothing was clear at all when I found this passage in an Information Week article about the "Internet-wide transition from Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) to IPv6":

"Because of this, a mass migration to IPv6 is expected to occur over the next few years, as organizations must update and transition to the new 128-bit IP. However, it remains to be seen if IT departments use IPAM tools like the Infoblox DDI products, or perform the migration manually."

I've said that many times.

With so much flux, change and upheaval in the world, it's somewhat comforting that such a dependable old phrase can stand the test of time. But will "remain to be seen" continue to have a place in the increasingly fast-moving world of digitized news copy? It's probably too soon to say.

Perhaps the matrix of compounding global complexity will make this particular editorial cliche more useful than ever. But for now, the answer remains to be seen.

(Crystal ball image above via iStockphoto.)

Looking Up: Rare Airship Photo Captures Wonder Of Early Aviation

2011-04-30T23:12:00.005-04:00

This 90-year-old photo shows the U.S. Navy's ill-fated H-1 blimp passing over the boardwalk at Far Rockaway, N.Y., during a brief series of test flights in the summer of 1921.

The picture was taken by my great grandfather, Leon Goldberg, a lifelong photo enthusiast. My grandmother and I discovered it in a long-overlooked family album earlier this afternoon.

The original image is small -- 3 inches by 3 and 3/4 inches. So the people in the foreground didn't catch my eye until I scanned and enlarged the photo. Absolutely everyone is looking up at the airship -- many shielding their eyes from the sun, some waving. A half-dozen boys are standing on the rails of the boardwalk for a better look. One almost looks like he's reaching up to the passing craft and its three-person crew. But I especially love the pair to those kids' right: the woman in the hat and a long dress, holding the hand of a well-dressed little boy. I imagine looks of quiet amazement on their proper faces.

The wonder my great grandfather's photo captured reminded me once again how far aviation has advanced in just 90s years -- one lifetime. My grandmother was born just six years after her dad snapped this picture. Now she watches space shuttles rocket into orbit from her kitchen window in Vero Beach, 80 miles away from the Kennedy Space Center.

But the H-1 blimp's test flights were not such a high point in aviation's history. The airship's final journey must have attracted a wide range of bewildered looks -- and explains why there are so few pictures of this short-lived aircraft.

The H-1 was the Navy's smallest blimp at the time. An official Navy history says the craft was built by Goodyear and arrived by rail at Naval Air Station Rockaway in Queens in May 1921. "Various trial flights were conducted" that summer -- until. . .

"On August 5, 1921, a malfunction in the engine caused her to come down. The landing was especially hard and the car tipped overthrowing the crew out. With the H-1 lighter, minus her crew, she ascended again and flew off on her own, making a gentle landing in a pasture near Scarsdale, N.Y."

The New York Times account of the H-1's unpiloted escape appeared on the front page of the Aug. 6 edition:

BLIMP ON RAMPAGE
CHASED BY AIRPLANE

The Times described the airship's rapid ascent as it passed high over Queens and Brooklyn and then recounted a three-hour chase that involved trucks and a seaplane before ending 50 miles away:

"A good part of the population of Scarsdale, attracted by the sight of the balloon cavorting mysteriously over their city, raced after it as they saw it suddenly begin a graceful descent. After narrowly missing a church steeple and a couple of flagpoles in its descent, the H-1 finally settled down to earth without a jar."

The crowd at Crane farm "captured the unruly aircraft" and tethered it to a tree, the Times reported. And "air officers who examined the blimp said that it was intact and ready to be used again."

But there was no happy ending for the troublesome blimp. The Navy's history offered this epilogue:

"A farmer found the airship and tied her to a tree. Unfamiliar with LTA [lighter than air] vehicles, he used the cord attached to the airship's rip panel for securing the airship. During the night, the wind caused a strain sufficient to pull open the rip panel and deflate the H-1. The airship was recovered and returned to the hangar at NAS Rockaway where, on August 31, 1921, she was destroyed in a fire."

Making Ourselves At Home: An Overlooked Space Milestone

2011-04-13T00:38:00.005-04:00

Tuesday marked the 50th anniversary of the Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 mission and the beginning of human spaceflight. It also was the 30th anniversary of the first U.S. space shuttle launch. But last fall another significant milestone went largely unnoticed: the first 10 years of continuous human presence in space.

On Oct. 31, 2000, a three-person crew (pictured above) lifted off in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to begin the first of a series of extended missions aboard the newly opened International Space Station. "I think that on that day a decade ago, we truly became a space-faring species," astronomer/blogger Phil Plait wrote last fall.

Will astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev be remembered by history as Earth's first space colonists? That depends on whether the continuous presence that began with their five-month mission -- now 3,815 days and counting -- ultimately represents the starting point of a permanent presence. Since their Expedition One mission in 2000-2001, more than two-dozen overlapping crews and dozens of short-term visitors have spent time aboard the orbiting outpost.

While space travel remains a hazardous occupation, the routine of regular personnel rotations 180 miles above us made last year's anniversary easy for most earthbound humans to overlook. Catherine "Cady" Coleman, a member of the station's current six-person crew, underscored that Tuesday when she and the rest of the Expedition 27 team reflected on the significance of Gagarin anniversary in a video link with reporters. "Now, just 50 years later, living in space is considered to be practically normal," the astronaut said.

Coleman explained how her fourth-grade son's classmates "think it's perfectly normal that his mother calls from space and helps with homework." But of course all of that is far closer to amazing than it is to normal. As Coleman put it, "We've really come a very, very long way."

(Image of the Expedition One crew above from NASA. As for the the Earth's first space traveler, I offered my favorite Gagarin story on this day a year ago.)

On The Beat: Tuning In To Tomorrow's News

2011-04-11T22:51:00.005-04:00

"Find me the lyrics to James Brown's 'Hot Pants.'"

A decade ago, I proposed that test to the American Journalism Review as a way for news managers to quickly gauge job candidates' digital competence.

These days, that's hardly a test at all. With oodles of online lyrics databases to choose from, the words to Brown's 1971 hit are just a Google search away. But back in 2000, my online pop quiz was actually a trick question. I had just offered a few bucks to the first coworker or colleague who could find me those lyrics. It was a stumper, and the winner arguably cheated: consultant Mark Potts (now blogging at "Recovering Journalist") downloaded the song and transcribed it.

I was reminded of my old test during a recent meeting with two recruiters from the human resources department at NPR, my current employer. The recruiters wanted to know what they could ask job applicants to help them cull the weak from the webby -- and how exactly did I define "webby" anyway?

"Webby?" The term sounds strangely dated, especially when I already find myself distinguishing between what I call "Web classic" (desktop and laptop browsers) and other online experiences (social experiences, tablets, mobile and so on). And yet I still need people on my staff who combine great journalism skills with an innate understanding of the potential and perils of those new platforms -- and the ones to come.

Figuring out what to ask a journalism job candidate is bit easier when you're recruiting for technical positions. But a traditional print or broadcast journalist submitting his or her resume for an online gig doesn't need to know PHP -- or even what PHP is -- to make the digital leap. They just have to live and work in the world of this century's news consumers.

Here are a few questions a news manager from this decade might ask:

Fear Of the 'B' Word

Simply asking what blogs people read is a revealing enough question, especially given how many professional journalists still dismiss blogging. Note: Those whose answers only include blogs hosted by major media sites only get partial credit.

Having a personal or professional blog is worth bonus points. I often recommend to people I know looking for new news jobs that they give themselves an assignment to blog about. It's a great way to learn some fundamental concepts about layout, content management and other aspects of online publishing. It also is helpful to hiring editors, since it lets them see an applicant's raw, unedited copy.

"At"-ittude And App-titude

What's the best story idea you got from a tweet or some other social media outlet? Who is the most interesting or useful person you follow?

Hyped as Twitter is, a beat reporter who doesn't use social media to identify and contact potential sources is like a beat reporter who's afraid to use a phone. At this point I actually want a job candidate to be the person who tells me what the next Twitter or Tumblr is.

The same goes for mobile apps. Asking which apps a candidate uses is an efficient way to find out if a candidate knows which way online publishing is moving -- literally.

I'm particularly intrigued by the apps that link content and social experiences. Is it world-changing that a location service such as Gowalla can show me that a coworker likes a pizza joint in my neighborhood? Maybe not. But I recognize that Gowalla and services like it also show me how local political and social movements will soon organize and coordinate -- and how they will disseminate and receive news about their activities. In fact, Gowalla's big brother Foursquare already appoints "mayors" and even "super mayors." How soon before someone uses or builds something like it to get elected to an even higher office. (Or maybe someone has.)

If your job candidate does not know what Gowalla or Foursquare is, that's okay. They still might be a good contender to work on your online political coverage, but probably not to help reinvent the way you cover your local arts and entertainment scene.

Old School Is New School, Too

The truth is, traditional journalism skills -- speed, accuracy, instinctive fairness, facility with a range of story types and formats -- are still as valuable in any online newsroom as they were back in the days of pneumatic tubes. That's why journalists with backgrounds at wire services and afternoon newspapers often have adapted to the rhythms and needs of today's newsrooms faster than others. Likewise, many magazine editors and writers inherently get the power of lists, graphics, Q&As, galleries and other alternatives to classical news story forms.

One online journalist I worked with was Martha Angle, a legendary Capitol Hill reporter/editor who recently announced plans to retire after a 47-year career. Martha began covering Congress and national politics at the Washington Star, D.C.'s long-defunct evening paper. Six years ago, when I arrived at Congressional Quarterly (now CQ Roll Call), Martha was the newsroom's one-person "continuous news desk," writing and editing breaking news copy for our webiste and a midday e-mail news bulletin. Apparently our business still has room for a "consummate line editor" with an "uncompromising dedication to getting it right and getting it out to our readers quickly" -- just to borrow a couple of lines about Martha from her retirement announcement.

Knowing A Good Story

The news business also needs people with original ideas for ways the Web gives us to tell, convey and present stories. One way to find innovators like that is to look for people who recognize it.

A few weeks back, blogger Mark Potts (the same "recovering journalist" mentioned above) e-mailed several friends asking for ideas for a University of Maryland class he teaches on "New Media Entrepreneurship":

"Seen any really innovative uses of the Web for news/information lately? I'm looking for examples to blow my class's minds -- interesting story presentations, creative mapping, smart uses of data, whatever."

The answers to Mark's e-mail were wide-ranging. One person called out a Chicago Snow CrowdMap experiment, produced during a blizzard by the Chicago Tribune, WGN and the Chicago Weather Center. Another flagged "Staying In Bounds" -- a fact-based, news-inspired role-playing game produced at UNC-Chapel Hill to explain NCAA's challenging ethics guidelines.

I shared a link to the Sunlight Foundation's "Checking Influence" browser tool. Check your credit card or bank account transactions online and Sunlight's helpful "bookmarklet" shows you what your money is really helping buy in the halls Congress -- which issues are on your merchants' lobbying agenda, and on whom are they lavishing political donations?

I appreciated all of the examples Potts' friends shared. But ultimately I was more focused on Mark's question than the answers.

The people I most need to hire in my newsroom are not the ones who see the evolution of the news business the way I see it. They are the ones whose answers blow my mind -- the people who see what I'm missing.

'Bearing Witness' From a Comfortable Chair: New Platforms Belie Old Dangers

2011-03-23T02:30:00.003-04:00

"In a world where most people consume their news safely, perhaps in a comfortable chair on some electronic device, it is worth remembering how dangerous news-gathering has become. . . .

"News flows so freely and easily these days -- on Web sites, on cellphone apps, on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube -- that it seems almost effortless.

"Getting it still requires old-fashioned courage and perseverance."

-- a New York Times editorial following the safe return of four of that newspaper's journalists from Libya.

In a related news story, the journalists -- Anthony Shadid, Lynsey Addario, Stephen Farrell and Tyler Hicks -- recount their nearly six-day ordeal. they also wonder about the fate of their driver:

"If he died, we will have to bear the burden for the rest of our lives that an innocent man died because of us, because of wrong choices that we made, for an article that was never worth dying for. No article is, but we were too blind to admit that."
Another example of courage and perseverance is the story of Mohammed "Mo" Nabbous, 28, "the face of Libyan citizen journalism." Last month, Nabbous started an Internet TV station in Benghazi called Libya al Hurra, or Free Libya. On Saturday, Nabbous was shot and killed.

NPR's Melissa Block and Andy Carvin remembered Nabbous on Tuesday evening's All Things Considered. Listen to their story to hear Nabbous's final report during an intense firefight.

Andy is NPR's social media strategist and our primary voice on Twitter, where he has become a discerning conduit for first-hand reporting by emerging online voices speaking from difficult places around the globe. The Guardian called Andy "the man who tweeted the revolution," but Andy would give more credit to others -- including Nabbous.

As someone who had "worked in the tech industry," Nabbous was able to cobble together "a live stream, using freely available tools and a satellite Internet access," Andy said. He added:

"Mohammed was a pioneer, but he wasn't alone. I think he helped show Libyans that they should feel free enough and safe enough to record their stories so the rest of us could bear witness."

The Truth About Science and the Press

2011-03-21T20:50:00.008-04:00

The memorial to Albert Einstein near the National Mall in Washington is an off-beat tourist attraction. Where else can you have your picture taken sitting in the lap of a 12-foot high bronze statue of the physicist?

The statue by sculptor Robert Berks stands on the grounds of the main building of the National Academy of Sciences, where my wife Christine works in the media relations office. A particular Einstein quote engraved in the memorial, as well as in the front of the Academy's newer building on 5th Street NW, often catches my eye:

"The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true."

As a journalist, "truth" is not a word I'm comfortable with. It's a bit unattainable to me. My editorial aims are impartiality and fairness and thoroughness. Yet that Einstein line about "truth" was on my mind again last week, as Christine and I prepared for a presentation that we did together for a regular forum on science, reason and religion hosted by the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Oakton, Va.

Our topic was "explaining science in the media." Here was the key slide:

Christine and I organized the first part of our presentation in the form of a marriage counseling session between the worlds of science and journalism. Our main points: Scientists and journalists share a common interest in uncovering facts that we hope explain larger truths -- lowercase "T," not necessarily the truth Einstein spoke of. And the scientific method and the journalistic method both are based on an incremental accumulation of facts and data.

But the methods of science and journalism are also often at odds, especially when it comes to conveying nuance and explaining the significance of anecdote and narrative. One old newsroom adage: "Two's a pattern. Three's a trend." Not exactly the makings of a peer-reviewed article in an academic journal -- but those journal articles sometimes aren't what they're cracked up to be either.

Christine and I also talked about the ways the scientific and journalism worlds depend on each other -- as demonstrated by the parade of experts consulted to help explain this past week's news from Fukushima, Japan. Likewise those experts often depend on media attention to help call attention to and, frankly, fund their work (the "no bucks, no Buck Rogers" rule referenced in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff).

Scientific truth is often a moving target. And sometimes, science misses the mark -- and takes the media along for the ride. My friend and creative partner Eric MacDicken and I tried to make that point in an "Office Opossums" cartoon we posted last year.

My own faith in the infallibility of science is no greater than my faith in the infallibility of journalism. That said, my faith and skepticism in both institutions are mostly in balance -- and I am a long way from cynical.

But based on the questions Christine and I heard after our talk today, I suspect many scientifically oriented people are more skeptical of the work of my journalism colleagues than they are of the research we might cover. I saw that in some of the immediate responses to an item posted this evening on NPR's health blog, "Shots."

Our correspondent -- one of the most knowledgable and experienced in the business -- consulted at length with a health physicist at Renssealaer Polytechnic Institute for help assessing the relative risk of drinking milk or eating food contaminated by radiation emitted by the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant. Their conclusion, based on the data released so far:

"To reach the radiation dose limit for a power plant worker, you'd need to drink 2,922 eight-ounce glasses of milk. To raise your lifetime cancer risk by 4 percent, you'd have to drain more than 58,000 glasses of milk."

The article quickly set off an active discussion among online commenters. Some appreciated the in-depth explanation ("The math doesn't lie"). Others strongly took issue with it ("If you believe the opposite of what they tell you on the news, you are, in all likelihood, closer to the truth").

Einstein also seemed to have held a pretty dim view of my chosen profession -- at least based on what he said in a 1921 interview about his first impressions of the United States:

"The public house is a place which gives people the opportunity to exchange views and ideas on public affairs. As far as I can see, such an opportunity is lacking in this country, the result being that the Press, which is mostly controlled by vested interests, has an excessive influence on public opinion."

Einstein's remark better describes the U.S. media of 90 years ago than it does any of the news organizations I happen to have worked in. But unfortunately, for many viewers, listeners and readers, the grand physicist's observation still has a ring of truth.

(Photo of the Einstein memorial above used with permission of photographer Christine Brennan Schmidt.)

David Broder: The 'Interactive' Journalist?

2011-03-13T09:14:00.010-04:00

"The future fascinates us, because we hope to live in it. But the press has a responsibility to bring the discussion back to the concerns that really matter in people's lives."

-- Washington Post columnist David S. Broder, in a 1999 online chat, answering a reader's question about why the the public and the press "is so obsessed with predictions as opposed to issues."

David, who was my first boss in Washington, died Wednesday. He was 81. As the Post's Dan Balz wrote, David was "the best political reporter of his or any other generation."

Generationally, David was more of a typewriter guy than a laptop guy. My own remembrance for NPR ("Broder's Shift Key") focused on how David's commitment to "lowercase-'I' interactivity" gave him a prominent -- albeit unlikely -- role in the early stages of the Post's transformation into a multimedia publishing company. That online chat from 1999 quoted above was just one example.

Alan Shearer, the editorial director of The Washington Post Writers Group -- which syndicated David's twice-weekly newspaper column -- remembered first hearing David speak about journalism in 1979. Alan was a wire service reporter at the time, and apparently took good notes. The striking, almost prophetic passage that Alan recalled is language I heard David use many times:

"I would like to see us say -- over and over, until the point has been made -- that the newspaper that drops on your doorstep is a partial, hasty, incomplete, inevitably somewhat flawed and inaccurate rendering of some of the things we have heard about in the past 24 hours -- distorted, despite our best efforts to eliminate gross bias, by the very process of compression that makes it possible for you to lift it from your doorstep and read it in about an hour. If we labeled the product accurately, then we could immediately add: But it's the best we could do under the circumstances, and we will be back tomorrow with a corrected and updated version.

"If we did that, I suspect, not only would we feel less inhibited about correcting and updating our own stories, we might even encourage the readers to contribute their own information and understanding to the process. We might even find ourselves acknowledging something most of us find hard to accept: that they have something to tell us, as well as to hear from us. And if those readers felt that they were part of a communications process in which they were participants and not just passive consumers, then they might more easily understand that their freedoms -- and not just ours -- are endangered when the search warrants and subpoenas are visited on the press."

(Photo: Washington Post Writers Group)

Sailing Home: An Astronaut on His Ship's Final Journey

2011-03-09T19:25:00.010-05:00

"I think about this space shuttle fleet like the clipper ships that were strong and fast and powerful -- they did their jobs but they were also graceful and beautiful. They conjured up imagination -- of foreign travel, exotic places, of exploration. And Discovery is just an elite member of this elite fleet. The clippers faded, and it was because there was an alternative, there was another ship that was coming in, steam power, that was stronger, faster perhaps, but not quite as beautiful. . . . We don't have that yet. . . . [W]e don't have that follow on."

-- Discovery astronaut Michael Barratt, in a CBS News interview on Tuesday.

Space shuttle Discovery's 39-mission career ended today when the NASA orbiter landed a the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Discovery was the third and oldest surviving vehicle in NASA's shuttle fleet. Since its maiden voyage in 1984, Discovery circled the globe 5,750 times, traveling a total of 148 million miles -- more than one-and-a-half times the mean distance between the earth and the sun.

As NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reported this morning, Discovery's next stop is one of 21 museums "vying for the chance to become a retirement home for one of the iconic space shuttles."

The stunning photograph above shows Discovery backing away from the International Space Station after an April 2010 visit to the orbital outpost. The picture was taken by Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, whose space photography I wrote about last year.

No Parking: Data-Driven City Life Rolls Along Slowly

2011-03-07T01:17:00.007-05:00

"We will look back at this time and the flowering of technology as one that transformed parking. The closest comparison would be the invention of the cash register in the 19th century, which totally transformed commerce."

-- Donald Shoup, a UCLA urban planner who studies parking, transportation and land use.

Shoup was quoted in a recent USA Today story on how new mobile apps and in-car technologies are changing the way people look for parking spaces. A related story focused on one particular mobile app: "Parker" from a company called Streetline. But what the app-maker calls "smart parking" is just a stepping stone in the company's vision for building "smart cities" -- using "live data from the real world to support sustainable development and transform the way people live and work."

More from the company's website:

"Imagine if cities could speak to us -- if they could give us live status updates on traffic patterns, pollution, parking spaces, water, power and light. Imagine how that kind of information could improve the economic and environmental health of the city, for residents, merchants, and visitors. Imagine how it could improve working conditions and productivity for the people who maintain the city."

Imagining these data-driven cities of the future turns out to be the easy part.

Tech-minded urban planners and entrepreneurs have been noodling about wired "info cities" for ages and ages. One far-sighted friend of mine, Geoff Halstead, even launched a business along the same lines as Streetline -- but Geoff's focus back then was traffic rather than parking.

Mobile carriers were beginning to integrate location information with every cell call -- mostly to help emergency responders with 911 calls. But the commercial potential of this location information looked like it would sprawl out faster and farther than a suburban strip mall. "This whole infrastructure will be built," Geoff told Business Week at the time. "And behind it will be a huge opportunity to offer position-based traffic services."

That was more than a decade ago -- when those of us who were tinkering with early version of mobile online services thought we'd have iPhone-like devices in hand within a couple of years. Alas, the mobile Web evolved far slower in the United States than a lot of us expected.

These days I frequently refer to an online traffic service very much like what Geoff had in mind in the late 1990s: It's my Google Maps app.

Mainstream mobile technology and services are now accessible, affordable and robust enough that companies as big as Google and as small as Streetline once again seem to be hearing the virtual "cha-chings" of those 19th-century cash registers that Professor Shoup mentioned above. This time I just hope the idea has enough change to park.

