E-lection Blog Party

As I'm starting this essay, the TV is on CNN displaying the latest election results. As I'm posting this, the Democrats have gained control of the House and the fate of the Senate is coming down to one race in Virginia. I'm working on a laptop in front of the TV with tabs open for Blogger, CNN, Google News, and my two favorite political blogs, TalkLeft and crooksandliars.com. As this is all going on, I'm wondering how much technology has changed politics and whether the changes have been for the better.

The CNN studio where all this is taking place has definitely been very digitized. There are the huge TV screens filling the studio following all the latest poll results that have been called in or sent over the internet instantly directly from the polling places. Everyone but the anchors are sitting in front of a computer. All of the graphics are obviously computer generated and very sleek. One of the reporters has a very cool looking large touch screen display that shows which seats belong to which party. One conclusion that can be made with absolute certainty is that graphics and animation on television look so much cooler now than they did before. This new, technology-filled CNN has the ability to get information to us so much faster and more clearly than ever before. CNN, along with all the other news channels and with online news sites, are able to instantly deliver information to the masses. It seems like, with so much greater access, more people would know about what's going on in politics and would be able to make a more educated decision in the voting booth.

Unfortunately, this isn't always the case. Anyone who wants to find this information has easy access to it, but less people are interested in it. Most people never take the time to do any research on the candidates they are voting for. And when these people do hear something about a candidate it's usually just because of some scandal or other shocking move that shows a candidate in one specific context instead of a view of how they usually act in office. Why would you when you have so many other toys to play with? If I'm not happy with how the world around me is working, I'll go find another world that I'm much happier with, like World of Warcraft. With all of this technology, it's extremely easy to tune out reality and live in a virtual world. Although, while this is a very important problem that we have to deal with, the technology itself is not at fault. Technology is an amazing thing and it should be up to the individual to decide how they want to use this technology.

In a room off to the side of the CNN studio, there was a party going on. They called this party the "E-lection Blog Party." Present were many well-known bloggers from blogs such as the aforementioned crooksandliars and TalkLeft. Blogging is another interesting phenomenon that has had an interesting effect on the political scene. Individuals have much more power in spreading information than they ever have had before and these blogs help in bringing more people and opinions to the table as well as more information that is not reported on larger news sources.

Everything around us is changing because of the new technology around us. The entire face of politics is changing and becoming much more influenced by 1s and 0s. As the people become more and more familiar with technology, politics becomes more and more digitized. And as politics becomes digitized, the entire world starts becoming digital.