Politics 2.0 is Closer Than You Think

Two pieces of news just sort of jumped out at me today:

(1) Dick DeVos, who is running for Governer in Michigan, just announced the winner of a video contest they were running on their website.  The DeVos campaign invited site visitors to make their own political ads in support of DeVos,...

Boy Scouts Now Fight Piracy

In a move that can be described as either truly genius or truly bizarre, the Associated Press reported  that the Motion Picture Association of America has developed a curriculum to teach the Boy Scouts of America about the necessity of entertainment copyright law and the ill-effects of pirating movies. Scouts receive a merit badge after completing the program,...

A Shakespearian Second Life

Virtual gaming fever has hit the MacArthur Foundation, resulting in the philanthropic organization awarding Indiana University professor Edward Castronova a $240,000 grant to build a Second Life -esque virtual world fashioned after the plays of Shakespeare. The project, entitled "Arden: The World of Shakespeare," is meant to let Castronova and his research team delve into online behaviors by conducting ongoing social experiments online....

Politicians Invade Facebook

Personal Democracy has a great blog entry regarding a recent study on the use of Facebook by candidates for political office.

Here are some key stats Personal Democracy highlighted:

(1) "36 or 25% of candidates for U.S. Senate have posted their own profiles: 17 Democrats, 11 Republicans,...

Internet Regulation Around the World

With the recent news that the Iranian government has decided to limit ADSL bandwidth above 128 kbps for all ISPs (BoingBoing reported it before Reuters) without giving a reason, it makes sense that this is an opportune time to take stock of state-mandated Internet regulation (including content filtering and surveillance) schemes around the world....