(Picture above: iStockPhoto)

To All the Phones I've Loved Before

2011-02-12T14:25:00.008-05:00

"Well, I am writing to you now because I have some news, and I wanted you to hear it from me first. My dalliance with that trim new Droid from Verizon is over, too. In Facebook terms, the relationship was complicated."

-- from my public breakup letter to AT&T's iPhone, posted this morning on NPR's "All Tech Considered" blog.

My letter reveals me to be the shallow serial cellular dater that a coworker accused me of being the other day. ("Technology enthusiast or cellular manwhore?" another coworker tweeted after reading my "sordid" story this morning.)

Some of the initial reader comments on my posting were interesting. One reader wrote that we should stop thinking that any particular company or product is magic: "Time to think of products as products and services as services."

Another said, "I really think its the serial phone daters that drive up the price of what is essentially a commodity (chip sets, internal parts OEM'd from the same manufacturers, eerily similar features on different OS). A smartphone is a smartphone."

I know they're right, of course. I keep telling myself that, too. And then I gaze at those pretty screens, and, well, I'm lost all over again.

Happy Valentine's Day.

(Candy Heart made at http://www.cryptogram.com/hearts/)

Eats, Shoots & Goes Extinct: Omit Needless Editors?

2010-11-22T14:46:00.003-05:00

"[E]ditors are obsolescent -– they are giant pandas in a receding bamboo forest. As the supply of editors outstrips the demand for them, the cost of the service of editing declines. New York is bursting at the seams with wildly talented editors who are under-employed, or about to be."

-- Babble and Nerve Media co-founder Rufus Griscom, musing about a profession he says is going the way of the hammered dulcimer, replaced by "content producers." (From his post: "The Fate of the Purple Spotted Editor: Evolve or Die")

Griscom explains:

"Editors have historically had two jobs: finding interesting material, and making it better. Next generation editors, if we still call them editors, will do two things: identify great content creators, and help them package and distribute their content in a way that is mutually beneficial. The relative value of the brands of content creators is ascendant, and publishers need to think more like coaches who are also business partners."

Griscom is not arguing against the need for quality or accuracy. As the comments on his post suggest, many "content consumers" still have high expectations there. One finger-wagging reader flagged this sentence: "Why is demand for traditional editing skills is going away?" Griscom fixed the typo and replied: "We have just demonstrated the efficiency of crowd sourced copy editing."

In online media, "editor" and "producer" titles are frequently used interchangeably. Calling these hybrid practitioners "preditors" is one of the oldest jokes in not-so-new media. This evolving species of content chimeras will need traditional editing skills. But those skills alone will not be enough to survive.

(Panda pic above from Wikimedia Commons. Hat tip to MediaJobsDaily for calling my attention to Griscom's post.)

Refreshing Public Media's Future

2010-11-20T14:01:00.005-05:00

I encountered this sad-faced retro news robot during a recent vacation stop at Disney World's Tomorrowland. ROBO-NEWZ's downcast expression seems to say a lot about the current state of the media world. But the disheartened look on ROBO's face does no justice to the buoyant spirit at this weekend's national PublicMediaCamp at American University in Washington -- even with all the current political fuss over public media's funding, image and critics. (Disclosure: I work at NPR.)

PublicMediaCamp, or PubCamp, is the second such attendee-led gathering of staff and supporters from across the country. As the event's website explains:

"PublicMediaCamp seeks to bring together community technology activists, citizen journalists and other members of the public eager to support public media in tangible ways, bringing them together with public broadcasters in an engaging collaborative environment."

As is customary at these improvised, "BarCamp"-style "unconferences", PubCamp opened this morning with introductions. One by one, the attendees stood, offered their names, affiliation and three "tags" or keywords to describe themselves. (My tags: "content, community and contraptions.") Attendees also proposed ideas for sessions, which organizers jotted down on note cards and quickly arranged into an agenda that promises a very full two days of conversation.

As I found at previous barcamps, the combination of attendee's three-term intros seemed to quickly reveal and reflect the mood of the crowd -- in this case, succinctly expressing the cultural and technological challenges that are changing the direction of public media, as well the opportunity those challenges expose. So here is an edited sampling -- organized to reflect the beginnings of the conversations I except to hear over the course of these two days:

"online, community, engagement"
"community, civic engagement"
"engagement, innovation, secret NPR tattoo"
"journalism, community, innovation"
"telecommuting, community, geek"
"local station presence"
"global, local, experiment"
"international, experimental, cheerleading"
"e-society, social networking, transparency"
"content, web, strategy"
"style books, content, workflow"
"interesting content please"
"multimedia, stories, technology"
"hacker, social, technologist"
"Android, open-source, collaboration"
"open-source technology community"
"video, Linux, blogging"
"Drupal, content, strategy"
"linked open data"
"metadata, archives, digital asset management"
"SEO, content strategy, 'I love bacon'"
"reading, learning, keeping up"
"social, design innovation, learning"
"stations, communications, educator"
"public citizen, mom"
"public citizen, dad"
"tech-that-matters, mountain-biking, dad"
"kids, local, interactive"
"games, kids, community"
"web, gaming, tacos"
"video, engagement, Jedi"
"community, storyteller, change"
"independent, photographer, storyteller"
"reporter, environmentalist, coffee"
"radio, development, highly caffeinated"
"not morning person"
"technology, geek, hoofer"
"interactive, organic, outside"
"artist, gadget-geek, roller derby"
"interviewing, reporting, running"
"print journalism, government, running"
"improv, storytelling, yoga"
"cyclist, storyteller, unemployed"
"recent college graduate"
"I'm hiring developers"
"whew!" "oh crap," "let's get it done!"

Amazingly, these and all the other intros took far less time than many people expected, especially those who never participated in such a free-form proceeding. (This was my fourth barcamp. In addition to last's year's PubCamp and a local spinoff hosted in the Raleigh-Durham area, I also attended the 1999 Government 2.0 Camp here in D.C.)

My favorite introduction this morning was offered by an attendee from Mississippi Public Broadcasting, whose three keywords referenced a recent controversy involving his organization:

"we canceled 'Fresh Air'"

His proposed session: "How to handle an online revolt."

With so many interesting and good-humored participants, this weekend's discussions about public media's future might even bring a smile to old ROBO-NEWZ's glum face. You can follow the conversations with the #PubCamp tag on Twitter.

UPDATE: NPR colleague Andy Carvin took the 45 or so introductions above and turned them into a text cloud. The forecast: Heavy "community" with a high chance of "content" and "engagement."

One Small Step to eBay?

2010-09-24T13:39:00.004-04:00

"The Chinese are going to the moon and they'll plant their flag up there and bring ours back down and put it on eBay."

-- Ray Trapp, a longtime driver of the space shuttle's mobile launch platform, quoted in Air & Space magazine. Trapp was one of 14 people profiled in an article on the impact of the shuttle's retirement on Florida's Space Coast.

(Photo of Chinese taikonaut Zhai Zhigang's spacewalk during the 2008 Shenzhou-7 space mission.)

A Wink and a Nod: Showing Your Emoticons at Work

2010-06-10T00:31:00.004-04:00

My excessive use of emoticons seemed under control -- especially after I came clean a couple of years ago about a lazy habit of using them in work e-mails. However, a quick scan of my sent mail over the past month revealed that I had punctuated at least 11 messages with a "wink": ;-)

And that's just work messages. I didn't dare try to count the number of these sentiment substitutes in my personal e-mails and Facebook messages.

Clearly I need a "Remoticon 2.0" -- the excessively empathetic cartoon robot who "emotes so you don't have to." Remoticon was created by illustrator Eric S. MacDicken for his most recent "Office Opossums" animation (sound editing by yours truly).

Here's Remoticon's user manual.

Hope this leaves you smiling.

(Remoticon image above used with the permission of Eric MacDicken, who also designed the logo for this blog.)

An Infinite Landscape: The Art of the Astronauts

2010-06-02T01:06:00.005-04:00

"The Earth is beautiful and I just want to share the pictures. I'm not the best photographer. There are a lot of people who take a better picture."

-- Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, shown above snapping photos from a newly installed observation module on the International Space Station.

During a 23-week stay on the space station, Noguchi used a recently activated onboard Internet link to share hundreds of dazzling photos via Twitter and its photo-focused offshoot, Twitpic.

Noguchi and two crewmates returned home early today (late Tuesday, Eastern time), landing safely in Kazakhstan in a Russian-made Soyuz space capsule. Now that their 163-day mission is over, I will certainly miss the almost daily stream of pictures Noguchi shared with his 250,000 online followers.

To mark this astroartist's homecoming, I assembled a gallery for NPR's Picture Show blog with several memorable images Noguchi sent back to Earth over the past few months. One favorite (below) shows the shuttle Discovery backing away from the space station over the Caribbean at the end of a two-week visit in April:

How will art historians of the future look back on the first five decades of Earth photos taken by astronauts such as Noguchi? Will the Japanese engineer's Twitpics someday be hung in museums and studied like the work of 19th century American landscape painters? Perhaps, if those images end up changing the way we look at our world, just as paintings by artists such as Thomas Cole defined how Americans of his day looked at the vast, beautiful spaces they too were settling.

As Arthur C. Clarke once said:

"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars."

(The NASA photo of Noguchi above was taken Feb. 18 by one of his space station crewmates. Noguchi's quote about his photography comes from an item posted Tuesday by CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood.)

Huxley's Anti-Social Media

2010-05-10T23:04:00.004-04:00

"But people never are alone now.... We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it."

-- "His Fordship" Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller for Western Europe in the frighteningly harmonious 26th Century World State of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World"

(Image of the original 1932 cover of Huxley's novel from an online edition hosted by the Lambertville Free Public Library. See Chapter 17 for the quote above.)

Chinese Rail Links Growing Fast to Going Fast

2010-05-02T23:48:00.006-04:00

Work and family travel have kept me on the road for much of the past few weeks, including a couple of trips on Amtrak's decade-old high-speed Acela line. I actually began composing this posting aboard an Acela, zipping from Philadelphia to Washington earlier today, but the trip was too quick for me to finish.

The truth is Acela's "high speed" status is marginal in most cases. Sure, it saved me a critical half hour getting from a meeting in downtown Boston to an event in downtown New York the week before last. But while Acela can achieve speeds of 150 miles per hour, it only averages about half that on the busy tracks of the northeast corridor. In most cases, that means Acela's time savings over Amtrak's traditional train service do not exceed the significant cost difference.

But would a really speedy Acela change that equation?

A new rail line operated by the Guangzhou Railway Group in China suggests what a difference even higher-speed trains could make for travelers in the United States someday.

The "Harmony express" began operating between the cities of Wuhan in and Guangzhou late last year, turning what was an 11-hour journey on older trains into a three-hour trip between the two provincial capitals. (The image above -- from Xinhua, China's state-run news agency -- shows a train operator's view accelerating out of Wuhan.)

China's Harmony trains race along at 210 miles per hour. That's about 30 miles per hour faster than Japan's Shinkansens and France's TGV.

A Harmony-fast train could cover the distance from Boston to New York in less than an hour -- compared to the three-and-a-half it took me on Acela.

China's investment in that kind of convenience and rail speed is significant: $17 billion on the Wuhan-Guangzhou line alone. That's more than twice the $8 billion in stimulus money that Congress approved in 2009 as a initial five-year investment in faster train service for the entire United States.

And as NPR's Beijing correspondent Anthony Kuhn pointed out in a Weekend Edition Sunday story back in January, the Wuhan-Guangzhou route is far from the end of the line: "China plans to spend $300 billion in the next decade to build the world's most extensive and advanced high-speed rail network."

Anthony's report made me seriously jealous. A sometimes frustrating thing about being an editor is spending most of your time at your desk and in meetings while your coworkers go out and do things like ride high-speed trains across China. The closest I could get was e-mailing him about the experience afterward.

Anthony told me the new rail service was comparable to other high-speed trains he's traveled on in Europe and Asia:

"I've been on France's TGV and Japan's 'bullet trains,' and the new Chinese train compared very favorably. In fact so much so that I was almost nostalgic for the old-style 'hard sleeper berths,' the somewhat claustrophobic, lumbering trains that I took many a ride on here in the '80s or '90s. It's a great way to meet folks and learn about China -- provided that you're not in a hurry."

Whether Chinese passengers will be willing to pay higher fares for the convenience of the new rail service was very much an open question, Anthony told me:

"The meat of this debate is whether China's huge investment will pay off. Beijing's attitude is 'build it and they will come.' With rail, I think that is basically a good bet, but. . . it will take time for incomes to rise to the point where large numbers of people are willing to spend money to save time. China's middle class is robust in absolute numbers (200 million?) but anemic in proportion to the whole country."

A contrast to U.S. plans for high-speed rail that Anthony noted was the speed with which the Chinese line was built:

"One thing that I didn't get to mention in the piece is that the new line goes through some very mountainous territory on the border between Hunan and Guangdong provinces, and so a lot of the line runs over bridges and through tunnels. It's quite something that they managed to complete the whole thing in just four years. During China's first experiment with railroads at the end of the last imperial dynasty, they tried to build a railway along the same route and it took them about 40 years."

One traveler advisory for anyone planning to book a trip: The stations for China's new trains are not especially convenient -- about an hour's drive from the downtowns on either end of the Harmony's route, as a Financial Times report noted.

Anthony's experience certainly echoed the FT on that detail:

"I almost didn't get to my train in time. The Wuhan station was way out in the suburbs, and the traffic snarled so bad on the way there that I had to hop out of my cab and leg it for about a mile to get past the jam and get in another cab. I thought urban rail was supposed to take people form one city center to another. One passenger pointed out to me, though, that the urban sprawl would soon consume that suburb, and it would soon just be another urban district."

In China, it seems, developing high-speed rail is seen as a fast-track for other kinds of development.

Here's Anthony's radio report about his trip from January:

Yuri Gagarin and the Face of God

2010-04-12T09:51:00.005-04:00

If you think science, religion and politics are a volatile mix in the United States, imagine what that combination must have been like in a state that was as steadfastly secular as the Soviet Union. Consider this story Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov once recounted about his friend Yuri Gagarin, whose Vostok 1 mission made him the first human to fly into space and orbit the Earth -- 49 years ago today:

"Shortly after Yuri Gagarin returned from his first spaceflight a reception was held in his honor, and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexis I, was present. 'When you were in space,' he asked Yuri, 'did you see God?' Yuri said he had not. 'Please, my son,' Alexis replied, 'keep that to yourself.' A little later Nikita Khrushchev posed the same question. Out of respect for Alexis I, this time Yuri said he had. 'Dear Yuri,' Khrushchev entreated, 'please don't say a word about that to anyone.'"

(From "Two Sides of the Moon" -- a 2004 Moon race memoir Leonov wrote jointly with U.S. Astronaut David Scott. Photo from the Russian Institute of Radionavigation via Wikimedia Commons.)

Digesting the News

2010-03-19T12:14:00.007-04:00

The food for thought was piled high and served on large platters throughout a seminar I attended last week about leading newsrooms of the future. I was a visiting faculty member during the six-day session at the Poynter Institute, a training center for media types in St. Petersburg, Fla. And by the time we finished, my brain was very full, stuffed with ideas and information about how to better serve a fast-changing news audience

Afterward, I drove across the state to visit family in Vero Beach. That's where I went to an art show and discovered the two whimsical images above by artist Kenneth Dames. (They are reproduced here with Dr. Dames' permission.) With all the conversations of the previous few days, the poses in both of Dames' images reminded me of the way technology has changed how U.S. consumers interact with the news. See how the newspaper reader on the left is relaxed, legs crossed, settled in for a leisurely read. The person on the right is multitasking, leaning forward into the laptop screen while juggling a mobile phone.

The multitasker is a perfect stand-in for the busy, workday user that has dominated most American news sites' Web traffic for a decade and a half. The familiar track of hourly online page views curves up steeply with the start of the East Coast workday, levels off by mid-morning on its way to a lunch-break peak, before sloping off at quitting time. The end-of-the-day slope has been steep for sites based in the east, and more gradual for those with many West Coast users. Weekends were as dependably flat as a drive across central Florida.

Now, after years of predictability, those patterns are shifting slightly. The rise of home broadband access and social media seem to be manifesting in increasing evening and weekend traffic for some news sites. And the mobile Web's long-awaited appearance in the United States is creating different online audiences during the commuting hours and on weekend days as well.

The question of the moment is whether the latest e-readers -- iPads, Nooks, Kindles and the like -- will create yet another kind of user, one who is more like the newspaper reader pictured on the left. These gizmos are quite different from smart phones, netbooks and other portable tools, all of which have workday if not at-work uses. You can steal glances at an iPhone during a meeting and no one would know if you were checking e-mails from the boss or toying with a favorite site or app. Haul out a 10-by-8-inch, pound-and-a-half iPad and you might as well just start flipping through the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly or Southern Living at the board room table.

E-readers are for living rooms, coffee shops and park benches. They are for people who have time to read and listen and browse and savor. If they take hold with large numbers of people, news sites might once again begin see changing user patterns -- with longer time-on-site numbers, growing page-per-visit counts, and increased traffic at traditionally off hours. And those patterns will in turn change the way online news managers program, present and perhaps even schedule their content. Rather than echoing story selections aimed at serving the grazing habits of workplace news skimmers, media sites may find that their e-reader users are in the mood for a more contemplative, transportive or analytical experience.

As it happens, NPR (my employer) announced plans for launching an iPad-friendly version of our Web site and a related app earlier this week.

"Audience is strategy," a panelist told our group of media managers at last week's Poynter seminar.

And platforms create audiences.

But no matter which audience you belong to, please wash your hands before returning to your work computer.

Predictions Take Flight: The Future As Seen in 1910

2010-01-01T02:03:00.008-05:00

New Year's invites predictions. New Year's at the start of a decade seems to beg for them. Looking back at past predictions is a helpful way to keep all the current prognosticating in perspective.

One cautionary example: a forecast for the coming decade in aviation published 100 years ago.

It appeared in the January 2, 1909, edition of the New York Times -- in the "Automobile" section -- under the headline, "Limit of Flight Not Yet Reached." The author was Cortlandt Field Bishop, an early aviator and president of the Aero Club of America. Bishop wrote about the "astonishing development of aeronautics" in the half-dozen years since the Wright Brothers historic flight in North Carolina. "That the advancement of human flight has exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the boldest and most enthusiastic follower of the sport must be admitted, and it would seem the wildest prediction as to the future may not be classed as impossible," he said.

But the writer's personal predictions were fairly reserved. Wing design, engine power, control issues and safety considerations meant "the practicability of the heavier-than-air machine is still far in the future," Bishop said:

"From an experimental standpoint aviation has graduated into actuality. It is a lasting tribute to the inventive genius and ingenuity of man, but the question of adaptability to commercial purposes and practical uses is yet far removed. The practical heavier-than-air machine is not here, and it is doubtful whether this decade will ever see it."

Early aviators had pulled off headline-grabbing feats in the final months of 1909. Wilbur Wright himself had soared over New York City and even circled the Statue of Liberty during a series of demonstrations that fall. Two weeks later, Count Charles de Lambert made an unannounced half-hour flight high above Paris, circling the Eiffel Tower in yet another Wright-made aircraft.

But the capabilities, range and safety of those early airplanes were still extremely limited. Focusing on those realities, Bishop cautioned that the new flying machines would be of "doubtful value in warfare," except perhaps for certain surveillance missions. Any "suggestion of equipping heavier-than-air machines with small guns" was simply impractical, he wrote, and "the use of aeroplanes at night for warfare purposes is entirely out of the question."

The Aero Club president also reminded readers that using aircraft to transport "cargo of any weight" was "impossible" at that point -- "but progress is being made rapidly and a revolution of the science may accomplish wonders."

Overall, Bishop hoped the aeroplane would quickly evolve from being a vehicle primarily used for stunts and experimentation to one that could become a dependable personal transport -- a flying motorcycle with longish range:

"For some considerable time the practicability of the heavier-than-air machine will be confined to record-breaking flights and gradual improvements in construction, and it will be a pleasant recreation for the owner of an aeroplane to jump into his machine and make a short call on a friend at a distance of from ten to 100 miles and return, but while many changes in mechanical flights will be accomplished in the next decade, the social life will not be disturbed and conditions will exist similar to those of the present day."

So how did our prognosticator do? Well, by 1911, a year after Bishop's article appeared in the Times, the first air mail routes were sprouting in various places around the world. Within a few years aircraft were conducting military reconnaissance and bombing missions over Europe. Aerial combat quickly followed -- changing warfare forever.

The aeroplane's far-off future arrived ahead of schedule. But Bishop had no reason to be ashamed of his forecast. After all, no less an aviation authority than Wilbur Wright had once famously told his brother "that man would not fly for fifty years." That was 1901 -- just two years before their breakthrough at Kitty Hawk.

"Ever since," Wright said, "I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions."

(Image above from Wikimedia Commons: A Wright Military Flyer arrives at Ft. Myer in Northern Virginia in 1908.)

NASA Plays Asteroids: Leapfroging to Mars?

2009-12-27T14:14:00.012-05:00

Asteroids, the iconic video game of the early 1980s, marked its thirtieth anniversary last month. You can honor the occasion by shooting up some space rocks in the embedded player above or by playing on the official Atari Web site.

NASA recently dropped more than 1.2 billion quarters on its own version of the game with its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The space agency launched the $320 million orbiting observatory earlier this month in part to help identify previously unknown asteroids and comets, among other astronomical objects.

And if President Obama takes the advice of an advisory commission that looked at the space program's future, an even higher-stakes version of Atari's arcade classic could be in the works -- one that would involve sending astronauts on a mission to explore one of the nearby planetoids.

A number of robotic space probes have already paid visits to asteroids and other Near Earth Objects (or NEOs) in recent years. The image here shows the shadow of Japan's Hayabusa space probe as it passed over a half-kilometer-long, potato-shaped object called Itokawa in 2005 (click to enlarge). Hayabusa's seven-year mission is scheduled to end this coming June when it returns to Earth with a small sample from the asteroid's surface.

Space scientists have been eying asteroids as potential destinations for human explorers as well -- possibly as a more challenging alternative to the Moon missions envisioned for the end of the coming decade. October's brief suborbital test flight of a rocket intended to be a key component of NASA's future lunar expeditions gave the Moon plans an equally brief burst of attention. But so far Congress and the public just have not shown sustained interest in paying for what critics have dismissed as a been-there-done-that sequel to NASA's late-1960s lunar triumphs.

