P-blogs revisited

Some time ago I have written about why politicians should be blogging. Apparently, although the term p-blog I tried to coin has gone unnoticed (as have, probably, my posts), the very idea was brought up by other people, and by now there are real p-blogs out there.

Wiki sais: "Political blogs attracted attention because of their use by two political candidates in 2003: Howard Dean and Wesley Clark. Both gained political buzz on the Internet, and particularly among bloggers, before they were taken seriously by the establishment media as candidates. Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager, made the Internet a particular focus of the campaign. Both candidates stumbled in the end, but were, at one time or another, thought of as front runners for the Democratic Nomination."

Wesley Clark 'blog' is here. I *think* Dean's blog has transformed into this site, but apparently he allows his staff to post most of the time, thus making the entire point of a personal blog rather moot in my opinion. Same with Clark's, although he appears to post by himself more often. The question remains, obviously, does he really write them himself?

Here are some other interesting links I found. By all means, if you know others, please let me know:
Lists:
* Why Politicians Need Weblogs - not only does this site answer this question, but it has a list of over 20 p-blogs :)
* Links to State Legislators' Blogs and Legislatures with RSS Feeds - the title sais it all
* Blogs from local politicians - mostly local to Greensboro, wherever this is :)
* Similar, but from a place called St. Cloud (?)
If you want some specific examples, I have checked out some at random:
* Jerry Brown - past governor, now a city's (Oakland) mayor
* Cam4u - blog by Stacey Campfield, a Tennessee House Representative
* Commonwealth Conservative - by Chad Dotson, an elected Republican Commonwealth’s Attorney in Virginia
Articles/related blog entries:
* Christian Science Monitor: More politicians write blogs to bypass mainstream media
* Washington Post: Politicians Deal With Newcomer, The Blog
* 10 reasons why should a politician blog
* VoxPopuli seems to agree with me, plus it has a good historical overview of politicians on the net
* Blogs Making Baby Steps in German Politics
* Blogs for German Politicians
* Politicians Start Blogging to Bypass Mainstream Media
* See also this interesting blog entry.
* One more

And those are mostly results from 3 pages of Google search by 'blogs by politicians'...

I think that's enough to prove that the phenomenon exists. I'd also wager a guess we are seeing just a tip of the iceberg of things to come...

Promised Wiki update

Plot of the traffic ranking data with a reversed logarithmic scale

A must read

In this much-anticipated sequel to The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil presents the next stage of his compelling view of the future. The merging of humans and machines -- the Singularity -- will be "... a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed," he says.

We are in the very early stages of this transition, and within just a few decades, life as we know it will be completely different, Kurzweil explains. "Non-biological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. By 2045, we'll get to a point where technical progress will be so fast that un-enhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it."

That means we will reprogram our DNA, human aging and illness will be reversed, world hunger and pollution will be solved, and our bodies will be transformed by nanotechnology, so that, for example, we will eventually be able to augment and replace our biological organs and vastly extend our intelligence. Eventually, he concludes, we will increase the powers of our intelligenceUniverse. by trillions of trillions of times and expand to rest of the

Wikipedia close to Top50

I remember telling some people recently that Wiki was the 70-sth most popular site on the net. Well, I was apparently using some outdated info (probably half a year old). I am happy to report we are the 53rd most popular site ATM. Or 49 on Global list. Alexa is bit confusing with different summaries and list (why can't I find Wiki on any other but the global list??).

For comparison:

Yahoo:1
MSN:2
Google: 3
eBay:5
Amazon:7
BBCOnline:10
Blogger: 33
Slashdot: 1,049
TheOnion: 2,639

One more thing I often say is that in a few years, Wiki will be as popular as Google. Comparison of 2 years (see graph below) is interesting: Google is of course much more popular, but Wiki is growing much faster. Google almost doubled its popularity - but Wiki popularity increased hundredfolds (see Wikipedia:Statistics for details). With some numbers one could fairly easy create a prediction. I may even do it sometime soon, for curiosity (and statistical excercise) sake. My 'eyeball Mark.I' estimate gives Wiki about 5 years to reach Google popularity. What's your call?

The four premises

Of the Good Technoutopian:

1) We are presently undergoing a (postindustrial) revolution in technology

2) In the postindustrial age, technological growth will be sustained (at least)

3) In the postindustrial age, technological growth will lead to the end of economic scarcity

4) The elimination of economic scarcity will lead to the elimination of every major social evil

Sounds good to me...

Flog of the Prokonsul

Long story short, as a part of one of my courses, I have started a second blog. You may want to check it at http://pioflog.blogspot.com/ (hyperlinks not working atm, blogger is having user interface issues again...).

Enjoy :)

Update: Hyperlinks working again.

Epic 2015

Interseting futurology flash movie. Enjoy few minutes of peering into the near future: EPIC 2015