Justin Oberman posted on techPresident the personal Democracy Forum about the usage of mobile phones in this year’s election and writes us: “Even though it doesnt mention Smartmob in the article that is essentially what it is talking about”
The difference between mobile’s original political roots and what we are seeing in this years election comes down to one word: “organic.” While the Clinton, Edwards and Obama mobile campaigns have had their savvy moments, they are all generally the same thing, that is, “campaign orchestrated.” And, as David All points out, the text messages smell like it.
Delivery Fiasco aside, even if the campaigns VP nominee text message had gotten to me before the main stream media it would only have been just that, what we in the mobile world call a “text message alert.” After that the interaction dies until the next alert. The Obama text message has already become a commoditized ritual of campaign sound bites.
According McKenzie Wark, Professor of New Media at Eugene Lang College, “This process of commoditization ends up polluting the very channels of communication it relies on in the first place to make the market efficient.” And these are all things that we, apparently, signed up for or thought we wanted. Junk mail, Spam email… mobile will be next. We may get excited about political campaigns going mobile in the beginning but as the interaction and messages remain stale so will our excitement eventualy become.
Justin Oberman posted on techPresident the personal Democracy Forum about the usage of mobile phones in this year’s election and writes us: “Even though it doesnt mention Smartmob in the article that is essentially what it is talking about”
The difference between mobile’s original political roots and what we are seeing in this years election comes [...]