As the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee noted in its final report this fall, the space agency won't be able to meet its 2020 time line for returning to the Moon with its current funding levels. The advisory panel offered the new administration several recommendations for moving forward, such as using new commercially developed spacecraft to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station after NASA retires its space shuttle fleet. That would free the agency to concentrate on human exploration instead. But exploration of what?

The main reason for going back to the Moon was to provide a stepping stone for an eventual trek to Mars. But an asteroid or some other object might be a more remote -- and more exciting -- destination, beyond the immediate gravitational neighborhood of the home planet. The technological, navigational and biological challenges of a months-long roundtrip journey would provide a better testing ground for an even lengthier Mars mission.

Others in the space community have been thinking along these lines for some time. The idea got a serious hearing during a high-level, two-day workshop on space exploration at Stanford University in February 2008. In a paper summarizing the discussion, the workshop's organizers said missions to near-Earth asteroids -- or perhaps the asteroid-like Martian moon Phobos -- would offer "valuable rewards in their own right, in addition to advancing the capability for sending astronauts on long interplanetary voyages. But their greatest value could be to supply what is missing in the current human space-exploration plan -- publicly engaging milestones on the road to Mars."

The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) made a similar case for sending human crews to NEOs in a 2004 report. One scenario that report examined: mounting a two-month expedition in 2025 to the asteroid 1999 A010 -- a journey that would require a yearlong roundtrip. A mission like that would "stretch the capabilities of human exploration just enough to greatly reduce the risk of the Mars missions to come," the IAA said, and therefore "play an important architectural role as a bridge between Earth's neighborhood and Mars."

The IAA also pointed out that asteroids could quite literally help build that bridge by providing relatively easy access to valuable minerals for future space colonists. "Importing materials from Earth to space is very expensive, so a key to establishing a permanent human presence in the solar system is to find means to utilize resources found in space," the report said. Scouting missions would help determine whether rocky space islands offer opportunities "to develop in situ resources including the production of energy, fuel and construction materials."

"Because NEO's have very low gravity, transportation of these resources to other locations can be done relatively inexpensively, and thus they could be extremely useful in the development of a long-term human presence in space. Early human explorers at NEO's could complete resource assays begun by robotic missions, select the best locations for resource processing units, and initiate their operation. It may also be determined that NEO resources have commercial potential, in which case larger-scale processing operations requiring human presence may be appropriate."

And if the idea of space mines doesn't capture the imagination, there's always the doom-and-gloom angle: Passing asteroids pose threats to life on Earth, as the popular press enjoys reminding the public every time a NEO is projected to tumble into our vicinity. A 2007 NASA study ordered up by Congress looked at a variety of techniques for changing the course of a threatening asteroid or comet. It detailed all kinds of diversion techniques -- from nuclear options to "gravity tractors." The study also outlined various manned and unmanned opportunities for learning more about what the report called "Potentially Hazardous Objects," or PHOs. (It's a NASA study -- an abbreviation is required.)

So would any of those reasons be enough to reengage the public in making big investments in human space exploration during a time of war and economic distress?

We'll see if the White House and Congress are willing to line up their quarters for a multibillion-dollar round of Asteroids -- or whether other, more terrestrial games take precedence. In the mean time, Hollywood already has ideas for its own expensive version of Asteroids. Over the summer, blockbuster film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura ("G.I. Joe," "Transformers") secured the film rights to Atari's arcade game. Tentative release date for Asteroids, the movie: 2012.

(Japanese space agency image of the Itokawa asteroid shown above from The Planetary Society.)

A Flight Plan for California's Aerial Giant

2009-11-30T22:41:00.004-05:00

This grainy nighttime picture of a zeppelin passing over a deco hotel in Los Angeles looks like it might have been shot in the 1930s. But it actually was taken with my iPhone on Sunset Boulevard two weekends ago.

Airship Eureka is the same Silicon Valley-based zeppelin that I traveled on over the summer, when it last ventured down the coast for a few days of L.A.-area tourist flights. I happened to be in town last week, too, and spotted the 246-foot, helium-filled craft several times while I was there -- in the air over Interstate 405 and above West Hollywood, and on the ground at the airport in Long Beach.

Long Beach also was the destination at the end of my July flight from Eureka's home at Moffett Field near San Jose. That 9-hour, 20-minute trip offered spectacular views down most of the length of the Golden State. We also made an unexpected pass over the media swarm that had gathered near Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch to cover the pop icon's death a few days earlier -- a test flight for the zeppelin's potential as a platform for TV crews.

Photo highlights from my trip are linked here and embedded in a slideshow below. But few of those shots convey how enormous Eureka is. From the ground, it might look like the kind of blimps that often circle over sporting events. But this zeppelin -- different from a blimp because of its semi-rigid framework inside -- is closer in length to a Boeing 747 or a colossal U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy cargo jet.

Enthusiasts of lighter-than-air vehicles such as the historic zeppelins of the early 20th century have been waiting decades for an airship renaissance. They imagine a time when aerial giants are once again common sights over big cities, if not to ferry passengers than perhaps to deliver airborne cargo to hard-to-reach destinations. Economics and aerodynamics have thwarted many such ventures over the years, as I noted in a previous posting. But those past failures aren't daunting the founders of Airship Ventures, Eureka's California operator.

Company president Brian Hall is a software entrepreneur with a soft spot for technologies that "ended prematurely" or were never "fully explored." He and his wife obtained their Zeppelin NT under a long-term lease from the legendary German airship-builder. The Halls' immediate plan for their zeppelin -- one of just three such aircraft operating around the world -- was to launch a high-end "flight-seeing" business for tourists and charter passengers, supplemented by the kind of sponsorship dollars long associated with traditional blimp operations. In an in-flight interview during my flight, Hall said "healthy profits" appeared to be in reach -- probably within a year, despite the hardly buoyant economy in which the privately held enterprise lifted off in the fall of 2008. Hall also said he eventually hopes to operate an additional airship or two, including one possibly based on the U.S. East Coast.

The longer-term plans for Airship Ventures are even more ambitious. Hall explained that the company's "public-facing business" -- tourism and advertising -- was designed in part to support the development of new and improved airships while also providing a showcase for their future potential. And as those vehicles become available, Hall clearly indicated he wants to be among the first in line to capitalize on their capabilities. "I don’t think it's the best airship," Hall said of Eureka as we passed a few thousand feet over the California coast south of Santa Barbara. "I think it's the best airship you can buy."

What could a better airship do? Hall said improvements in propulsion and range will turn future zeppelins into fuel-efficient, stable and highly maneuverable platforms for lucrative government work -- such as aerial surveillance flights for military or homeland security missions that would benefit from an airship's ability to "loiter" for long periods over fixed points. Heavy-lift cargo assignments, especially in areas without significant infrastructure, were another possibility Hall mentioned. And the same long-distance, long-duration capabilities required for those assignments also could lead to grander travel possibilities, such as the trans-oceanic passenger flights that ended with the Hindenburg disaster of 1937.

One way that Airship Ventures is trying to demonstrate the potential of current and future zeppelins is by leasing out the Eureka for scientific work -- like the kind of atmospheric research done by NASA. Conveniently the aerospace agency's Ames Research Center is the landlord for Eureka's Moffett Field hanger. And a few weeks ago, researchers from NASA's Earth Science Division at Ames hired out the airship for eight hours to test its uses as an experimental observation platform.

Hall also told me he was talking to researchers from other scientific institutions about ways to take advantage of Eureka's ability to unobtrusively study whales and other marine life. A stunning overhead photograph of a blue whale recently posted on Airship Venture's Web site may help make that case.

Hall said earlier airship start-ups led by entrepreneurs with similar goals and visions foundered over the years because they tried to do too much too fast. In contrast, Hall said his company was slowly cultivating the technology, know-how and market for innovative new lighter-than-air craft. "We're building a foundation," he said.

As Hall and I finished our interview, I rejoined the handful of other passengers, taking in views of Malibu and the passing coastline out the port-side windows of Eureka's 30-foot gondola. A short time later, we soared over Santa Monica Pier and into the heart of Los Angeles. We watched jumbo jets land below us as we passed over busy LAX. And a few of us took turns snapping pictures of each other sticking our heads out one of the windows -- not something you can do on many other aircraft these days.

As we neared Long Beach, one of our two pilots -- Fritz Guenther, on loan from the airship's manufacturer -- provided some last-minute instructions to the passengers about the arrival procedures. We applauded -- perhaps prematurely. "We're not done yet," Guenther reminded us. "We have to land." But after that flight, it was hard not to be a little enthusiastic.

Reality is for the earthbound.

(Photos by the author. Click into the gallery for captions.)

Putting the 'Public' in Public Media

2009-10-17T12:06:00.003-04:00

What's the public's role in PUBLIC media's future, particularly in shaping and contributing content? That's the subject of a two-day "unconference" that began this morning on the campus of American University in Washington, D.C.

What the heck is an unconference? An increasingly popular form of informal build-your-own-agenda event, also called a "BarCamp". As veteran "camp" councilor Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs explained to the crowd of several hundred attendees at the start of the day, "Why isn't there a sign for where the bathroom is? Because you didn't put it up."

Public Media Camp was organized by NPR, PBS and A.U.'s Center for Social Media to kickoff an initiative to "strengthen the relationship that public broadcasters have with their communities through the creation of collaborative projects." The meeting attracted a diverse group from across the country -- executives and journalists, technologists and designers, fund-raisers and funders, students, professors, "citizen journalists," and many independent content creators and freelancers, both on-air and online. There's no shortage of laptops and iPhones, so the discussions are easy to follow at #pubcamp on Twitter.

Camp convened this rainy morning with about an hour of introductions. Each attendee was supposed to very briefly introduce themselves -- although few stuck to three three-word limit. As I did at Government 2.0 Camp, a similar event for public sector types that I attended in March, I tried to jot down a few three-word introductions that captured the spirit of this gathering. A dozen or so that resonated with me...

"digital immigrant party-crasher"
"oldest laptop here"
"old socialized anarchist"
"veteran, strategy, unemployed"
"geeky journalism student"
"social media skeptic"
"community, widgets, caffeinated"
"content, convergence, management"
"content, content, content"
"open development, sharing"
"more system collaboration"
"drive web traffic"
"it's cold outside"

And my favorite: "AOL, Friendster, future" -- care of Andrew Phelps from WBUR.org. "My point," he explains "...is that platforms come and go but community is forever." (Andrew also may be the funniest person at Pubcamp.)

My own three words: "public media newbie," having moved to NPR just 12 weeks ago after a couple of decades working on the editorial and business sides at traditional, for-profit news organizations, mostly trying to help print journalism find its way online. Much to learn still, even after 13 years in this not-so-new media business -- especially when it comes to how we engage our audience. But one thing I know: There's no way to be interactive without interacting.

Quotes From the Future: Ted Kennedy's Political Force

2009-08-26T10:34:00.003-04:00

"We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make."

-- Edward M. Kennedy, quoted in this morning's New York Times obituary for the Massachusetts senator. The line comes from a speech Kennedy delivered when he received an honorary degree at Harvard last December.

In nearly two decades of Washington journalism, I have never come anywhere near as close to stumping a lawmaker as I did when I was a 12-year-old volunteer on Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential bid.

My volunteer work on Kennedy's campaign for the Democratic nomination had nothing to do with politics. My sixth-grade political views were embryonic, at best. But the campaign staff conveniently located their D.C. headquarters in an abandoned Cadillac dealership on 22nd Street NW, just a couple of blocks from my mother's office. Having nothing better to do with her pesky son when school was out, she took me to work with her and then dispatched me to the Kennedy HQ down the street. And the campaign staff kept me plenty busy: I worked in the mail room; I photocopied donor checks and FEC documents; I fed audio clips to local radio stations over the phone; I couriered packages across town; I helped set up chairs for a fund-raiser on the lawn at the senator's McLean home. It was like a wonky summer camp.

As the Democratic primaries wound down in early June, Kennedy came by the office to thank the troops. This was my opportunity to get the candidate to sign one of the black-and-white photos that I had signed in his name for many supporters when I worked in the mail room.

When my turn came to shake the senator's hand, the only thing I could think to say perfectly captured my lifelong geekiness:

"May the Force be with you, Senator."

What else would a 12-year-old say in 1980? "The Empire Strikes Back" had just come out in theaters.

Kennedy was baffled. "Uh, thank you -- very much," he said in that distinctive "Kennedy accent." Then he signed his picture and moved on.

His brother John may have charted humanity's path to the Moon, but Senator Kennedy clearly was wondering how his campaign had been infiltrated by a little alien from a galaxy very far away.

The Very Model of a Modern Mobile Admiral

2009-08-12T02:10:00.004-04:00

Admiral Thad W. Allen is a Webby guy. The commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard is on Facebook. He blogs, he tweets, he podcasts. And he carries around a coffee mug.

The admiral explained how and why online communications is changing the seafaring business in a recent interview with gCaptain, a Web site for maritime professionals. While much of the discussion was technical, given the audience, Allen also made broader points about why shipping may have been a late-adopter compared to other, less tradition-bound transportation sectors.

Here's an except from gCaptain editor John Konrad's interview with Allen:

"...What I try to do is compare and contrast the aviation community with the sea-going community. The aviation industry is a product of the 20th century. Because there was such a premium placed on safety, with many passenger and cargo flight incidents early on, our air traffic control system is now one of the safest and most transparent operations that you will see anywhere. Pilots are used to being given commands to go from point A to point B and cleared for a specific altitude, then cleared for final and cleared to land. That type of control in the maritime environment is something no one has ever seen and will probably take some getting use to.

"For a thousand years we have operated on the water where anonymity was a proprietary advantage, you didn't want anyone to know where you were going based on what goods you were carrying or what the markets were doing. The fact is that modern economics is driving us in a direction, not solely because of safety and security, but as a profit motive for visibility of the supply chain. Business managers want to know, anywhere in the world, the location of a container and this information is not possible without knowing the location of the vessel carrying it.

"So I think we are being pressed this way for economics but on the safety and security side the automation of our vessels and its sensors makes it possible to be anywhere on the ship and understand the entire operation. The days of wipers, oilers and engineering officers making rounds is rapidly disappearing. For example, I've made the comment that our new national security cutter, the Bertholf, is really a computer with a ship attached.

"I am not sure it's a matter of everyone having to change. I think it's a new environment and operators have to realize this or be overtaken."

(Coast Guard photo above by Petty Officer 1st Class Thomas McKenzie.)

Quotes From the Future: 'No Bucks, No Buck Rogers'

2009-07-30T21:19:00.004-04:00

"It would be like your mom saying to you when you were a teenager, 'Here's your lunch money and, by the way, I want you to buy yourself a car, so you can't borrow ours.' And you'd say, 'Well, mom, I've only got lunch money.' 'Well, I don't care. You go get a car.'"

-- Apollo 12 Astronaut Alan Bean, on the July 17 episode of NPR's Science Friday, explaining why he thinks NASA's budget is inadequate to pay for the agency's current plans to return to the Moon by 2020.

(The NASA photograph of Alan Bean shown here was taken by Apollo 12 mission commander Charles "Pete" Conrad during their November 1969 mission to the moon's surface. If you click to enlarge that image you'll see Conrad's reflection in Bean's visor.)

Search and Sensibility: The Romance of Microsoft and Yahoo's Courtship

2009-07-30T01:22:00.005-04:00

Microsoft and Yahoo's long trip down the aisle has been worthy of Jane Austen, beginning with months of awkward flirting and unrequited passes. But after 18 months of courting, the two families were pleased to formally announce the companies' pending marriage. All are invited.

Microsoft comes to the deal with a much-needed dowry for struggling Yahoo. But the pair's future will depend just as much on what investors and regulators think of this arrangement as it will on the technology and marketing smarts this union would combine.

I rounded up some background and instant analysis on NPR's All Tech Considered blog this afternoon (my first item for NPR.org). Commenters chimed in as well.

One wrote, "I heard that Google is giving them a lovely toaster"

Asked another, "Where are they registered, eBay?"

In that posting I also wrote about the "Microhoo" label and some of the other clever names that headline writers and bloggers have used to shorthand this deal. My new favorite is "Yang," which combines "Yahoo" with "Bing," the new Microsoft search engine. Only trouble is whether Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang would nix THAT merger, as he did so many others before stepping down as CEO last year.

(Image above: Thomas Sully's 1834 painting, "The Love Letter," at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology.)

'The Moon Is Our Paris': Lindbergh and the Legacy of Apollo 11

2009-07-19T00:25:00.004-04:00

(Above: Aviator Charles Lindbergh, left, and rocket designer Wernher von Braun in a 1969 NASA photo from the Lindbergh Picture Collection at Yale University.)

This posting is adapted from my final "Futurist" column for Congressional Quarterly, which appears in the July 20 issue of CQ Weekly.

My grandfather attended many space launches as a senior IBM contractor during NASA's moon program. But it's the parties before and after each mission that still loom large in his memory -- particularly the one on the eve of the historic circumlunar flight of Apollo 8 late in 1968, when he met Charles Lindbergh.

Lindbergh, who was 66 by then, was chatting with Wernher von Braun, the German rocket pioneer and mastermind of NASA's towering moon ships, before my grandfather introduced himself to the famed aviator. Astronauts were in attendance, too. But in a room full of heroes, Lindy was the brightest star -- the man who inspired many people there to go into aviation and the aerospace business. Just like that evening's host, astronaut Wally Schirra, my grandfather was 4 years old when Lindbergh made his solo flight across the Atlantic, 41 years before.

Now, as the world recalls the Cold War space race, which culminated with the Apollo 11 landing 40 years ago this week, Lindbergh's legacy once again seems to put into perspective what Neil Armstrong hailed as a "giant leap for mankind."

Von Braun often cited Lindbergh's 1927 flight when answering critics, who wondered if the billions the United States spent sending astronauts to the moon was worth the investment. "I do not think that anyone believed that his sole purpose was simply to get to Paris," von Braun would say, explaining that Lindbergh's true objective was to capture the public's imagination by dramatically demonstrating the possibility of trans-oceanic flight. "In the Apollo program," von Braun sometimes said, "the moon is our Paris."

Much had indeed changed between Lindbergh's flight and the Apollo launches, two of which he attended. Just a few months before Apollo 8's first flight around the moon and a year before Apollo 11's landing, Boeing rolled out the first of its huge new 747 jumbo jets, capable of ferrying hundreds of passengers thousands of miles in nonstop luxury. Orbiting satellites were beginning to beam television signals and other communications around the globe in an instant. And the aerospace industry's needs were accelerating the development of smaller, faster computers.

And since Apollo? In some ways, technological developments in aerospace have continued along the same flight plan. Satellites, for instance, helped enable worldwide computer and telecommunications networks that simultaneously permit an airline passenger with a laptop to answer e-mail at 30,000 feet and a pilot in Nevada to fly robotic aircraft in combat missions on the other side of the planet.

NASA has continued to accumulate achievements, from the unmanned probes that have wandered the surface of Mars and the edges of the solar system to the Hubble Telescope, whose recent repair by a space shuttle crew was also a reminder that humans still have something to contribute to space exploration.

But von Braun would have been disappointed by the space program's pace, without a Paris or a moon race to galvanize the public's imagination. In the final days of Apollo, before policy makers lowered their gaze to more urgent matters on this planet, the rocket engineer detailed ambitious plans for putting astronauts on Mars in the 1980s. Under NASA's current plans, in contrast, astronauts won't return to the moon's surface before 2019 -- fully half a century since Armstrong took his first steps. In fact, the next person to walk on the moon might not have any memory of the moment when the first humans landed there; as noted in a previous posting here, six of the nine astronaut candidates NASA named last month were born after July 20, 1969.

Twenty five years ago, President Ronald Reagan challenged NASA to work with other countries to "develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade." Over budget and more than a decade late, the International Space Station really opened for business Oct. 31, 2000, when a rocket carrying its first long-term crew lifted off from a Russian spaceport. And that orbiting outpost has now served as home for a continuous succession of visitors for more than 104 consecutive months.

But does continuous mean permanent? Is that Apollo's legacy?

Future history books might remember either the space station or the Apollo moon landings as the beginning of humanity's extraterrestrial colonization. Or perhaps these "small steps" will turn out to be more like L'Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland, the location of an 11th century Norse sailing camp. That temporary settlement, rediscovered by archeologists in 1960, predated the voyages of Columbus by half a millennium, making it Europe's earliest known toehold in the New World.

But "permanent" European colonization of the North American continent would not begin until centuries later.

The timeline for the next major phase of human migration will probably be measured in similar increments -- not in 40-year or 80-year spans. But, as Lindbergh wrote in Life magazine around the time of the Apollo 11 landing, scientific accomplishment is "not an end." It's "a path leading to and disappearing in mystery."

Mostly Cloudy: Reporter From 1981 TV Story Updates Media Forecast

2009-07-14T00:14:00.006-04:00

As a certified broadcast meteorologist, Steve Newman probably knows all about the perils of predicting the weather in front of a large audience. But over the past year or so, the former TV weatherman received a lot of media attention for a different kind of forecast: a local news story he did in 1981 about how the San Francisco Examiner was experimenting with a downloadable electronic edition for home computers -- and what that might mean for the future of news. Newman posted his 18-year-old TV report on YouTube early last year, and since then this historic artifact has become a much-circulated and much-discussed hit among media types, bloggers and j-school students. (Skip on down below if you've already seen this clip....)

Newman was KRON-TV's science editor when that story aired. Not many of those left in local TV. Now Newman lives in Pilot Point, Texas, and is executive editor of Earthweek -- a Web site and syndicated column that began life as a print feature in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1988.

After hearing audio from his 1981 report used on the May 29 episode of NPR's "On the Media", Newman shared his brief reminiscence about the story -- and his updated forecast -- which co-host Bob Garfield then read on the June 12 program....

"We in print and TV all thought back then that we would eventually prosper and thrive in the new media. I felt so confident in the Internet's future nearly 20 years later in 1998 that I quit a lucrative TV career to focus on my syndicated newspaper column -- 'Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet' -- and its online component. Now the newspaper version is threatened with extinction and the Web version doesn't make enough to live on. Local TV news is no longer an option for someone who has matured with a face meant for the radio. It's a good thing I invested somewhat well."

New Astronauts: The Next Small Steps

2009-07-12T02:17:00.005-04:00

The next person to set foot on the Moon might not have any memory of the moment when the first astronauts landed there 40 years ago this month.

Six of the nine astronaut candidates named by NASA on June 29 were born after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made their giant leap for mankind. This diverse group of future space travelers range in age from 30 to 43; the average age is 37.

As noted here last summer, when the deadline loomed for aspiring astronauts to submit their resume, more than 3,500 people raised their hands. The planned retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet at the end of next year means the new kinds of missions for whom this team was chosen will be far different from most of their predecessors' jobs. That means different kind of training, which begins next month at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston.

Here's a bit about what the previous group of 11 astronaut candidates went through after their selection in 2004.

(Image: Artist's rendering of the proposed Altair lunar lander from NASA)

Frankenpaper and the Monster Mashup

2009-07-09T23:38:00.007-04:00

For anyone whose ever worked in the newspaper business, watching the industry's struggles to rebuild itself can feel a bit like being one of Dr. Frankenstein's horrified friends in the 1931 film version of Mary Shelley's novel.

The illustration above by my friend Eric MacDicken captures the horror I've been feeling as newspapers, reanimated somewhat online but stitched together with lifeless lines of business, try to lift themselves from the table -- perhaps to ultimately turn on and destroy their crazed makers.

The industry's desperate and circuitous debates -- about online subscriptions, PDF editions and how to reestablish mass market media dominance in a highly niched, multimedia world -- hint to me of a self-destructive Frankenstein-like madness.

But others in the media business see very different monsters.

Les Hinton, Dow Jones' chief executive and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, recently described Google as a Dracula-like figure, feeding on the blood of traditional media institutions -- by which Hinton meant freely distributed Web content.

I saw Hinton's remarks in a Crain's New York Business report on his speech at last month's PricewaterhouseCoopers Entertainment and Media Outlook event. Google may not have started out "in a cave as a digital vampire per se," the newspaper executive told the audience. "The charitable view of Google is that the news business itself fed Google's taste for this kind of blood." By giving away content, Hinton said, newspapers "gave Google's fangs a great place to bite.... We will never know what might have happened had newspapers taken a different approach."

Many in the news business share this view of Count Googlia -- but not me. Perhaps as an editor of Web sites that have long depended on search engines such as Google to help drive traffic and new users to support their ad businesses, I'm just a Renfeld-like minion....

"I am here to do your bidding, Master. I am your slave, and you will reward me, for I shall be faithful.... I await your commands, and you will not pass me by, will you, dear Master, in your distribution of good things?" (From "Dracula," by Bram Stoker, Chapter 8)

Those who feel otherwise, who agree that Google is the vile blood-sucker that Professor Van Hinton warned about, can comfort themselves by putting virtual garlic flowers and pay walls around their necks. After all, cutting off the Googlebot's ability to find and link to one's content is a technological snap.

So if Google really is villainous, why haven't more news organizations stabbed it in its algorithmic heart? Because most advertising-supported Web sites understand that the bite out of their own page views and user counts would be far more fatal than the one Dow Jones' CEO fears.

(Note on the illustrations above: Eric MacDicken, who designed the logo for this Web site, knows of what he draws at the top of this entry. He's done much work for a number of the major newspaper and other media industry groups -- including the logos and other materials used to promote the American Society of Newspaper Editor's "Sunshine Week" campaign. The Google logo is from the company's Oct. 31, 2005, homepage.)

Diversion to Neverland

2009-07-02T12:12:00.011-04:00

A full account of what I saw and learned during yesterday's amazing Zeppelin ride, which I mentioned earlier this week, is still in the works. But I did want to share a timely anecdote from the trip. The story does not say much about my beat -- the future -- but it does reveal a little about how my business, journalism, is deploying limited resources at a time of increased competition, dwindling audience and limited resources.

Brian Hall, president and co-founder of U.S. Zeppelin operator Airship Ventures, was on board serving as "flight attendant" for the five passengers, but he also had other business to attend to. For the first half of the trip, Hall and his colleague David Knight were in negotiations with TV networks about whether their airship, Eureka, could be used the next day to follow a motorcade that was expected to take Michael Jackson's body from L.A. to his former home at the Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County. While the 246-foot-long German-made airship is huge -- longer than a Boeing 747 -- the helium-filled vehicle's ability to travel slowly and hover in place for long stretches of time makes it an ideal platform for many media assignments -- better than a helicopter in a lot of ways.

The transit flight down the coast gave the Airship Ventures team a chance to plot the route and location. But by the time we arrived over the ranch, north of Los Olivos at 3 p.m. PT, the plans for the motorcade were off, and Eureka's services in the Michael Jackson media circus were no longer needed.

We did a few quick orbits over the property and the amazingly long line of TV trucks and other media vehicles along the road in front of the ranch. Then we continued along our way. "Hopefully we scored some air time," said Hall, whose company began offering aerial tours in the Bay Area last fall.

Here's one shot I took as we passed over the property. The building in the bottom left corner is a train station with a large floral clock out front. Jackson's famed amusement park rides are long gone....

And here's the roadside press encampment. Oh, the humanity....

I should note that I was a paying passenger on this trip, which I took on my own time and dime. I also just heard on TV that my erstwhile co-author, CNN's Larry King, is doing a special program on the Neverland Ranch tonight -- in case you want to see more of the place. Personally I think a lot of viewers have seen enough.

Airships: Real and Imagined

2009-07-01T03:55:00.004-04:00

This summer's Disney/Pixar film "Up" prominently features a classic airship, the "Spirit of Adventure" (shown above). A mock news reel shown at the beginning of the movie says the giant 1930s-era dirigible was as long as "22 Prohibition paddywagons" and served as the world-traveling home of historic adventurer Charles Muntz.

Those images captivate young Carl, the movie's protagonist -- much as images of the real-world dirigibles that inspired "Spirit of Adventure" first captured my imagination when I was eight-years-old. The idea of a flying ocean liner activated both my obsessive grade-schooler's focus on anything aeronautical and my matching interest in skyscrapers and other massive feats of human engineering.

Like Carl in "Up," the decades since then have done little to dim my fascination -- which perhaps explains why I am in Northern California tonight, too excited to sleep on the eve a 400-mile flight down the Pacific coast on a real German Zeppelin.

The airship Eureka, which I'm scheduled to ride tomorrow from Silicon Valley to Long Beach, is one of four such Zeppelin NTs built over the past dozen years. They were made by the corporate offspring of a company founded more than a century ago by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, an aviation pioneer whose name is now synonymous with these kinds of aircraft. But these new Zeppelins use helium for lift -- not the hydrogen used on the ill-fated Hindenburg.

The Hindenburg disaster ended the era luxurious, intercontinental airship travel more than 70 years ago. And yet classic airships continue to be a nostalgic fixture of science fiction and fantasy books and films -- from the floating electronic billboards of "Blade Runner" to the fleets of Zeppelins featured in the movie "Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow", Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" novels and Kenneth Oppel's "Airborn" series. Second Life users whose avatars are aspiring aeronauts can even buy and operate their own virtual airships, some of which take their names and designs from historical zeppelins and airfields -- or from even earlier ideas for sky boats.

Some in the aviation industry appear to share these romantic visions of large-scale, lighter-than-air travel -- as I noted last summer in a posting here about some real-world airship projects. These visions tend to focus on rigid or semi-rigid airships, rather than non-rigid blimps (the boneless chicken of airships), in part because their frames would allow for better engine placement for steering and greater capacity for carrying cargo or people. But grand dreams of environmentally friendly dirigibles efficiently hauling cargo or passengers across remote areas or around the globe always seem to encounter some kind of engineering, economic or institutional turbulence.

ZLT Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH & Co KG, the company that built the airship I'm scheduled to ride a few hours now, is an exception. Its Zeppelin NTs are currently in service in Germany, Japan and now the United States, ferrying tourists on short trips and providing a high-profile billboard for creative advertisers. But the company also is exploring ways to use the Zeppelin NT as a platform for scientific and surveillance missions.

Tomorrow's scheduled journey is the California-based Eureka's second extended sight-seeing trip from its new home near Sunnyvale. The ship's first flight to the L.A. area and back straddled the Memorial Day weekend -- when, as it happens, Disney/Pixar was using the Eureka to help promote "Up."

I'll write more in a follow-up posting about my trip -- and about Airship Ventures, the Bay Area start-up that partnered with the Zeppelin's builder to offer these unconventional "flight-seeing" trips and advertising opportunities late last year.

(Image above of the "Spirit of Adventure" is from the Pixar blog)

Rebooting at 30,000 Feet

2009-06-28T17:34:00.003-04:00

Accident expert Charles B. Perrow writes in Sunday's Washington Post about what may turn out to be the common element in the recent Air France Flight 44 and D.C. Metro crashes: computer system/sensor failures....

"The ultimate question in these tragedies is: Can we really trust computers as much as we trust ourselves? For some things, perhaps not. But if we want to travel faster and in more comfort, we have to let ever more computerization into our lives. And that means that we have to focus more on the humans who interact with the computers."

Reporters Andy Pasztor and Daniel Michaels look at how that human-computer interdependence plays out in the cockpits of modern airliners in Saturday's Wall Street Journal:

"Unlike jetliners built in previous decades -- which required pilots to frequently manipulate controls and often manually fly the planes for long stretches -- newer computer-centric aircraft such as the A330 and Boeing's 777 are designed to operate almost entirely on automated systems. From choosing engine settings and routes to smoothing out the ride during turbulence and landing in low visibility, pilots essentially monitor instruments and seldom interfere with computerized commands. So when those electronic brains begin to act weirdly at 35,000 feet, the latest crop of aviators may be less comfortable stepping in and grabbing control of the airplane.

"Airlines typically use simulators to train cockpit crews for such events, but a pilot may only hone skills to deal with major computer problems every few years. Pilots hardly ever experience multiple computer failures in real-world conditions."

And when it comes to the systems that send data to the instruments on which pilots depend, "never has 'garbage in-garbage out' carried such dire consequences," as InformationWeek senior editor Paul McDougall observed shortly after the Air France crash:

"The issue is particularly keen now as the aviation industry's true stick-and-rudder men--fliers, like US Airways' Sully Sullenberger, who cut their teeth in the pre-digital era and who can sometimes still bring a wounded plane down safely through a combination of testicular fortitude and instinct--are hitting retirement age in increasing numbers.

"Many of today's younger jet jockeys haven never flown a plane without help from a computer.

"It's one thing if Gmail goes down for a couple of hours. It's something wholly different if the software and chips designed to keep a 200 ton tin can straight-and-level as it hurtles along at 500 MPH can't be trusted."

(Image from iStockPhoto: A Fabio Pignata photograph of an Airbus A330 cockpit during a night landing.)

A Futurist's Future

2009-06-24T05:00:00.006-04:00

"[W]e must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge -- not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and of storing information that the individual can rise. Think of the lives that this would change.... A wild and visionary idea? Not at all. Yesterday's strangest dreams are today's headlines and change is getting swifter every moment."

-- President Lydon B. Johnson, signing the Public Broadcasting Act on Nov. 7, 1967.

This "Futurist" is a little behind the times in reporting some news about my own future: Next month I am leaving GOVERNING and CQ Inc. to join what I already consider to be the "great network for knowledge" that LBJ promised this country would build 42 years ago. As NPR's new managing editor for digital news, I will help lead the online efforts of what Fast Company has rightly called "the country's brainiest, brawniest news-gathering giant" and the "most successful hybrid of old and new media."

Why public radio? One of my new bosses, Executive Editor Dick Meyer, summed it up for me in that same Fast Company article:

"Part of our desire to bring more NPR to more people is that, with the evisceration of commercial journalism, there's a dire need for it. Major mainstream stories are increasingly going uncovered. And I think it might be the nonprofit journalism world that meets that huge market need, which is also a basic need of a democratic society and an information-based economy."

NPR also is a great organization, filled with friends, former co-workers and colleagues and many of the best journalists in the business.

Chief Executive Vivian Schiller spoke at the National Press Club a few months ago about the "disruptive challenges" affecting all media. She also explained NPR's need to preserve its standards and personality ("the quality we call internally our NPR-ness") while continuing to "branch out into other platforms" -- making sure public radio is serving its best work to a growing audience "however they choose to consume it, not the way we want them to consume it." Among the related priorities the former New York Times executive outlined: increasing collaboration across the public media system, including radio, TV, local stations and new online start-ups; stepping up the system's investigative output, nationally and locally; and engaging and interacting with the audience.

Vivian also alluded to President Johnson's prescient 1967 statement about the need to build a multi-platform "network for knowledge." "It's almost like they were anticipating the Internet," she said.

Four decades later, the most pressing question I see for all of us in media is how to navigate the challenges and swift changes of the moment while also anticipating and preparing for the "strangest dreams" of the decades ahead. The future -- hmmm... What a great assignment.

Tune In Tomorrow: Digital TV Frees Spectrum for Public Safety -- Someday

2009-06-24T01:10:00.005-04:00

Adapted from "Calling All Cars," my "Futurist" column in the June 22 issue of CQ Weekly.

My mother-in-law's kitchen television (shown here with its owner) is as indestructible as a cockroach. Having assumed that the nationwide move to digital TV would mark the end of the ancient black-and-white's long life, my wife's mom was delighted to turn on the set after the June 12 switchover date and find that one analog channel was still on the air. A Tuscaloosa station, owned and operated by the University of Alabama, was among the low-power local broadcasters that Congress exempted from the conversion, so the dependable little relic would avoid the landfill for a little longer.

By the time most analog transmissions went off the air the week before last, most people who owned TVs as old as my mother-in-law's had either purchased new digital converter boxes for their sets or signed up for cable, fiber or satellite service, which were unaffected by the digital transition. Sets of more recent vintage typically came equipped to turn digital signals into high-resolution images of dancing celebrities and all the gory evidence that makes "CSI Wherever" so popular.

As it happens, the needs of real-world police investigators were among the selling points for this switch. Yes, moving to digital "will free up parts of the valuable broadcast spectrum for public safety communications (such as police, fire departments, and rescue squads)" -- as a frequently-asked-questions page on DTV.gov, the federal government's homepage for the transition, prominently (and some might even say deceptively) notes. But many of those "important benefits" of the recent switch are at least several years away -- held up in part by a failed effort to find a private-sector partner to develop this valuable new communications system.

Most of the airwaves the digital transition freed up were actually auctioned for commercial use last year, generating nearly $20 billion for the Treasury. The Federal Communications Commission separately put up for bid a sliver of the broadcast spectrum in the 700 megahertz band for public safety uses. The plan was to create a public-private partnership to combine this 10 megahertz -- from a segment of the spectrum called the D Block -- with a nearby 10 megahertz that was previously put aside to help create a super-fast, interoperable national network for emergency communications.

This shared wireless broadband network would do more than address longstanding problems with reducing interference and making sure disparate systems could be linked in a crisis. Firefighters and police officers could be wired up like the early astronauts, sending real-time feeds on their vital signs and locations to their supervisors. These first-responders could quickly gain access to the blueprints of a building on fire, say, or the police intelligence reports on a hostage-taker. An emergency room doctor could begin monitoring an inbound patient's vital signs before the ambulance even arrived. And images captured by digital cameras mounted in police cars or fire trucks could be beamed instantly to dispatchers, rather than stored for retrieval on hard drives — or even, as the chief technologist for a major Midwestern municipality sheepishly told me, on a VHS recorder in the trunk. (And that municipality's police are hardly alone in using such outdated and inefficient media for storing and accessing video.)

While ideas for using faster networks are plentiful, safety officials know better than most that high-speed chases are unpredictable. In this case, their plans for a national network took an unexpected turn early last year, when questions about price, penalties and unclear requirements appeared to scare off any qualifying bids for the D Block.

While the FCC has been rethinking its plans for how to license the D Block, public safety groups representing police chiefs, fire chiefs and sheriffs, among others, have been discussing other ways to move forward. One proposal would let interested regional partnerships begin building their own broadband networks using the available frequencies. The District of Columbia has already done so as a pilot project. New Jersey, New York City, Boston and a San Francisco Bay area consortium are formally asking to follow suit, and New York state and the Seattle area are making plans to join them.

Under this model, these states and communities would move forward using mutually accepted standards that would eventually allow them to connect with whatever national network emerges -- in effect, creating a network of networks. At the same time, those networks would provide testing grounds for government and business applications hoping to take advantage of all that connectivity.

The Public Safety Spectrum Trust Corporation, a nonprofit organization formed two years ago to hold the license for the original 10 megahertz set aside for emergency communication, generally backs the idea. But there are obstacles. First, FCC waivers would be needed for any cities, regions or states that wanted to use the D Block frequencies or the nearby spectrum currently licensed to the nonprofit corporation.

More significantly, the standards for a shared national network are still a work in progress. So, for instance, a community that decided now to build its network using an emerging wireless service called Long-Term Evolution, or LTE, might have to reboot and rebuild if a rival next-generation standard called WiMax ultimately won the day. Major players in the mobile industry have placed big bets on each and will fight to keep from being bumped out of the game early.

These complications aside, Congress is likely to want more action and less static when it comes to getting broadband services up and running for the nation's emergency responders. On that technological issue, even my mother-in-law is getting the picture, especially now that she has given up all but one channel to help solve the problem.

(Image and Sources: The photo of my mother-in-law and her kitchen TV was taken by R.C. Sneed. In addition to the links above, background on these issues can be found in the video and prepared testimony from a Sept. 16, 2008, House homeland security subcommittee hearing -- "Interoperability in the Next Administration: Assessing the Derailed 700 MHz D Block Public Safety Spectrum Auction." This column also depended heavily on the wisdom of Bill Schrier, Seattle's chief technology officer -- also known by readers of his blog as the Chief Seattle Geek. However, any conclusions presented here are mine alone.)

The First Space Colonists: A Permanent Home Away From Home?

2009-05-30T15:44:00.004-04:00

The International Space Station's long-duration crew doubled to six Friday, when a Soyuz TMA transport arrived with three new inhabitants. And life will get even more crowded onboard the orbital outpost next month, when shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to deliver six temporary visitors, plus a replacement crew member for the station.

Expanding the full-time crew was an important and long-delayed milestone for the space station program that should allow the astronauts and cosmonauts to devote more time to science and less to assembly work and housekeeping. But the crew count is not as interesting to me as another overlooked detail: Humans have now lived and worked in Earth orbit continuously for eight years and seven months -- 3,134 days and counting as of Sunday.

This extended occupation began on Oct. 31, 2000 -- perhaps a date that will matter in future history books. That's when a NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off in Kazakhstan to open the space station for business. One of the three crew members, Sergei Krikalev, is pictured above during that mission, watching shuttle Atlantis approach for an early 2001 visit. In a career that included six different space missions, Krikalev spent 803 days circling the Earth -- more than anyone else to date. The record for a single space flight is held by fellow cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 438 days on board the Soviet/Russian space station Mir in 1994 and 1995.

If not for a 14-month gap (from August 1999 to October 2000), the beginning of ongoing human settlement of space could be dated more than a decade earlier -- to Sept. 5, 1989, when the Soviet Union commenced what would turn out to be 10 years of continuous operations on Mir.

But does continuous mean permanent?

Perhaps the long-term missions to the International Space Station and to Mir before that will be remembered as the beginning of humanity's extraterrestrial colonization. Or perhaps they will turn out to be more like L'Anse aux Meadows, the location of an 11th Century Norse sailing camp that was rediscovered by archeologists in 1960. This admittedly Eurocentric example offers a useful distinction: The temporary Norse settlement in what is now known as northern Newfoundland predated the voyages of Christopher Columbus by half a millennia, making it Europe's earliest known toehold in the New World; but permanent European colonization of the North American continent would not begin until centuries later.

The timeline for the next major phase of human migration will likely be measured in similar increments.

(Photo above from NASA)

Quotes From the Future: The End of the World

2009-05-21T01:26:00.002-04:00

"I promise there'll be a tomorrow, sir.... In fact, it's already tomorrow in Australia."

-- Marcie, trying to alleviate Peppermint Patty's doomsday worries, in a 1980 "Peanuts" strip. (The tireless truth-seekers at Snopes suggest that a similar quote that's frequently attributed to "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz appears to be a paraphrase of this 29-year-old cartoon.)

'Idol' Buzz: Prize Money Spurs Technology and Discovery

2009-05-18T20:55:00.005-04:00

Adapted from "Reality Show Innovation," my "Futurist" column in the May 18 issue of CQ Weekly.

The small, two-seat silver "autogiro" in a far corner of the National Air and Space Museum's annex near Dulles Airport is an unusual contraption. Part wingless airplane, part helicopter, the AC-35 (pictured above) also was designed to fit in a garage and has three wheels for street driving at speeds as fast as 25 mph.

Aviation pioneer Harold Pitcairn's Autogiro Company of America built this prototype for a Depression-era competition sponsored by the Commerce Department. The goal was to make air travel as affordable and routine as a long car drive, but no competitor was able to come up with a machine that could be produced for even close to Commerce's targeted price tag of $700, or less than a modern Ford Focus after adjusting for 73 years of inflation.

Still, the legacy of this competition -- and similarly ambitious scientific and engineering contests over many decades -- is alive and well. A fast-growing number of philanthropic and government-sponsored prizes intended to harness entrepreneurial ingenuity seems to be signaling an "American Idol" approach to solving technological problems.

A March study of more than 200 large dollar awards conducted by McKinsey & Co. found that there was $253 million in prize money up for grabs in 2007 in technical and scientific categories ranging from aviation and space to engineering and the environment. That was a sevenfold increase from a decade before, when sponsors were offering $36 million in those categories. Prize money for the arts grew a modest 11 percent in that period. (See the full McKinsey & Co. report.)

Proof that prizes can spur innovation is in the Smithsonian's original Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington. That's the retirement home of SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded machine to carry a pilot outside the atmosphere. Back-to-back flights in 2004 earned its designers the $10 million Ansari X Prize, a philanthropic award intended to reduce the cost of human space travel. The prize was inspired in part by the $25,000 award Charles Lindbergh claimed -- 82 years ago this week -- for making the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris. And now SpaceShipOne hangs in the Smithsonian right beside Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis.

With help from Google, Progressive Insurance and other sponsors, the X Prize Foundation has moved on to an array of daunting new contests. More than 100 teams are vying for multimillion- dollar awards for building new kinds of fuel-efficient cars. Another X Prize challenges scientists to develop faster ways to sequence genomes. And to encourage commercial development of the moon, a $30 million prize awaits the first privately funded team that can successfully land and operate a robotic lunar rover.

Governments are getting into the act, too. One NASA contest earned $200,000 for an engineer from Maine who designed a glove that makes spacewalking astronauts more dexterous. Ongoing space agency "Centennial Challenges" are pushing inventors and scientists to develop technology that would transmit electricity without wires and generate oxygen from elements found in simulated lunar soil.

Federal agencies, corporations and philanthropies are not the only ones offering prizes. Teams of programmers submitted dozens of Web pages, Facebook tools and iPhone applications during a 30-day "Apps for Democracy" contest sponsored by the District of Columbia government last year. Vivek Kundra, the city's chief technology officer at the time, told GOVERNING magazine that Washington got about $2.6 million worth of computer development out of the contest in exchange for a $50,000 expense, nearly half of it for prizes. Now that Kundra is a senior technology official in the Obama administration, even more contests seem likely at the federal level.

Contests can motivate innovation, capture the public imagination and even change opinions and create new markets. But a big cash prize does not guarantee success, short-term or long-term. Not long before SpaceShipOne made its maiden voyage beyond the atmosphere, designer Burt Rutan predicted that suborbital space flights would be as affordable as luxury cruises by 2016 or so. His company has begun to test a new aircraft that would serve as an aerial ferry for SpaceShipTwo, designed primarily for wealthy astrotourists. Ultimately good technology and good economics will determine whether Rutan's bold plans will fly or whether they will be a historic footnote -- like that quirky AC-35 autogiro.

Back in October 1936, hundreds gathered outside Commerce's headquarters near the Mall to see the odd-looking prototype land. "Here on our doorstep was a bit of the future," wrote Washington Post reporter Eugene Warner, who fashioned his coverage into a poem for the next day's paper. Noting the manufacturer's ultimately optimistic price estimates, he wrote:

"It may sell for more, maybe for less
Its future price is only a guess.
But it's easy to picture a plague in the sky
As clouds of gyros glide lazily by."

Seven decades later, commuting remains landlocked. That won't stop prize sponsors and entrepreneurial competitors from looking up, nor should it -- as long as someone is watching the bottom line.

(Photo of the AC-35 prototype by Mark Stencel)

Quotes From the Future: The Art of Science

2009-04-25T12:32:00.002-04:00

"Science is whatever we want it to be."

-- Dr. Leo Spaceman, in a 2007 episode of "30 Rock." The celebrity doctor -- listed under fertility, meth addiction and child psychiatry in the Writers Guild Health Manual -- is a recurring character played by actor Chris Parnell.

Journalism's Online Future: What Made the 'Truth-O-Meter' Click

2009-04-24T12:56:00.009-04:00

One of the best parts of sharing office space with the St. Petersburg Times' Washington team has been talking with bureau chief Bill Adair about PolitiFact.com -- the news site that he conceived and created at the start of last year's presidential campaign cycle, and that he is now nurturing into the first year of the new administration. Now that the Florida newspaper has become the first to collect a Pulitizer Prize for national reporting that appeared primarily on the Web, journalists should be carefully mapping Bill's DNA to try to figure out what his creation suggests about journalism's future.

Laboratory research will quickly reveal several genetic markers -- the evolutionary mutations Bill introduced that helped distinguish PolitiFact from a gazillion other political news sites, old and new. Among them:

An accessible, if not gimmicky interface;
A well-defined niche;
An important journalistic purpose and heritage;
And carefully documented reporting

Bill would be the first person to give credit to PolitiFact's many other contributors, particularly his newspaper's talented techies and designers, and a long list of reporters and researchers from the St. Pete newsroom and the Congressional Quarterly staff, all of whom can take pride in this week's award. Bill and the PolitiFact team also had enthusiastic support from the brass in St. Pete. (Disclosure: The Times is the corporate parent of my employers, GOVERNING and CQ Inc. As ever, the opinions here are mine alone.)

But this was Bill's vision. I remember when PolitiFact was just an idea that he crudely illustrated on the kind of three-panel cardboard backdrop commonly used to display middle school science experiments. The plan was ambitious -- perhaps even unsustainable, as I warned Bill two years ago, especially during a demanding and fast-moving election year.

But Bill was all but genetically engineered for this job. He had been writing about Washington for more than a decade, having already collected a prestigious Everett Dirksen Award for distinguished coverage of Congress. He also covered transportation issues for the Times and had written a book on airline accident ("The Mystery of Flight 427: Inside a Crash Investigation"). Writing that book involved organizing a voluminous amounts of fragmentary and often technical information. Bill kept the notes for his book in spreadsheets, using Excel's "sort" functions to sift and organize details and track sources as he needed them. That way of breaking down and reassembling information turns out to be a fundamental element of good non-linear journalism, in which the order or progression of information depends as much on reader choices than writer choices. ("More on this?" Click. "This or that?" Click.)

Did Bill metamorphose into a Webslinger by organizing large projects this way, or were his neurons and synapses just wired that way from the larval stage? Either way, he began building PolitiFact with the right editorial mindset. He did not start with an assumption that he needed to post scrolling pages of long-form text or beautifully shot and edited video or audio just to take what he was doing seriously. He set out to build a Web site.

This mindset was reflected in the underlying structure of PolitiFact. The site's core from the start was its Truth-O-Meter, which allowed users to sort its collected fact-checking by subject, speaker or ruling (true, mostly true, half-true, barely true, false and the dreaded "Pants on Fire!"). PolitiFact later added a "Flip-O-Meter" (with scores ranging from "no flip" to "full flop"). And the three-month-old "Obameter" was added just before January's inauguration to track roughly 500 specific campaign promises that Barack Obama made during his campaign. The promises are organized by subject and by status (from promises kept to promises broken, with other steps in between, including no action at all). And throughout the site, the PolitiFact team has meticulously listed and, whenever possible, linked to the sources on which they were basing their conclusions.

In short, PolitiFact provided dozens (I stopped counting at 192) of easy-to-understand and relatively easy-to-navigate ways for visitors to sort through the site's accumulated and carefully attributed findings -- along with an almost daily stream of more traditional articles that primarily serve as a way to connect dots or signal new findings in a small box atop the homepage. Without relying on user profiles, animated controls or other fancy forms of personalization, the site enabled its visitors to customize their experience, based on their interests and questions. ("Who's lying?" "How's my candidate doing?" "What about the others?" "And what's this debate really all about anyway?")

Plenty of other good sites take this approach to organizing content, particularly online services that provide news and information on finance, sports, weather, traffic, entertainment -- topics that perhaps more obviously lend themselves to the approach. But few apply this multilayer, user-directed model to other bread-and-butter journalism beats, such as local news, national news, foreign affairs and politics.

The data-driven political blog FiveThirtyEight was -- and is -- a good example of a more dashboard-like approach to organizing daily news. CQ Politics, PolitFact election-year sister's site, also did this to some degree with its continuously updated race ratings for the electoral college and all the 2008 congressional and gubernatorial contests -- a feature that was prominently displayed throughout the site, but that was still second to the day's this-just-in, headline-driven coverage.

The navigational approach/mindset I'm describing is much more common in project-based journalism. One of the most impressive examples is "13 Second in August," a Minneapolis Star Tribune special report presented with a scrolling aerial shot of the 35W bridge after its 2007 collapse. Clickable numbers on each smashed and abandoned vehicle take visitors to the stories of the occupants, using a combination of text and multimedia.

Could this approach work to covering breaking news -- say, for instance, day-of coverage of a disaster on this scale? Absolutely, as public radio station KPBS did using frequently updated interactive maps during the 2007 wild fires in San Diego. But pulling off such coverage means that, from the very start, editors and top producers need to think about how their reporting and information is organized -- not just how to get it or the order in which it was received.

I learned that at washingtonpost.com overseeing our overnight coverage of the presidential and vice presidential debates in 1996, 2000 and 2004, when we embedded a small, sometimes animated "Debate Referee" to serve as our fact-checker throughout each transcript. Clicking on the referee opened a window that had a short bit of text on the veracity of a candidate's claim and links to other articles and off-site resources that provided more information and explanation.

I warned Bill about the challenges we faced cranking out our quadrennial Debate Referee boxes, many of which benefited significantly from the traditional, long-form fact-checking articles produced each debate night by teams of reporters in the Post's print edition newsroom. Turning that kind of work into a day-in, day-out operation for the 18 months leading up to election day did not sound sustainable to me when Bill first started explaining his idea for PolitiFact. But he was undaunted and his enthusiasm was infectious. With his Science Project cardboard chart in tow, he convinced his editors in St. Pete to devote considerable resources to an editorial experiment they believed in.

The Truth Squad Tradition and Missing Links
One of the most shrewd decisions Bill and his editors made was to choose their niche. While driven in part by competitive reality, the choice to focus their online election coverage almost entirely on vetting the statements of the 2008 presidential candidates distinguished the site's content from the more ephemeral enterprise of chasing campaign polls, ground movements and other tactics. That focus also linked their site to a number of noble but generally under-appreciated editorial progenitors.

The tradition of "truth squading" took on greater urgency among political journalists two decades ago, after the fact-twisting TV ads of the 1988 White House race. That's when columnist David S. Border (my first boss at the Washington Post) began urging his colleagues in political journalism to "become more like consumer reporters," systematically scrutinizing the content of campaign commercials -- the dominant form of political communication at the time. As David put it in a 1991 speech, these "ad-watch" stories would help voters "decide what was true and what was false in the advertising, what was real and what was distorted."

The Post and many other news organizations, national and local, print and broadcast, joined in David's cause. One such notable journalist was Brooks Jackson, a longtime Washington reporter for the AP and Wall Street Journal, who created the template for on-air "ad-watch" and "fact-check" segments on CNN in 1992. Brooks later continued that work online on FactCheck.org, an ongoing project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Bill has often tipped his hat to Brooks and his FactCheck'ers -- even as he was building upon and revolutionizing how this kind of journalism was organized and presented.

Bill also did not turn up his nose at the hard work of generating reader interest. He built up buzz and traffic for PolitiFact, tirelessly plugging its work in segments on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR and elsewhere. He often appeared with a geiger-counter-like "Truth-O-Meter" prop (pictured here) sitting in front of him. Bill also carefully monitored the Web site's traffic reports to make sure he understood how his visitors were finding and using the site. And he has worked closely with the Time's in-house search-engine-optimization guru in recent months to make sure his journalism is reaching users via the sites they use most. (How many news organizations have their own SEO expert on staff? That's a question Recovering Journalist Mark Potts has often mused about.)

PolitiFact certainly missed opportunities, too. The site provided prominent feedback links, but few ways for users to publicly engage the editors and each other -- a conscious and debatable decision, intended at least in part to help differentiate the site from becoming just another place for partisan name-calling and bickering. But being interactive means being available to interact.

The site also needs a business model -- something Bill and his editors are keenly aware of. I was very happy to see an ad on the site just a moment ago that was paid for by one of the major "advocacy" advertisers that help underwrite other politically oriented Web sites and publications. That's a start.

Can serious online journalism like this sustain itself financially? I believe it can. But for the business of providing journalism to evolve, its editors must as well. Journalists can no longer just do the equivalent of reading news copy into an open microphone. Depth and expertise have to become as important as immediacy. And we have to present our work in ways that make sense to the medium in which we're working -- not the media from which many of us came. Bill Adair and PolitiFact point us in the right direction. Now just click....

More High-Speed Rail: Was 'Supertrain' Just Ahead of Schedule?

2009-04-20T00:28:00.002-04:00

Trains for America's Pat Lynch posted a nice link to my CQ column on high-speed rail. However, Pat was not amused by my impertinent references to NBC's failed 1979 TV series "Supertrain." "Come on, Mark," he wrote, "give us a break over here!"

Apologies, Pat. Readers of this blog probably are used to my interest in finding links between technology policy and pop culture. In this case, I had a hunch: Most of the folks who even remember "Supertrain" are probably the same people who -- like me, to be honest -- always had a certain fascination with the concept of high-speed rail. The show in fact refers directly to this kind of person in its two-hour debut.

In the opening scene, a blustery, gray-bearded executive -- played by character actor Keenan Wynn -- explains that he has the backing of the federal Transportation Department to quickly build a new "atom-powered, steam-turbine" train "capable of crossing this country in 36 hours."

The executive's cigar-chomping board of directors is skeptical, if not hostile. "I think you are letting your psychotic fascination with railroads lead you into a suicidal gamble with the future of this company," one board member says.

Funny enough, this opening exchange pretty well sums up most of the public policy arguments about high-speed rail in this country, both before and since Supertrain's short, nine-episode run on network TV.

Trains for America -- a terrific resource for anyone following this subject seriously -- just as succinctly captures the real-world version of this debate on the bloggers' "about" page, where they explain their intentions:

"Much of the public policy discussion centers on the emotions of hard-core 'raifans' and greedy corporate interests. The great trains of the 1940s are dead and gone forever, but America still needs passenger trains for business and personal travel. So far, airlines, highways, and trucking special interests have monopolized the debate. Interstate highways are an essential part of our transportation system, but that's obvious. Air travel is convenient and cheap. Reliable trains ought to be an option for intermediate length trips and under-served rural areas. Americans should enjoy the same travel options others nations take for granted"

So how does the fictional version of the debate between the "hard-core 'raifans'" and the "greedy corporate interests" play out? The first 10 minutes of the "Supertrain" pilot are posted on YouTube (and embedded below), just in case you want to see that scene for yourself -- or get a quick sense of how cheesy the rest of the series turns out to be alas. Despite all that, I'll confess: I was a fan (and even enjoyed double-checking my memories of the show against this tribute site).

High-Speed Rail's Long, Slow Journey

2009-04-19T23:16:00.003-04:00

Adapted from my "Futurist" column in the April 20 issue of CQ Weekly.

One of the most expensive flops in television history was "Supertrain", a show about a 200-mile-per-hour, nuclear-powered locomotive -- a landlocked "Love Boat" with celebrity guest passengers, fancy special effects and elaborate sets, including a disco worthy of the program's snappy theme song. NBC aired only nine episodes back in 1979, far from enough to land "Supertrain" in rerun heaven. But at least in the world of slow-moving public policy, the show has been in continuous syndication.

Since Japan's first Shinkansen "bullet train" debuted 45 years ago, U.S. officials, advisory panels and even some private ventures have tried to get high-speed rail lines rolling in this country. With the exception of Amtrak's Acela Express, which has run at top speeds of 150 mph between Boston and Washington for nearly a decade, all those efforts have taken the same brief one-way trip to cancellation as NBC's fictional train.

Now Washington is trying again. President Obama wants to make $5 billion in grants in the next five years on top of the $8 billion for new, faster railroads provided by this year's economic stimulus package. Some of the stimulus funding made good on $1.5 billion in grants authorized in last year's Amtrak law, which also approved some Transportation Department money to encourage commercial enterprises to get into the act. (See Obama's statement on April 16, when he unveiled a strategic plan for high-speed rail.)

Does all that budgeting and legislating mean conductors will soon be welcoming American passengers aboard glitzy new levitating passenger cars, ready to zip them across magnetic tracks at hundreds of miles per hour? Not so fast.

The new administration's initial focus will be on incremental service improvements, such as track upgrades that will allow conventional trains to get from here to there faster -- a safe bet with more immediate prospects for creating jobs. (My GOVERNING magazine colleagues Alex Marshall and Josh Goodman both wrote about this approach before last week's announcement.)

Bolder investments in genuinely advanced service are still on the table, with detailed plans expected later this year. But an in-depth analysis issued last month by the Government Accountability Office raises questions that might be daunting enough to send even the most vocal high-speed rail advocates to the "quiet car" to think. (PDF: full GAO report). Even with all the recent 10-figure authorizations and appropriations, the biggest obstacles to the fastest rail options still seem to be the same ones that derailed many past efforts: politics and economics.

The political questions are obvious enough. Super-fast trains are big-ticket, long-term projects that will require sustained support through many administrations and legislative regimes -- and not just at the federal level. States and localities will have significant responsibility and authority, too, which is why the stimulus law gave those governments new flexibility to borrow for rail projects that aim to move passengers at 150 mph or faster. Cooperation across jurisdictional lines will be key, especially in places that will need extended rights of way to build dedicated new tracks. That could be politically tricky in some of the most congested areas, where potential demand for faster rail service might justify the investment.

The investment is itself a significant challenge. As the president put it when he unveiled his high-speed rail plan last week, the $13 billion already requested amounts only to a "down payment." Whether that down payment pays off hinges in part on demand -- a notoriously elusive metric, the GAO notes, since estimated ridership depends on such unpredictable factors as energy costs, ticket prices, convenience and reliability. Cost overruns also can throw off the math.

Even if the demand is there, the capital may not be. The money for high-speed rail is coming from general funds, making it subject to continuous jostling with other budgetary priorities. The GAO cautions that private investors might be reluctant to shovel in cash without a dependable source of sustained public funding.

Given the challenges, how do Asian and European countries pay for their high-speed trains? The GAO found that fast rail systems in France, Spain and Japan are generating sufficient passenger revenue to cover ongoing expenses but not the cost of building the systems in the first place -- an expense officials in those countries justify for environmental or other societal reasons. "In the countries we visited, the central government generally funds the majority of up-front costs . . . without the expectation that their investment will be recouped through ticket revenues," the agency's report said.

It's not that European and Asian countries are more willing to subsidize big transportation initiatives than the United States is. It's that U.S. subsidies tend to favor other modes of transportation, particularly roads paid for with taxpayer money -- much of it in the form of government borrowing -- and air travel, a consistently profit-challenged business that depends heavily on public infrastructure, services and tax breaks.

If all the train talk in Washington signals a real change in policy, especially in terms of political and financial expectations, Supertrain might in fact be ready to roll. All aboard?

Image above: A conceptual rendering of a high-speed train passing through California's Tehachapi Pass created by Newlands & Company (NC3D) for the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

Dot-Gov'ing Life: Three Little Words

2009-03-27T10:39:00.004-04:00

Reposted from GOVERNING' s blog.

Lots of state and local techies are gathering with their federal brethren here in Washington for Government 2.0 Camp, an "unconference" on using technology to make government more accountable and accessible. EPA's Jeffrey Levy, co-chair of the Federal Web Managers Council's social media subgroup, opened the highly unscripted two-day event at the District's Duke Ellington School of the Arts this morning by leading the crowd in a brief chant to set the tone: "Get down, get funky, get loose and groove to the beat."

With that, all several hundred attendees and sponsors spent the next hour and a half proposing breakout sessions and introducing themselves to one by one -- with all of three words to sum up their interests, expertise or reasons for showing up. Here's a telling selection of a few dozen of those brief intros (the words are unedited, but the order below is mine)....

"lots to learn"
"leveraging the tools"
"leveraging each other"
"making data social"
"give data way"
"digitizing dusty archives"
"location based conversation"
"shouldn't cost millions"
"open source adoption"
"let's bash Vista"
"firewall? what firewall?"
"low hanging fruit"
"should be easy"
"making it simple"
"breaking the rules"
"doing it legally"
"changing agency attitudes"
"sick of excuses"
"bosses almost understand"
"no no no"
"I am excited"
"so far behind"
"social media ninja"
"we wear capes"
"we serve you"
"citizens are government"
"need government job"
"up for hire"
"we are hiring"
"journalist, still employed"
"need story ideas"
"Arizona time, tired"
"my thumbs hurt"
"where's the bar"
"nothing to add"
"I'm already inspired"

The discussions over the next two days will be moving just as fast. But since this is the kind of event where plenty of people have written their Twitter @names on their "Hello, My Name Is" stickers, the easiest way to follow what's going on is via the "tweets" posted by attendees. You can monitor those short, rapid-fire messages on Twitter using the #gov20camp tag. The organizers also urged the unconference-goers to post relevant information, blog posts and images on the wiki linked up at the top of this entry.

Genes Without Borders: Biotech's Possibilities and Perils Know No Bounds

2009-03-24T23:32:00.001-04:00

Adapted from my "Futurist" column in the March 16 issue of CQ Weekly.

Putting limits on some kinds of genetic research has always been a bit like trying to regulate spam. Somehow those unwanted and often-offensive junk e-mail messages continue to invade our inboxes, despite a five-year-old federal law that was supposed to lead to punishment for the most egregious senders.

Linking such an irksome inconvenience to the far larger ethical issues raised by research that has the potential to alter the course of human development might seem perilously flippant. But the link is this: If the scientific and technological activities that concern us are occurring mostly overseas, the laws and regulations we impose in our country often have little impact.

The problem with spam is that much of it is flung by e-mail servers outside the reach of any authority in this country. Likewise, the genetic research that might be most troublesome to many Americans may take place in labs that are far beyond the bounds of U.S. law.

The same is also true of the most promising areas of genetic investigation. President Obama alluded to that in his March 9 announcement overturning President George W. Bush 's 2001 limits on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. "Some of our best scientists leave for other countries that will sponsor their work," Obama said. "And those countries may surge ahead of ours in the advances that transform our lives."

Balancing the exciting possibilities and frightening consequences of international genetic research is an issue a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee struggled with last summer. California Democrat Brad Sherman, the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade panel's chairman, is best known for his expertise on the spread of nuclear weapons and know-how. But the subject of this hearing was a different sort of arms race: the diplomatic and security implications of the spread of "genetics and other human-modification technologies."

In some ways, the testimony from the June 19, 2008, hearing reads more like a Hollywood pitch for a sci-fi thriller than a sober discussion of scientific reality and diplomatic policy -- with talk of biotech's potential for creating supersoldiers, superintelligence and superanimals, as the chairman put it. Witnesses mused about the convergence of nanotech, biotech, computers and cognitive science, with one warning that new applications could "put agents of unprecedented lethal force in the hands of both state and non-state actors." There were discussions of genetic discrimination, eugenics and the civil rights of humans and animals whose intelligence might be enhanced or whose genes might be altered or integrated to the point that definitions become tricky. And witnesses warned of a genetic divide, in which enhancements would go only to the most privileged societies or individuals.

Much like his political mentor, the late California Democrat George E. Brown Jr., Sherman came to Congress with a personal interest in scientific matters -- such as research on linking human and computer intelligence -- that were easier for him to pursue when he served on the Science Committee.

At the Foreign Affairs hearing, he acknowledged speculation on potential far-off technologies is easily subjected to "mockery" and "cheap derision." But the panel's other members and witnesses seemed to take the issues he raised quite seriously. Many drew comparisons to the rapid development and spread of nuclear weapons -- an analogy that brought the panel to more familiar ground: Could the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty be a template for international agreements to mitigate the potential dangers of genetic manipulation?

Jamie F. Metzl, executive vice president of the Asia Society, offered some of the most detailed thinking on what a treaty to curb genetic modification abuses might involve. One key requirement: The accord would need to be "permissive and flexible enough to keep the more scientifically aggressive countries, particularly those with the most to gain from the development of these capabilities, on board." At the same time, Metzl cautioned that any enforcement mechanisms "will be used by opponents of legitimate research to advance principles antithetical to the genetic engineering process as a whole."

He also noted that governments might not turn out to be the key players, especially as global commercial opportunities emerge. That would raise questions about "how to deal with non-state actors that could, for example, engage in such activities from ships based in international waters or, conceivably, on research platforms in space." (In addition to Metzl's testimony, his article in the Spring 2008 issue of Democracy -- "Brave New World War" -- also is worth reading.)

Creating a workable global framework for regulating fast-moving developments in genetic research will be daunting -- like the driest dry county in the United States trying to ban the sale of alcohol on a passenger jet zipping through its skies, six or seven miles overhead. Ongoing domestic and international disagreements over basic questions, such as whether to allow cloning human embryos for research purposes, point to some of the challenges.

As Sherman put it, "We cannot assume that everyone in the world will reach the same philosophical and moral answers that we do, especially when we do not know what answers we might reach."

Putting Your Faith in Cyber Security

2009-03-23T15:38:00.005-04:00

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover blurbs. Virtual Integrity: Faithfully Navigating the Brave New Web by Daniel J. Lohrmann is one of those books.

Some of the expert endorsements on the back cover and first page are the sorts you'd expect for a book on computer and online security. California's chief information officer and New York state's director of cyber security are among those lending support to the book by their colleague, Lohrmann, who is the acting chief technology officer and infrastructure director for the state of Michigan.

But the book's other endorsements are clearly aimed at a less-secular audience than your typical technology tome. There are plugs from the president of the Family Research Council, a professor from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary and an official from the Board of Social Witness of Presbyterian Church in Ireland. While not technologists, they share many of Dan Lohrmann's concerns about the information and activities the Internet enables.

Brazos Press published Virtual Integrity last fall, a couple of weeks before Dan came to Washington to be recognized as one of GOVERNING's Public Officials of the Year for his work as Michigan's first chief information security officer. Dan is a 12-year state employee who also worked on government computer systems as private contractor and as a network analyst at the National Security Agency (here's his official bio). In a video from our November awards dinner, you can hear Dan's conviction about "the promise of new, exciting opportunities" and "the good that 21st century technology allows." But he also warned our guests about the "harsh new realities" of the online world, many of which directly "threaten our integrity."

That's the theme that gave Dan the title of his book. Virtual Integrity focuses on how "e-temptation" creates "powerful challenges to our values and beliefs" -- issues Dan addresses from a distinctly Christian and pro-technology point of view. Throughout his short but ambitious book, Dan easily alt-tabs from descriptions of malware and the limitations of Web filtering tools to passages of scripture and biblical analogies.

This was interesting reading, even for someone who does not share Dan's particular faith but who tries to lead a moral life -- which is why I invited Dan to answer some questions here about his views on the relationships that connect personal ethics and responsibility, religion, public roles and technology.

Talk about what you mean by "virtual integrity." Is there a governmental role in preventing what you call "integrity theft?"

By "virtual" I mean online life. I'm addressing the ways we logon to the Internet at home and work -- from answering emails with work Blackberrys to surfing the net with school laptops to using Facebook on home PCs to connect with family and friends. More people are even creating avatars (online representations of themselves) to have fun, attend training, or travel to meet others in "virtual worlds" such as Second Life.

Almost every institution in our society talks about having "integrity." A Zogby poll in 2005 reported that 97% of Americans consider themselves to be trustworthy. There are many definitions of integrity such as "what you do when no on else is watching." My preferred definition is from the Yale Law School professor Stephen L. Carter, who wrote a book called Integrity (BasicBooks 1996):

"Integrity involves three steps. The first is to discern what is right and wrong. Discernment takes time and emotional energy. It's much easier to follow the crowd. The second step is to struggle to live according to the sense of right and wrong you have discerned. The third is to be willing to say what we are doing and why we are doing it."

So by "Virtual Integrity" I am attempting to put the two concepts together and challenge individuals to examine their online life at home and work. Simplistic answers are not solving our complex problems online. After describing many of those problems, I offer new approaches to help "surf your values."

I coined the phrase "integrity theft," to highlight scary new cultural trends that are different than the well-publicized issues surrounding identity theft. With Integrity theft, rather than your money or personal information being at risk from unseen hackers, your reputation, your career, or your important relationships are threatened by online temptations to do wrong. As we surf the Internet, we are offered intriguing images, videos, and other content that vie for our thoughts, dreams, time and money. Advertisers and others "tempt the click." We can be enticed by clever schemes to act against our professed values and beliefs.

The focus of the book is on personal responsibility and the actions that individuals and families can take to protect themselves and be a force for good online. However, there is absolutely a role for government -- as well as technology companies, online businesses, advertisers and others in cyberspace. We have many laws prohibiting unwanted spam, deceptive practices, sending child pornography, communication with minors without parental consent, and various other Internet practices. As the 21st century moves forward, we need to increase what Microsoft calls "end-to-end trust." In some cases violators will need to be prosecuted.

There is also an education role. Most Americans agree that government has a role in supporting safe, healthy lifestyles. From food and drug safety at the FDA to healthy school lunches to ensuring fair mortgage terms and conditions with banks to laws governing our highways, our various government organizations must play an essential role in helping citizens make wise choices. The Internet is our new 21st century superhighway system. As we do more and more online, there are important freedoms, legal protections and elements of security and privacy that governments must provide.

Your book is written specifically from a Christian perspective and you use scripture in forming your arguments and in the recommendations you make for Christian families and Christian businesses. How is the idea of "virtual integrity" relevant to people from other faith backgrounds. Is "virtual integrity" strictly a religious idea?

Thanks for the comment, Mark. As a computer security professional and someone who has worked in (or in support of) various government organizations for my entire 24-year professional career, I tried to write for as wide an audience as possible, while grounding the book with scriptural truths that have been quoted and followed for thousands of years. Just as Stephen Covey addresses "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" and public school programs offer programs like "Character Counts," I am confident that "virtual integrity" is relevant for most people in society regardless of religious belief.

My hope in writing the book was to bridge what I believe to be a large gap in current technology and/or religious dialogue. Solutions to our complex Internet problems need to address people, process, and technology at home, school and work. A big part of the "people" component must include our beliefs, values, and religious practices to be effective in the long-term. As virtual life and real life merge together in new ways, people from all faith backgrounds need to reassess what's working and what's not in cyberspace. I think the temptations and other challenges we experience online may be different for people with different religious beliefs, but we all experience online temptation that conflicts with those values.

People from different faith backgrounds have read the book and told me that they agree with the book's messages. For example, Dr. Peter Stephenson, associate director of the Masters of Science in Information Assurance program at Norwich University and author of many books, wrote, "Virtual Integrity offers a solid roadmap, grounded in universal truths, for corporations and governments alike. You don't need to be a Christian to benefit tremendously from Lohrmann's book."

In chapter ten, I mention Dinesh D'Souza's description of the majority view in the Muslim world regarding moral decadence in America. I am confident that most Muslims will agree that we need new approaches to morality online. I'd love to work with Muslims and those of other faiths to ensure that we respect the values of all surfers around the world -- regardless of their religious beliefs. That is true freedom of religion online.

I think most people desire to surf their values -- regardless of their religious belief. I had a fascinating discussion with a former Christian from a major software provider, who was now an agnostic, who said the same concepts articulated in chapters nine and ten could easily be adapted to most of the religions around the world or even to those who desire to "go green" in their lifestyle or support various other causes.

At points in your book you are critical of privacy and free-speech advocates in terms of the online practices and content they sometimes defend. But you also recognize and respect some of their concerns too, particularly related to censorship and constitutionally protected freedoms. What is the best way for government organizations and public officials to balance these kinds of issues as it relates to complex and fast-changing technology?

I think we need a new national strategy on cyber ethics that brings the different voices together. (I even provided the beginning of an outline in the appendix of my book.) I'd love to see government facilitate this debate. We need a task force, just as we had under President Bush on identity theft.

Just as we are bringing together multiple organizations and perspectives on health care and other topics of national significance, we need to debate cyber ethics separately from cyber security. Yes, there is overlap, but as health care insurance is debated separately from the ethics of using stem cells, so cyber ethics in society is different than changing passwords or applying virus filters or stopping hackers. Yes, we urgently need both.

We must also try and emulate "real-life" situations online to enable more trust. For example, when I go to the Disney Store at a nearby mall with my six-year-old son, I know what to expect and what not to expect in way of content on the walls and items sold in the store. The same is true when I attend our church or schools or for that matter go to (my brick and mortar) office. Online, these expectations are often violated -- sometimes intentionally, as we surf through cyberspace.

It may sound easy, but it can get very difficult to address. For example, in real life many people know me at work or at church, but who am I really online? Anonymity or false identities cannot be allowed to cause harm to others. Governments can help improve identity management by driving technology requirements and government contracts towards more secure solutions that ensure privacy and respect for the values of others. This will play a huge role in health IT and other government efforts. The goal needs to be end-to-end trust, and government should bring all the players to the table -- including faith-based groups .

Explain why you don't like the terms "adult" and "child" content -- and why you think "moral" and "immoral" are in fact better labels.

As every marketing company knows, words are very important. The porn industry has done a successful job of gradually changing the U.S. vocabulary over the past decade. Up until the 1990s, "adult entertainment" was called pornography. And yet, I have seen porn destroy marriages, careers, and church ministries.

People of many religious backgrounds believe that viewing pornography, and other material now labeled as "adult," is wrong. Many individuals and families don't want to see this content online, but numerous Internet companies merge various types of content under the label "adult," assuming that everyone 18 and older wants to see it. This impacts online trust and integrity for all of us. Because of the current situation, some people I know throw the baby out with the bathwater and totally avoid Internet use.

One medical doctor said it this way, "Pornography is not a victimless crime. The users and the subjects are both devastated and the societal cost is immense."

These labels even have a pattern of showing up in the technology products we use online. I work with many security and Internet filtering companies that are building technology around these definitions. For example, if you are 18 or over, filters work differently. In some cases, you must even lie and say you are under 18 if you want to block pornography or other unwanted content. Bottom line, a large number of "adults" don't want to see "adult" content, but content providers assume you do.

Many government organizations rely on filtering technologies to prevent public employees from accessing certain kinds of online content at work. Given what you say in your book about the limitations of many Web filtering tools, do you think this is a good practice?

Filters can help, but don't even come close to fixing many online problems at home and work. They can also create more problems or a sense of complacency. There are also many ways to get around filters. Filters will evolve and improve, but lasting solutions require changes in culture.

New issues have emerged with social networking that include a thousand shades of gray. The challenge is to allow social networking sites with accountability and a level of transparency. (There is no presumption of privacy on work computers.)

In the future, I believe we will need new approaches and new tools to allow us to surf our values. I lay out one such scenario in chapter nine, but we need content delivered in smarter ways based upon our profiles that include security, privacy and values. This new approach is not about blocking content, but delivering what people want to see. That's true personalization.

As a public official, are any of your cyber security responsibilities ever at odds with your personal beliefs?

Not really. I did have staff reporting to me in the past who performed official duties that included viewing content that I didn't want to see (for acceptable use investigations). We have a great security team, and I trusted their reports. No one was asked to violate their personal beliefs in the process.

In your remarks at the November 2008 dinner where you accepted your award as one of GOVERNING's Public Officials of the Year, you spoke briefly about how your faith helped you and your family through your cancer. Since your book also discusses religious views, can you say a bit about your faith and religious background and affiliations?

My father was a Lutheran Pastor, and my wife's father was a Presbyterian minister. I grew up in Baltimore as the youngest of seven children. I was active in the Lutheran church until my mid-20s. While in England, my wife and I were active in an Anglican church for about three years and an Evangelical Free Church for about four years.

When we moved back to Michigan, we settled into a Baptist Church in Grand Ledge. I often teach adult ministries classes, such as a course I just offered on the Internet and Christianity. My wife was on staff for two years as Child Ministries Director and she volunteers her time now to help with children. On Wednesday nights, we lead a weekly program together for about 75 children, and I lead music on the guitar.

About eight years ago, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. I was shocked, confused, and honestly thought my career in technology was over. I spent many sleepless nights covered in cold sweat worrying about my family and my future. And yet at the same time I felt closer to God than ever before. I reexamined my goals, priorities, beliefs, habits and lifestyle. My faith grew tremendously as I prayed and read the Bible as well as other Christian books. My love for my wife and two daughters grew deeper as well.

The doctor told me exactly what kind of cancer I had after my operation, and he said my chances were good for a full recovery. After several weeks at home, I returned for more tests and a detailed plan -- but amazingly the pathology came back without cancer. Simply stated, I once had cancer, but it was gone. The doctor said that I was a 1 in 400 (odds).

I believe that my prayers were answered, but I knew that I didn't deserve this outcome. Many suffer for years with cancer. Others die. But by God's grace, I was given a clean bill of health. I was (and am) so thankful to God for his faithfulness.

Over the last five years, my wife and I adopted two more children from overseas. I have seen God bless my family and career, and I know that it is only by God's grace that I was able to publish the book: Virtual Integrity.

What role has your faith played in your career choices?

A very large role. Starting at the National Security Agency (NSA), I wanted to serve society, see the world and be involved with government in various capacities. I was very blessed with an excellent education at Valparaiso University in Computer Science, and NSA paid my way through Johns Hopkins University for my Master Degree as well. I've always felt God's calling on my career as more than just a paycheck, but as an opportunity to do good for my family, my local community, my state, and our nation.

Government service has provided an exciting role that makes me want to come in to work every day. At the same time it allows me to be home at night and not travel as much. It also allows me to be active in my church. Even when we were in England, I didn't travel very often, so I was able to get involved in church life. We have a close-knit extended family in Michigan, and we do quite a bit together.

I also realize that I've had great mentors who have influenced me, like Teri Takia, CIO of California; Rose Wilson, deputy director of Michigan DMB [Department of Management and Budget], and others. There are many wonderful, hard-working people in government all over the world, and I've been blessed to have great teams working with me. There are many men and women with strong faith in the military, and I saw that at NSA and in England on US/UK bases.

As far as the book goes, I am excited that a number of technology companies are interested in what I have to say about the future of Internet life. I have seen how my faith interacts with security, integrity and cyberspace and every aspect of my career. I don't push my beliefs on others at work. Rather, I hope my life and actions speak for themselves. Integrity and accountability are more than just words to me, and I hope others see my faith through my actions. I still make plenty of mistakes, but I know a loving God who forgives and that is life-changing.

My thanks to Dan for his time and patience with all of my questions, particularly the nosy personal ones. You can read more about Dan's views on these and other issues on his book site's blog, Faithfully Online, and his other blog on the CSO Web site. -- Mark

Status Update: 250 or So Random Experts on Government Transparency

2009-03-10T22:56:00.010-04:00

Washington's upcoming "unconference" on using the Web to make government more accessible and accountable has found a venue at last. The free, two-day Government 2.0 Camp, scheduled for March 27-28, will be held near the Georgetown University campus at the.....

Duke Ellington School of the Arts
3500 R Street NW
Washington, DC 20007
Directions

As I mentioned here last month, hundreds of people have registered to attend the previously homeless gathering, and Tuesday afternoon's e-mail announcing the location said a waiting list for the event already has more than 200 people on it. The Governing 2.0 Camp wiki lists about three dozen sponsors -- this blog among them -- that collectively contributed more than $6,000 to help cover any expenses. The wiki also has the beginnings of an agenda that includes introductory sessions on social media tools and an impressive lineup of speakers and presenters, including the likes of John Hale, Web 2.0 guru for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

As a journalist, I'm not sure I'll have much constructive to contribute. Somebody already appears to have done my idea for a Facebook app that lets you send earmarks to your friends -- and that's probably not the kind of thing this good-government crowd has in mind anyway.

'Jetson, You're Fired!'

2009-03-08T03:40:00.008-04:00

"Even the Jetsons needed someone to push the buttons."

-- California employee Rod Breitmaier, responding to Cosmo G. Spacely-like suggestions by two leading candidates for governor there that technology can help significantly reduce the state's public workforce.

Breitmaier, a 13-year employee at the California motor vehicle department, made his comment in a story by Sacramento Bee's "State Worker" blogger Jon Ortiz. The comment also was picked up in GOVERING.com's daily "Who Said That?" feature.

Hope Breitmaier isn't too worried. There's always work to be done at Spacely Space Sprockets Inc., once ranked the 25th largest fictional company by Forbes.

Twitterary Criticism: 'This Stuff Is Wizard'

2009-03-07T10:31:00.007-05:00

Jon Stewart: "Why is Congress and the media jumping on this?"

Samantha Bee: "OK, because we're rotting corpses grabbing for any glimmer of relevance, Jon, hoping at some point one of these retarded things will be the vine that can rescue us from this quicksand. And don't think you're immune, Cable Boy."

The Daily Show's recent poke at the current Twitter fixation among media types and government officials is good for some self-aware laughs.

My GOVERNING co-worker Ellen Perlman also looked at how some state and local officials are using -- and sometimes misusing -- the mini-messaging service in her latest biweekly Technology e-letter. One of Ellen's peeves: screen-wasting personal musings by people who take Twitter's defining question -- "What are you doing?" -- a little too literally. "If someone feels the need to wake up and smell the coffee, then tell the world he just smelled the coffee, narcissism is at play," she writes.

But Ellen also says Twitter offers more than that:

"[M]any users, including government officials and a growing number of government agencies, have twisted Twitter's mission in positive ways. Instead of telling the world that they just dusted the credenza, they're using Twitter--along with Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other consumer-oriented 'social media' channels--to publish information for constituents or colleagues. In return, these officials receive a flow of feedback, links and ideas that can lead to improved service or teach them something they might not have learned another way. Sometimes that input comes from the general public, and sometimes it comes from co-workers or peers across the country, depending on who decides to 'follow' (or subscribe to) your feed and whose feeds you choose to follow back."

As Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak tells Ellen, "I love that with a few clicks on a keyboard, I can communicate with a lot of people and hear back instantly.... It's a lot faster than door knocking. It's the most efficient way to get to the most people directly that I know of. And I kind of have fun doing it."

Stimulating Technology: The Award For Best Special Effects Goes to... (corrected)

2009-02-22T16:11:00.009-05:00

Reposted from GOVERNING 's blog

Forget the Hollywood red carpet at tonight's Oscars ceremony. The best spot for political star gazing today was the J.W. Marriott on Pennsylvania Avenue, scene of the National Governors Association's winter meeting. When I stopped there this morning to have coffee with a state official who was in town for the gathering, it was hard to go more than a few feet without passing a governor. There was New Jersey's Jon Corzine and his impressive entourage on the escalator -- followed shortly by Vermont's Jim Douglas, NGA's unaccompanied vice chair. Also solo was Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, dressed in fleece and tennis shoes, on her way the hotel Starbucks before the morning workshops began. Downstairs, in the dining room, NGA chairman Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania held court at a small power breakfast.

Just like Hollywood, the less-recognizable players who work behind the scenes wield considerable influence over what we see on the big screen of American government. These days that often means the special effects wizards from the community of big government technology vendors. So I was not at all surprised to run into senior executives from the public sector groups at companies such as Microsoft and Oracle working the crowd.

Anyone who questions how important technology is in government today just needs to glance at NGA's list of 114 corporate fellows. Each companies' "$20,000 contribution allows NGA to leverage your industry expertise and utilize your company as an intellectual resource for the work done by the NGA Center for Best Practices," the association's Web site explains. More than a quarter of those corporate fellows (at least 30 companies, by my count) provide technology and telecom services and advice to government.

Much like the awards for the most technical categories at the Oscars, tech issues were not exactly prominent on the governors' agenda for the three-day meeting, with one speaker scheduled for Monday afternoon's closing plenary session. But many of the companies in attendance were particularly interested in hearing the governors' take on the technological implications of the recently enacted $787 billion economic stimulus package.

Those implications also were much on the mind of two senior officials representing the National Association of State Chief Information Officers -- Minnesota CIO Gopal Khanna, the organization's current president, and Pamela Richardson Walker, NASCIO's new director of governmental affairs in Washington. (Pam came from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, which worked closely with NGA and NASCIO on issues related to the 2005 REAL ID law; she also is an alum of Congressional Quarterly, my publication's parent company.)

The NASCIO team came to the governors' meeting with a long list of stimulus-related questions. Among them:

How do states plan to use technology to meet the stringent transparency and accountability requirements that are attached to all those stimulus dollars?
What will states do to make sure the highly targeted federal money does not perpetuate the often "siloed" ways that state organizations run their staffs and operate their systems -- particularly when federal laws and regulations in effect require that funding and data be segregated in ways that may be inefficient?
Do the governors plans to use any stimulus money for cybersecurity or consolidating their frequently decentralized data centers in order to protect the underlying technology on which nearly all government infrastructure and services depend?
Will states use the $7 billion dedicated to extending high-speed Internet access to under-served communities to pay for increasingly important wireless technologies as well as more traditional fiber- and cable-based efforts?
What are the states' plans for coordinating the $19 billion provided for spreading the use of electronic medical records?
How much of the $106 billion for education and training will be invested in educational technology?
And will any of the $37.5 billion for energy research go for the kinds of "green IT" programs that are high on the agenda for state technology leaders, who also see opportunities for controlling expenses by deploying computer systems that gobble less electricity?

I don't pretend to have the answers to these questions, but they are the right ones to be asking. Technology may not be a head-turning, sexy subject for most elected leaders, but it is so critical to the way governments do business -- or need to -- that it should be among the issues that get top billing the next time the governors put on one of their big shows.

(Note: An earlier version of this posting incorrectly stated that technology was not called out at all as a topic on NGA's agenda. That error has been corrected above.)

Spiel Check: To Err Online Is Still All Too Human

2009-02-16T11:18:00.008-05:00

One of my first and best sources when I covered Research Triangle Park for the Raleigh News & Observer was Mike Clark. Mike was then a senior corporate communications official for a nonprofit research center called MCNC. He and I were united by a lonely interest in words in a community of technology-oriented people who seemed to prefer cryptic and sometimes meaningless abbreviations -- like MCNC, which once stood for the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina, but stopped meaning that sometime before I arrived there 15 years ago. (I also could count on Mike to appreciate the hackneyed puns, double entendres and occasional Yiddish I found ways to slip into my copy -- and still do.)

Mike now writes a column on language for the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., and a related blog, DoWriteRight. His latest column is a roundup of embarrassing typos he encountered. His concluding example recounts a humbling and absolutely unintentional error involving me and this very blog -- and the interactive way in which it was discovered and corrected. I'll let Mike tell the story from here....

"[Mark] was a panelist speaking about media careers to a group of journalism students at the University of Virginia. With his focus on online writing and editing, Mark emphasized that in today's world, many journalists are asked to blog frequently, so mastering the discipline and skills to edit one's own writing is critical.

"Right after the discussion, Mark received a text message from an eagle-eyed reader, alerting him that in his latest blog posting, Mark had left out an important 'r' when he wrote about 'an Obama T-shirt.'

"See there -- even with the best of us, shirt happens."

Sigh. Here's the original -- and now corrected! -- item to which Mike was referring.

Web 2.0 Love Fest: Get a Room

2009-02-16T09:59:00.009-05:00

One way to measure the fervent enthusiasm and creative energy behind the current push to use technology to make government more accessible, responsive and transparent is the number of people who've signed up to attend next month's Government 2.0 Camp here in Washington. The event already has more than 450 registrants, and about 30 paying sponsors (this Web site among them). Now the organizers just need a place to hold this "unconference."

The purpose of the planned March 27-28 gathering is to discuss "using social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies to create a more effective, efficient and collaborative U.S. government on all levels (local, state, and federal)." It's too soon to say if a passionate crowd with nowhere to meet is a metaphor, but the list of those planning to attend is indeed diverse and impressive, including a sizable contingent from inside the alphabet soup of federal agencies and departments, as well as representatives from other levels of government -- from Arlington County, Va., to Washtenaw County, Mich. And there's no shortage of folks from the vendor and consulting community, including some of the biggest firms in the business.

I'm looking forward to seeing how BarCampish this really turns out to be. The idea grew out of a post-election discussion comparing notes on MiXT Media, a blog hosted by D.C.-area strategy and business consultant Maxine Teller (a former colleague of mine at Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive). Hats off to her and fellow organizers Peter Corbett and Mark Drapeau for the energy they've harnessed so far. They also have a helpful co-conspirator in Jeffrey Levy, director of Web communications at the Environmental Protection Agency and co-Chair of the Federal Web Managers Council's Social Media Subcouncil.

If you have any ideas for a Metro-accessible, rent-free venue that's available for a meeting this size, you can add it to the event wiki, of course. And you can follow developments via the Government 2.0 Club's group on GovLoop's Ning site, on LinkedIn and Facebook, and on Twitter, where you can see or contribute related posts using the #GOV20CAMP hashtag.

Information Underload: Washington's Ways Are a Barrier to Interactive Government

2009-02-15T17:09:00.003-05:00

Adapted from my "Futurist" column in the Feb. 16 issue of CQ Weekly.

Ron Sims' move from one Washington to the other may change his online world, too. The nomination of the Seattle-area county official to be deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development could make Sims one of the highest-ranking federal officials on Twitter if he's still allowed to use the free Web-based, mass-messaging service.

The King County executive told his local public radio station he was aware that "the rules" of Washington could mean he'd have to log off from his online social networking. Sims said he'd wait to gauge the new administration's "comfort zones with my Twittering and my Facebook."

Unfortunately for Sims, the capital's comfort zone took a hit just after he was chosen two weeks ago. That's when Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra began sending short Twitter posts during a congressional trip to Iraq. "Just landed in Baghdad," the House Select Intelligence Committee's top Republican told his followers. "Moved into Green Zone by helicopter. . . . Headed to new U.S. embassy," he said in another Tweet.

Hoekstra dismissed complaints that his postings endangered the Iraq delegation as a "Twitterversy." But the incident, paired with last year's debate over whether lawmakers could use Twitter on the House floor, also underscored the challenge of using the Internet to promote a more interactive and transparent government: Can Washington safely and smartly harness the same online tools that helped propel Barack Obama 's presidential campaign? And does it really want to?

It's not that Washington is afraid of the Web. The Federal Web Managers Council estimates that the government has launched 24,000 Internet sites. Many departments and agencies host blogs, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, Twitter feeds and even ambitious virtual worlds on Second Life. But many also strictly limit staff access to the same services they are using to reach out to the public.

See these recent reports and white papers from the Federal Web Managers Council (all are PDFs):

Putting Citizens First: Transforming Online Government (Nov. 2008)
Examples of Agencies Using Online Content and Technology to Achieve Mission and Goals (Nov. 2008)
Barriers and Solutions to Implementing Social Media in Government (Dec. 2008)

Some of the roadblocks the Web managers have documented are substantial. The "terms of service" on commercial sites that ordinary users might click right past are often at odds with what federal agencies can legally accept -- a challenge best illustrated by the complex seven-month negotiations between the General Service Administration's Office of Citizen Services and YouTube on that very issue. (A note on the U.S. government's Web Content Manager's Forum last month summarized the key points in those talks; Government Executive's NextGov reported last week that the feds were "on the verge of reaching an agreement" with YouTube and its corporate parent, Google.) Other legal and regulatory barriers include procurement laws, which possibly limit how the government may use free online tools, and other rules that constrain how officials may collect feedback and track online behavior.

Technological and managerial concerns include fears that giving federal workers less fettered Web access will create security vulnerabilities and sap limited network bandwidth. And perception problems abound, from posting government information on sites that display advertising to worries that employees will waste time "friending" college roommates and old flames.

As Obama's campaign team shifted to governing mode, it seemed to recognize some potential perception problems, too. A week after the election, The New York Times obtained a questionnaire asking candidates for senior positions to provide not only "any posts or comments on blogs or other Web sites," but also "all aliases or 'handles' you have used to communicate on the Internet" and any electronic communications that might "be a possible source of embarrassment." The seven-page form -- subsequently posted by the transition team -- also sought addresses for "any Web sites that feature you in either a personal or professional capacity (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, etc.)."

Despite this sudden skittishness, the transition team continued to actively post its own YouTube videos and solicit public input. And on Jan. 20, the White House Web site rebooted with a prominent blog. At the same time, the new staff chafed at strict online security rules and struggled with outdated computers and software. In a Washington Post story two days after the inauguration, White House spokesman Bill Burton said that the adjustment had been "kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari."

Those frustrations strongly echoed the grumblings from another White House transition, 16 years ago, when Bill Clinton's staff arrived to find aging, user-hostile computers and communications systems -- as I recalled in a previous Blog post. And one of the senior White House aides I mentioned in that item, Clinton first media director, Jeff Eller, told me last week that the Obama team's initial struggles sounded familiar to him, too.

Those struggles did not ultimately dampen the Clintonites enthusiasm for the potential of the novel new technologies that they had used in their campaign. When I spoke to Eller in 1993 -- in an electronic interview using CompuServe, a popular online service at the time -- he had speculated about how this thing called e-mail would someday "allow us to make information from the White House more readily available to the general public." That's just how Obama's staff views the social media tools of today. But Washington, a town in which even government spokesmen insist on being quoted anonymously, has ways of keeping its secrets.

The Mac at 25: Or the Glorious Anniversary of the Information Purification Directives

2009-01-25T03:08:00.005-05:00

"Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!"

-- spoken by the Big Brother figure in the January 1984 TV ad introducing Apple's new Macintosh computer. (See the full ad in Quicktime or the YouTube version embedded at the end of this post.)

Apple's iconic, Orwellian advertisement -- created by the Chiat/Day agency and directed by filmmaker Ridley Scott ("Alien," "Blade Runner") -- was almost as revolutionary as the product it was promoting. The ad poked at IBM's dominance of the emerging PC market and aired once nationally -- on Jan. 22, 1984, during Super Bowl XVIII. So, like Lyndon Johnson's shocking "Daisy" ad, which similarly was only broadcast one time during the 1964 presidential campaign, the Mac spot's power came more from the buzz it created than the reach the advertiser actually paid for.

As influential as the Macintosh was on the direction of home and office computing -- particularly in terms of the adoption of easily understood Graphical User Interfaces -- it also radically changed how computers were marketed and sold. One major factor was the Macintosh's relatively accessible price tag: $2,495, or about half the price of the IBM XT that debuted the previous year. Of course, adjusted for inflation, the same money would buy you $5,100 worth of computer today. That's enough to pay for two souped-up 15-inch MacBook Pros now.

Apple's marketing is still among the best, but I have never seen another TV advertisement that could absolutely silence a room full of rowdy Redskins fans the way Ridley Scott's "1984" spot did 25 years ago this weekend.

Watch below and see how it holds up....

White House Upgrades: Party Like It's 1993

2009-01-23T02:56:00.006-05:00

Bill Clinton was never much of a techie, but his vice president certainly was, as was much of their eager young staff. That may be why I hear echos from the Clintonistas' first days on the job 16 years ago in the digital dismay radiating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this week.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," White House spokesman Bill Burton told the Washington Post, which ran a front-page story Thursday on how President Barack Obama's webby warriors are struggling with the strict new security, software and hardware limitations that are annoyingly familiar to many government workers.

The Post's Anne E. Kornblut described the "technological dark ages" in which Team Obama suddenly finds itself: "No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking."

Clinton's staff was similarly frustrated in their first weeks in office in 1993. A couple of months into the new administration, I wrote a story for the Post that looked at how "many of the young campaign aides who came to Washington with... President Clinton to 'reinvent government' are still trying to adapt to the White House's aging, user-hostile phone and computer systems."

The March 29 article ran with the headline, "Under Clinton, The PC Is PC: Shocked White House Moves to Upgrade Archaic Office Systems." Vice President Al Gore's staff secretary, Michael Gill -- a management consultant who had previously worked on computer networks for private sector clients -- gamely posed for a photo in a closet stacked high with retired IBM Selectric typewriters. He explained his efforts to get his boss access to the same "high level of technology" they'd had during the campaign. Those efforts sometimes put Gill at odds with career staffers in the Office of Administration's Information Systems and Technology Division, some of whom later singled out the Gore aide's network and e-mail retention practices in affidavits filed as part of the endless legal wrangling that consumed so much of the Clinton years.

As it happened, Clinton preferred legal pads to laptops, one adviser said. But the president was nevertheless annoyed by the technology that was available to his staff -- as he made clear publicly during a Feb. 22, 1993, visit with amused high-tech workers in Silicon Valley:

"...When we took office, I walked into the Oval Office -- it's supposed to be the nerve center of the United States -- and we found Jimmy Carter's telephone system.... No speaker phone, no conference calls, but anybody in the office could punch the lighted button and listen to the President talk, so that I could have the conference call I didn't want but not the one I did. Then we went down into the basement where we found Lyndon Johnson's switchboard -- true story -- where there were four operators working from early morning till late at night. Literally, when a phone [call] would come and they'd say, 'I want to talk to the Vice President's office,' they would pick up a little cord and push it into a little hole."

In conversations, Clinton's staff was even more blunt about the technology they inherited from the staff of President George H.W. Bush. "No wonder they lost," one aide told me after being assigned an office equipped with a typewriter and a disassembled seven-year-old computer. "Speak up," another said in a phone call. "You know we only have a tin can and a wire here."

Some of the people who worked for the previous administration bristled at such descriptions. Kristin Hyde, then a 25-year-old former staff assistant in Bush's White House press office, said, "I never had any problems with the phones, other than they rang too much."

To be fair, e-mail was not exactly new to the White House either -- even in 1993. Just ask Ronald Reagan's national security team, who in 1986 tried to delete messages (later recovered from backup tapes) that helped reveal their plans to trade weapons with Iran and to use the profits to fund anti-communist fighters in Nicaragua.

But e-mail was not the widely used electronic tether it is today -- buzzing BlackBerrys on bedside tables across Washington at all hours of the night. In fact it was enough of a novelty 16 years ago that Jeff Eller, Clinton's first White House media director, developed a reputation as a futuristic communicator during the 1992 campaign simply by being one of the first people in politics to use e-mail to distribute position papers and press releases. Ross Perot's campaign staff, many of whom came from the independent candidate's technology ventures, also were early adopters.

Chatting via CompuServe, Eller mused at the time about how e-mail and other technology would eventually "allow us to make information from the White House more readily available to the general public." That vision clearly would resonate with the current White House team. The only difference: Most of the Obama folks probably do not remember what CompuServe was, and few, if any, ever used an IBM Selectric -- a great machine, by the way.

Since I've pulled out the time machine for this posting, let me add a couple of quick "where are they now" notes: Clinton media director Eller is now president and CEO of Public Strategies Inc., and Bush (42) press aide Hyde is the co-founder of Good Food Strategies, a Seattle-based public affairs and communications firm that advises clients involved in sustainable food issues. Both appear to be keeping up with the times: I spotted profiles for both on Facebook and LinkedIn, and Eller is even Twittering.

(Image above: a Selectric typing element from the IBM Archives. The March 29, 1993, Washington Post article from which I recovered many of the quotes above is available -- for a price -- in my former employer's online archive.)

Anti-Viral Marketing: Spreading Drugmakers' Messages Online

2009-01-18T18:49:00.002-05:00

Adapted from my "Futurist" column from the Jan. 19 issue of CQ Weekly.

Pharmaceutical advertising can cause drowsiness, irritability, mild confusion and occasional hypochondria. People experiencing prolonged humming of jingles derived from old Elvis Presley songs should consult a doctor. After all, getting you to contact your doctor is one reason drugmakers spend billions on all those ads, anyway.

Like most marketers, pharmaceutical companies are slowly shifting their advertising focus to the Internet. Changing media habits are a contributing factor: Web activity now rivals radio and print, and by some measures is gaining on television's reach, even when excluding at-work Internet use. Online marketing offers targeted audiences at a low cost, too.

But pharma's growing interest in online also relates to the distinctly stringent way direct-to-consumer marketing messages for prescription drugs are regulated, especially on U.S. television. With Congress expected to consider even more restrictions, creative Internet advertising looks more appealing than ever -- and poses challenges for the Food and Drug Administration, which already struggles with its responsibility to monitor the marketing of prescription medicines in all media.

This shifting media landscape helps explain how Debbie Phelps -- mother of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps -- ended up on Facebook last year, working as a paid spokeswoman for a new online group for parents of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The "ADHD Moms" page offers space to share stories, access articles and vote in online polls. The page shows up prominently when users search for information on the disorder on the hugely popular social networking site, and more than 7,000 "mombassadors" have declared themselves "fans" on their personal profiles.

ADHD Moms' sponsor is McNeil Pediatrics, a division of Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. Its role and logo are highlighted near the top of the page, but a user would need to click through to the company's Web site to learn that it's "a leader in the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" -- a reference to Concerta, a commonly prescribed daily treatment for ADHD.

Parent company Johnson & Johnson has been in the vanguard of this kind of indirect, community-oriented online marketing for prescription medications -- setting up blogs, Facebook pages and YouTube channels to help extend its brands. Some drugmaker marketers see campaigns like those as the industry's future.

"The genie is out of the bottle," said Peter Justason, a global marketing director for Johnson & Johnson, in a recent TNS Media Intelligence report on using "social media" for branding. "Now it doesn't cost anything for a million people to get online and talk to each other. People are trusting people like themselves more and more, as opposed to some sort of third-party authoritative figure."

FDA's regulations for digital communications are the same as those for direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical messages in other media, including rules against promoting a product's possible off-label uses and requirements that drug companies clearly disclose potential side effects and adverse reactions. If anything, the Web may provide better opportunities for that kind of disclosure than the tiny type in magazines and the fast-talking voice-overs on TV. "It's hard when you only have a 30-second spot," says John Mangano of comScore Inc., a market research firm that advises pharmaceutical clients on online issues.

Nonetheless, drug companies have been slower than other industries to explore social media's potential. A key concern: "user generated content," such as the stories and comments posted on ADHD Moms. Some in the industry fear that user comments will dramatically increase reports of possible adverse reactions, which the companies are then legally required to document. (See Brandweek: "Why Pharma Fears Social Networking", Oct. 20, 2008)

Such worries have kept many drugmakers from doing anything more online than buying some ads and creating static, carefully vetted Web pages. But that could soon change. In a series of videos posted on his site, EyeOnFDA blogger Mark Senak notes that Congress is likely to consider imposing a moratorium on TV ads for newly approved drugs and restrictions on direct outreach to doctors and medical groups -- moves he predicts would accelerate the pharmaceutical industry's online shift. "Traditional concerns" about Internet marketing "actually crumble in the face of the fact that coming reforms are really going to demand new approaches," says Senak, who's an executive at Fleishman-Hillard. (Here's Senak's video series: "Changing Policy Landscape," Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Could increased online marketing of prescription drugs attract the same level of legislative and regulatory scrutiny that broadcast advertising has? Sure, but Senak thinks that's a long way off. And the FDA is far from ready to take on such a challenge. The Government Accountability Office has found that FDA's small staff for monitoring drug marketing has labored with the growing volume of industry submissions over the past decade, including 4,600 offline pieces and more than 6,100 online pieces in 2005 alone.

One way the agency might accelerate enforcement efforts is using social media. The FDA is beginning to develop a new "Web portal" to make it easier to report adverse drug reactions. A similar approach might allow consumers to report potentially illegal advertising, too. For now, however, the agency Web site provides only an elusive link -- with a phone number and a mailing address. (See the third-to-last answer on this Q&A from FDA's consumer guide on drug ads.) Very old media.

YouLinkMyFace.com?

2009-01-11T20:19:00.005-05:00

"The value for users of having one interoperable social network is so great that it's very hard to believe that you're going to end up in the next year or two NOT having fairly complete interoperability and visibility across social networks."

-- Tim O'Reilly, of O'Reilly Media Inc., speaking about the "future of of social media" on NPR's "Science Friday" last month. O'Reilly helped popularize the term "Web 2.0" (coined by his colleague, Dale Dougherty).

Future History

2008-11-08T00:49:00.009-05:00

Getting my mits on a commemorative copy of the Washington Post's election special edition was my obsession this week -- especially after someone swiped Wednesday's newspaper from our driveway. The Post is now selling "limited edition" copies online for $9.95, although I bought a copy for $4 from a vendor at a Metro station this evening. The Post also is selling front-page reproductions on T-shirts and coffee mugs, as well as fancy reprints that are suitable for framing.

I understand the urge to keep a little piece of future history. Screen grabs of historic homepages just don't have the same impact, although I am happy I still have this series of three washingtonpost.com homepages from election night 2000. The images were snagged at 3, 3:30 and 4 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 8 (use controls at the bottom of the window below to advance the slides).....

Election Night 2000

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My copy of this Wednesday's print edition will go into a stash of consequential front pages that I have saved since at least the mid-1980s. Among them....

* "FBI's No. 2 Was 'Deep Throat'" (Post, June 1, 2005)

* "Presidential Cliffhanger Awaits Florida Recount" (Post, Nov. 8, 2000)

* "Clinton Impeached" (Post, Dec. 20, 1997)

* and "Space Alien Meets With Ross Perot" (Weekly World News, July 14, 1992)

I was always surprised that last story didn't get more pick-up.

How did other newspapers present Tuesday's election results? The Newseum here in Washington has posted a collection of hundreds of front pages from around the world. (Thanks for the link, Bill Schrier.)

UPDATE (11/9/08): Speaking of instant history and historic Web pages, my friend Mark Potts over at Recovering Journalist posted a set of "Obama Wins" screen shots from major online news sources -- on election night, no less.

CNN's Hologram: 'Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi...' (Updated)

2008-11-05T18:18:00.008-05:00

In case you missed it, CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin "beamed" onto the news network's election night set from Chicago for a four-minute, live "holographic" conversation with anchor Wolf Blitzer in New York (video embedded below).

Yellin explained that she was reporting from a tent near Obama headquarters, surrounded by a ring of 35 high-definition cameras that created a 3D-ish composite image of her. The cameras moved in sync with the cameras in New York, allowing her to appear on set with Blitzer. Engineers spent two weeks assembling the set up in Chicago.

"It's like I've followed in the tradition of Princess Leia," Yellin (complete with a bluish outline) said.

"You're a terrific hologram," Blitzer assured her.

Why it was worth all the expense and trouble to have a live, on-the-scene TV report that omits the, um, scene was unclear.

Clearly the gimmick is a contender for the Best Special Effects award when the "Waltys" for election coverage are handed out next year. But I am not sure it served any purpose for viewers. A quick Twitter search immediately after the segment generated a wide range of reactions, including "DUM!," "cool," "hilarious," "star warseque," "lame," "neat," "pathetic," "silly," "cringeworthy," "SIKKKK!" and "weird."

So how will we see this nifty new tool used next? Sportscasters beamed into the middle of instant replays to point out a fumble? War correspondents beamed into replays of fire fights to explain the action?

Here's last night's CNN video....

UPDATE (11/7/08): Here's a little more on how this was done from CNN. Turns out out that sports coverage was in fact exactly the kind of programing this system was designed for....

"The technology in play was originally developed by Israeli-based company SportVU (pronounced 'sport view') as a new way of filming soccer games.

"Gal Oz, a SportVU designer who came to the United States to work with CNN on the endeavor, said it was originally designed 'to create a matrix effect in sports' -- in other words, to provide 360 degrees of perspective for instant replays. "

In a segment on Blitzer's "Situation Room" Wednesday, CNN Senior Vice President and Washington bureau chief David Bohrman said he's been trying to do something like this for a dozen years. "I've basically been a crazy mad scientist trying to get it done."

So does Bohrman think holocoverage has a future?

"We'll see. It was a little ornament on the tree.... But television evolves, and how we do things evolves, and at some point -- maybe it's five years or 10 years or 20 years down the road -- I think there's going to be a way that television does interviews like this because it allows for a much more intimate possibility for a remote interview."

More on E-Voting: The Human Element

2008-11-04T12:34:00.002-05:00

It's too early to say whether the polling place issues that have emerged in the first hours of voting today will add up to serious problems in the final election counts. Among these preliminary reports you'll see that several voters in Shaker Heights, Ohio, received paper ballots that left off the presidential race. And a precinct in Raleigh, N.C., did not open on time this morning because its chief judge's grandson drove off with the ballots in his pickup truck.

Mistakes will happen. But it's hard to read these and other accounts and not be amazed that people still think paper is the key to secure, fair and accurate elections. Electronic voting certainly has its problems too, but is paper the answer?

I ask because my recent CQ column on the obstacles to Internet voting in the United States (reposted here last week) generated some interesting comments, mostly about online security.

One writer, a former colleague of mine, asked about the online voting system in Estonia that I wrote about in the column. "How would the Estonian e-voting have gone down if had happened during the Russian cyber attack in May of '07?" he said, citing a Guardian article on the incident. "Assuming we kept something along the lines of single voting day and didn't open it up to a voting month... couldn't a denial of service attack plus a strict reading of/adherence to voting laws ('deadlines are deadlines') lead to as much or more trouble than single voter ID fraud?"

My answer to this and other comments was that online voting has many potential vulnerabilities, a denial of service attack or some kind of other cyber assault among them. But our current offline systems for managing elections also are vulnerable to all manner of disruption too. The 9/11 terrorist attacks happened to be on primary day for New York City's 2001 municipal elections; voting was postponed, needless to say. That is not an argument for or against Internet voting. But the tendency to see vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems (whether online or systems at the physical polling place) as significantly different from non-electronic systems (missing paper ballots or manual manipulation of registration rolls) is interesting, if not mysterious.

Any process involving humans is vulnerable, and I am not convinced that current offline election practices are especially efficient, reliable or secure. My wife and I waited 70 minutes to cast absentee ballots in Fairfax County, Virginia, one night last week. The main hold up: Election workers had to read each paper absentee voter application and call someone on the phone to verify details. Much of the time we were there, the six available voting machines were idle while the harried poll workers managed the line and the phones. Not so efficient.

On the other hand, the very next afternoon the state board of elections Web site let me use my name and the last four digits of my Social Security number to verify that I had indeed applied for an absentee ballot and cast my vote in-person the previous evening. While that online confirmation message gave me great confidence that my vote had in fact been counted, others just as easily might have found it creepy. In a society in which people are perfectly comfortable swiping credit cards at kiosks to get boarding passes at airports or conduct other private-sector transactions, many Americans still seem to distrust government use of technology for equally routine purposes.

That kind of anxiety may reflect more how Americans feel about government than they do about technology. It's an emotional reaction, understandable in a country built by people who largely fled other forms of government. And that innate anxiety and distrust will continue to drive our future decisions about voting systems and processes -- perhaps far more than technological considerations alone would merit.

One Click, One Vote

2008-10-30T03:02:00.003-04:00

Adapted from my "Futurist" column in the Oct. 27 issue of CQ Weekly.

The lines for early voting have been long in North Carolina, one of this year's unexpected electoral battlegrounds. With just days to go before the election, about a third of the state's registered voters, or roughly 2 million people, had already cast their ballots.

Among those voters were hundreds of Wake County residents, including my father, who waited for an hour to cast their ballots a couple of weekends ago at the Cary Town Center shopping mall, a short drive from the state capital in Raleigh. That must have been a galling experience for those busy suburbanites, many of whom work for the "Research Triangle" area's numerous technology firms. In an age of instant online access to so many public and private services -- including all of the Web-based storefronts of the same retailers that have shops in the Cary mall -- how is it that people were still standing in long, winding lines to vote? Aren't lines just for roller coaster riders and airline passengers?

So why not vote on the Web? That's not a new idea, but Internet voting is a long way from reality -- at least in the United States. Pilot projects during the past decade in this country have focused almost entirely on voters who live and work overseas, particularly people in the military. For these voters, the realities of international postage delivery are often at odds with state and local deadlines and processes for requesting and returning absentee ballots, so e-ballots make sense.

Electionline, a Pew Center on the States project that tracks voting trends, notes that seven states now permit military and oversees voters to use e-mail to send in absentee ballots -- the Internet-age equivalent of faxing in the documents. (See ElectionLine's 2007 report on overseas voting.) And a few state political parties, including the Democratic organizations in Michigan and Arizona, have dabbled in online voting as part of their presidential nominating caucuses. But real-time voting via the Web just has not taken off here.

The technological concerns about Internet ballots are the same that some voters have with electronic voting machines: accountability, security, privacy and redundancy. But the highly federated systems of administering elections in this country, and of keeping tabs on the population, are major obstacles to online voting as well.

Voting experiments in other countries help underscore the distinctive challenges for American election officials. Take Estonia, the small, young Baltic democracy that has been a global innovator in e-government services. In 2005, the former Soviet republic allowed nationwide Internet voting in its local council elections. More than 9,000 voters, including the prime minister, used the service. But most of the country's roughly 1 million registered voters were eligible, as long as they possessed a new national ID card and had access to a device that allowed a computer to read the card's embedded electronics. In combination with a private, government-issued PIN, this system made voting via a secure Web connection as easy as a transaction at a bank teller machine. And in parliamentary elections last year, three times as many Estonians cast their votes online -- 30,275 out of 897,243 eligible voters. (See stories from the BBC, CNET and Wired for more on Estonia's e-voting efforts.)

Compare all that with a new online voting experiment in Arizona. Also a pioneer in online government, that state was the first of only two that allow voter registration on the Web. Since the United States has no national ID card, Arizona's system depends on driver's licenses or official state identification. Easy enough. And, in fact, this successful system served as the entry point for about 60 percent of the people who joined the voter rolls this year before Arizona's Oct. 6 registration deadline.

Now the state is taking the next logical step: Internet balloting for overseas voters. But this system is not quite as simple. First, voters need to obtain log-in information and passwords from their home counties. After that, they can download ballots, as well as affidavits that require their signatures. The completed documents can then be scanned and uploaded to the state via a secure Internet connection. The state transmits the files to the counties, which validate the signatures and registration information before sending the ballots along to be tabulated by local vote counters. Got it?

A news release by Secretary of State Jan Brewer's office notes that Arizona's Internet voting system is based on "the same type of security used for online banking and credit card transactions." However, if online banking were in fact done this way, customers would write out checks, scan them into a computer and then upload the images of those check to their bank, which would then make disbursements from a local branch office.

Arizona's online voting system carefully and cleverly preserves its counties' official role in administering key parts of the election process. But it also illustrates the challenge Brewer and other officials face in creating simple Internet voting processes that comply with this country's hodgepodge of state and local election requirements.

Inevitably, online voting will become a trusted way of exercising democracy's most fundamental rights. But, in part because of the quirks that distinguish American democracy and culture, the United States is unlikely to lead the way.

Just Browsing

2008-10-08T19:14:00.002-04:00

Have you downloaded Google's slick new Chrome Web browser yet? Or the latest version of Firefox? Or perhaps you're test-driving one of the beta versions of Microsoft's next Internet Explorer upgrade. Heck, are you even using the current version of IE, which celebrates its second birthday this month?

The Web browser wars are heating up again, giving Web users a variety of choices in the tools and features they can use to surf from site to site. The latest browsers offer significant improvements in speed, security and compatibility.

So why are some government tech shops slow to deploy even the latest versions of the tools to the staffs they support? I try to explain in the October edition of GOVERNING's Managing Technology e-mail newsletter. One major obstacle to upgrading: legacy applications, such as an online employee payroll system used by the state of Utah that turns out to be dependent on Internet Explorer 6.

Reporting this out helped me figure out why we we're continuing to see so many IE6 visits on our Web site, Governing.com.

One High-Flying Business

2008-09-29T11:49:00.003-04:00

The Chinese space walk got more attention, but this past weekend marked another milestone in space flight when a low-cost commercial rocket lifted off from a small Pacific atoll and successfully placed a 364-pound dummy payload in orbit. The launch followed three glitchy attempts by privately held Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to reach orbit with one if its Falcon 1 rockets. (The image above is from SpaceX, which also has posted video from the flight.)

SpaceX was established in 2002 by Elon Musk, the founder of PayPal and the Zip2 Corp and Inc. magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007. Musk has big plans for his El Segundo, Calif., rocket company, beyond its already busy manifest of unmanned military and commercial payloads. Under a contract from NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, SpaceX is developing a spacecraft that could be used to ferry astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station after the shuttles are retired. The SpaceX contribution to this government-funded competition is Dragon, a spacecraft designed to carry up to seven astronauts. The Dragon capsule would be orbited by a heavy-lift Falcon 9 rocket, the first of which SpaceX plans to test from Cape Canaveral next year.

In an online Q&A with washingtonpost.com last week, Musk mused about some other long-term plans, including the possibility of using one of his boosters to launch interplanetary space probes. "My interest is very much in the direction of Mars, so a Mars lander of some kind might be the next step," he said. He also answered a question about using Dragon for a flight around the moon -- an idea Musk called "conceivable."

Jeff Foust, editor and publisher of The Space Review, summed up the significance of Falcon 1's first orbital success to the future of privately funded space ventures:

"SpaceX, and other NewSpace ventures like it, carry the promise of dramatically changing the space industry with low-cost orbital and suborbital launch options that open up new and potentially lucrative new markets. That promise, though, has remained just that -- a promise, not a reality -- since SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X Prize four years ago. Sunday's launch was perhaps the biggest milestone since then in demonstrating what NewSpace can offer."

Ground Control to Commander Zhai

2008-09-28T22:07:00.010-04:00

Taikonaut Zhai Zhigang (above right) climbed outside his Shenzhou 7 spacecraft this weekend in an experimental $4.4 million spacesuit. Aided by crew mate Liu Bomingalso, who stood in the open hatch wearing a proven Russian spacesuit, Zhai waved a Chinese flag as he hovered over the airlock. China's first spacewalk was being beamed on live TV across their country and around the world.

China's third human space mission ended this morning when the Shenzhou reentry vehicle parachuted safely to Earth in a grassy Mongolian plain. The mission's success sets the stage for a series of more ambitious flights in the next few years, including plans for a modest orbital laboratory. I wrote some about China's space plans in a column earlier this year. Here's a brief update.

A Congressional Research Service report says China's next two flights, Shenzhou 8 and 9, will ferry the module to orbit and allow the country to test rendezvous and docking procedures. The crew of Shenzhou 10 will then visit the orbiting laboratory. Those missions will give China the know-how it needs to operate an even larger space station, similar to a series of Salyut orbital outposts operated by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. China plans to orbit a Salyut-like outpost by 2020, after it completes development of a new, more powerful launch vehicle -- the ChangZheng (or "Long March") 5.

The CRS report also notes that China's Shenzhou spacecraft could eventually be used to ferry crews to and from the NASA-led International Space Station -- "if that becomes politically feasible in the future." That kind of partnership would indeed be tricky politics, but the looming U.S. dependence on Russian spacecraft after NASA's space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010 could make that a more attractive option in the next couple of years.

What about sending taikonauts to the Moon? NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has publicly speculated about a possible circumlunar flight -- no landing -- perhaps sometime in the next decade. Chinese space officials have denied they have any specific lunar plans, although they float the idea from time to time. Just today a spokesman's for the country's space program told reporters that the extra-vehicular activity on the Shenzhou 7 flight was a necessary stepping stone for a moon landing. But the spokesman quickly noted that "more investigation" was needed before China commit to any such course.

Here's a video from this weekend's EVA....

(Photo up top from China's official Xinhua news agency)

A Different Digital Divide

2008-09-27T16:34:00.004-04:00

Adapted from my "Futurist" column in the Sept. 29 issue of CQ Weekly.

The child of a science writer I know once hopped into her mother's lap and took control of the family computer. My friend was amazed to watch her daughter, who was 3 at the time, use the wheel on the mouse to scroll down the screen. "Oh," the science writer said, "that's what that does!"

Perhaps John McCain has felt just that kind of wonderment this year, as his staff and family have taught the 72-year-old Arizona senator how to browse the Web and read his daughter Meghan's campaign blog. The Republican nominee has described himself as a technological "Neanderthal" and computer "illiterate." And now his Democratic opponent has turned those comments into a campaign ad that paints McCain as "out of touch." (PolitiFact.com truth-squaded that ad earlier this month.)

The ad is a way for Barack Obama's team to raise the age question -- "Is McCain too old to be president?" -- without having to ask it in so many words. That's politics. Yet McCain's comments also illustrate a greater intergenerational challenge for all policy makers, even the 47-year-old Illinois senator: How to keep up with unfamiliar, fast-changing technologies -- especially those with political, legal and regulatory implications.

McCain earned a little of my sympathy on this point a few weeks back, when work required me to bumble through a virtual world that tested my own online agility. My assignment took me to Second Life, a vivid online community where inhabitants create animated electronic stand-ins called "avatars" to play and do business in a bustling, game-like 3-D environment.

Despite more than a dozen years of working in digital media, my visit to the much-hyped service was humbling. I was able to quickly create a cookie-cutter avatar and then "teleport" to a recruiting center built in Second Life by government officials from Missouri to help fill real-world jobs in the state's technology division. But I was hardly graceful. Using my mouse and arrow buttons, I managed to wander through the state's displays and even collect a free T-shirt to add to my avatar's electronic wardrobe. But I also bumped into walls and struggled to figure out how to make basic moves, like sitting down.

All of this would have been child's play to my nephews, ages 8 and 11, who I've seen master complex new game controllers within minutes of removing them from the package. In fact, the difference between their natural ability and my own klutziness is the difference between what some experts in online learning and behavior describe as "digital natives" and "digital immigrants."

John Palfrey and Urs Gasser popularize the idea of online natives and immigrants in their accessible new book, "Born Digital", although educational game creator Marc Prensky is generally credited with coining the terms. In 2001, he described how technology was rewiring the brains of this generation of children to "think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors." Digital immigrants, on the other hand, "adapt to their environment" but "always retain, to some degree, their 'accent,' that is, their foot in the past."

That accent can be particularly thick when it comes to setting policy, which may explain why government leaders have been so tongue-tied in trying to address critical technology challenges for more than a decade -- from modernizing intellectual property laws and updating security practices to establishing policies that foster competition in telecommunications and increase reliable and affordable access to faster online services. Technology also creates new expectations for transparency and accessibility.

In that context, comments such as President Bush's past musings about "rumors on the Internets" and using "the Google" to view a satellite image of his Texas ranch deepen the divide between the immigrants and natives. Garrett M. Graff, in an essay in The Washington Post last year, argued that the press and the public were being too easy on digitally illiterate politicians in a way that would be unacceptable on questions of foreign policy or macroeconomics. "Why is it," he asked, "that we blithely allow our leaders to be ignorant of the force that, probably more than any other, will drive and define the nation's economic success and reshape its society over the next 20 years?"

Obama's ad mocking McCain's tech savvy offers no such allowance. It aims to make the Republican seem out of step with online immigrants and natives alike by reminding them that he "admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer" and "can't send an e-mail."

In truth, McCain has said he's only made tentative forays into the digital world. He told The New York Times in July about several blogs his wife and staff have shown him -- and he promised he was "learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon." He described reading messages on other people's BlackBerrys but noted that he "never felt the particular need" to send e-mail messages of his own.

All of that may have sent an entirely unintended message to digital natives. The message to other political leaders: It's time to log on.

Finding Real Work in Virtual Worlds

2008-09-13T18:14:00.004-04:00

Adapted from the September 2008 edition of my Managing Technology e-mail newsletter. (subscribe here)

Meet one of the newest employees in Missouri's Information Technology Services Division. That's him above, the cute gray cat in the red bow tie. Well, that's what one of his computerized "avatars" looks like anyway.

Avatars are stand-ins for people who use virtual worlds such as Second Life, the popular, almost game-like online universe where Missouri opened a modest recruiting station more than a year ago. And the state's very first Second Life recruit was the small cat whose real-world identity is Ben Rhew, 27.

A 2003 graduate of the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Rhew is exactly the kind of young computer engineer many state and local employers are trying to lure to government work before a looming wave of retirements depletes their ranks. On average, 1 in 4 state government IT employees are expected to retire within five years, according to a survey by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers.

Government leaders have a mediocre track record when it comes to recruiting the next generation of workers into public service. (See: The Young and the Restless, from Governing, Sept. 2007). But virtual worlds and online communities such as Second Life may offer promising new hunting grounds, especially for young, up-and-coming techies.

Rhew describes Second Life as a "3-D chat room" where "you can pretty much do anything you want" -- especially if you have the right combination of basic programming skills and imagination. The mix of stores, homes, clubs and other hang outs is as diverse as the population of on-screen characters, any of whom can walk, fly or even teleport from one hot spot to another.

Transactions are done in "Linden dollars" -- a currency named after the service's parent company, Linden Lab. But favorable "exchange rates" mean actual U.S. dollars go a long way. Dan Ross, Missouri's chief information officer, estimates that all of his organization's "in-world" recruiting has cost a little more than $200 in taxpayer money so far.

Ross' office was among the first major public-sector employers to use Second Life to search for talent. A large rotating state seal marks Missouri's online outpost. "IT Jobs Now Available," a sign at the entrance announces. "Come in and browse." Inside, visiting avatars can click on screens with Web links to information about the kinds of technology work the state needs done. A kiosk collects contact information for state recruiters to follow up by e-mail. There also are free T-shirts for visitors to add to their avatar's online wardrobes.

Missouri's presence made a big impression on Rhew, a self-described Second Life addict who has created multiple avatars for himself and others. Rhew says he first heard about his state's innovative online recruiting efforts when he began looking for a new job within commuting distance of his home in the Rolla-St. James area. After one brief visit to the recruiting station earlier this year, he returned to attend a "job fair." Other attendees nearly sat on Rhew's diminutive feline avatar, which is only about the size of a typical character's foot. But Rhew made an impression anyway. A rapid-fire series of real-world interviews quickly turned into an offer to work on applications development for the Department of Natural Resources. He started work at his new Jefferson City office last week.

Rhew is as surprised as anyone that his online pastime would help land him a job working in state government. "I never expected this to happen," he says. And he certainly will not be the last Second Life recruit to end up on a public payroll. Whole blogs have popped up devoted to recruiting in virtual worlds. And with many large, technology-oriented corporate employers looking to Second Life and other online communities to identify and compete for talent, government leaders may have little choice but to create their own avatars and follow Missouri's lead -- unless this just turns out to be a fad.

Even Ross -- whose avatar you might be able to identify by his sparkling shoes -- thinks it's too soon to say how important these emerging avenues of communication will be going forward. Nonetheless, the CIO and his management team are working with the staffs of other agencies to examine possible uses beyond recruiting, as well as the right rules of conduct for state employees whose work takes them into this alternate dimension.

So where to start? Second Life's Wiki offers some examples of what various government organizations are up to, while David D'Angelo's blog Recruiting in Second Life is a good source for information on how employers in all sectors are using the service specifically for h.r. purposes. Video links on David's blog (on the right side of the page) also will give people who have never visited a virtual world a sense of what the experience is like.

For those who are ready to take the plunge and try it out, the Association of Virtual Worlds offers a group for newcomers. And once in Second Life, users can find Missouri's recruiting station on "Eduisland 3." As it happens, the state is making plans to renovate its site -- and has posted an opening for a student intern to help.

Some online recruiting is less direct. Governing's May 2008 special report on what Web 2.0 trends mean for state and local government included a section on how a southern California hospital district used Second Life to build a working online model of a planned $850 million facility. The virtual model showcases the administrators' plans for using cutting-edge medical technology, in large part to help the new hospital gain "competitive advantage" in attracting the most qualified doctors and nurses. Here's a video of the simulated hospital.

Apparently virtual reality isn't just for recruiting computer engineers anymore.

(Many thanks to Ben, who goes by Lomgren Smalls in Second Life, for sharing the image of his avatar above.)

A Virtual Crime Wave

2008-09-02T00:42:00.004-04:00

Case closed: e-government increases crime. At least that's what seems to be going on here in Fairfax County, Virginia.

The affluent D.C. suburb where I live has seen significant jumps in the numbers of serious crimes reported in recent years. But local police attribute the increase at least in part to their efforts to promote an upgraded system that makes it easier for victims to report some crimes online and by phone.

This kind of marketing success could easily turn into a twisted argument against making government services more convenient and accessible online, as I mentioned in a longer look at this story over on GOVERNING's blog:

Local leaders could easily misread a story like Fairfax County's as an argument against providing a system like this: Make it easier to report crimes and the crime rate goes up, providing statistical fodder for negative headlines, public criticism and perhaps political attack. Sign me up. But hopefully officials in Fairfax -- and elsewhere -- won't be tempted to shoot the messenger....

I've already heard an example of such thinking at a GOVERNING technology conference in Seattle a few months ago, during a daylong workshop on municipal 3-1-1 telephone lines. One official from a medium-sized northeastern city lamented that providing 3-1-1 was only increasing demands and expectations for government services in his community -- from filling potholes to disposing of roadkill. "If we miss one dead dog we get creamed," the official said.

Fairfax, on the other hand, takes great pride in its online offerings. Its e-government efforts have been ranked among the best in the country by the Center for Digital Government and the National Association of Counties in their annual Digital Counties Survey. Gerry Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax board of supervisors, once said that recognition was "an excellent reminder of how technology can connect residents and their local government." So I'll be watching to see how he and other officials respond if the crime data becomes an issue in a local congressional race, in which Connolly is a candidate.