Free Publicity: Who do we help?

Props for providing a cynicism antidote - I for one could use it. I pounded the streets 18 months ago to help get Obama elected, and while I really appreciate the lower profile achievements you list (and sure wouldn't say "he ain't done nothin'") I am frustrated at the seeming lack of willingness to push hard (and the backtracking from campaign promises) on high-profile issues like national health care plan, or closing Guantanamo, or West Bank settlements. (And I have been making the phone calls to Congress, etc; trying to help where I can). Now it seems we're down to half-baked, politically-minded, running-scared stuff like this brainless "spending freeze" idea.

Guess I'll just do my best to keep the pressure on, and the cynicism at bay.

You make valid points especially when it comes to the Apple bandwagon PR fanboys.

If you are not a Democrat, what are you? Its so called 'independents' that do not help the middle-class cause while you cowardly independents stand on the sidelines making criticisms and judgments. With all the improvements that the Obama's administration is doing for the middle class, I am proud to be a Democrat.

Anil -
Another great thoughtful post. I too will be watching both the Apple announcement and the State of the Union. But to respond to the higher level thread of your post: In any situation, once we have EARNED attention it's important to think carefully about what we DO with that attention. True attention is a very valuable and rare gift that can lead to real engagement on issues, when accompanied by trust and demonstrated expertise.

Anil, you make a good point generally in terms of where our attention goes. At the same time, sadly Apple has done a better job of focussing attention with a promised deliverable than Obama has in the past few months.

Personally, I've been putting a lot of my time into LGBT equality stuff as well as the process of trying to have children. Because I'm legally a second class citizen it takes a lot of extra time and money to have a child. The screwed up health care system makes it take even more time.

Obama has made it crystal clear than LGBT issues are not a priority for him during this term (DADT and DOMA campaign promises unmet; the same speech given to HRC that he gave during his campaign; refusal to do any work in any State to fight for marriage equality votes; DOJ filing briefs in support of anti-LGBT cases). I actually do think that it's important that he put the economy and health care first, but it means even more of my time has to be put into the stuff that his administration hasn't been willing to risk politically: eg. trying to help defeat the Maine proposition which rolled back marriage equality in Maine.

I think Obama could take a page and learn from Apple when it comes to succinct messaging in terms of health care. While the problem is extremely complex, the general communication to engage people in the work to help pass it needs to be simple. Obama failed to communicate strongly and simply around his proposed reforms and the messaging battle was successfully muddied by his opposition. This sense of hopelessness and muddiness I think has left many of us who were so hopeful about his Presidency less engaged.

An election is like a product launch. Clear with a visible change. It's the nature of politics that sophisticated policy action feels more nuanced and less exciting. Communication and community organization are core strengths for Obama and he needs to do a better job of them. One of the reason's iPhone apps appeal to people is that they organize action into small, digestible, measureable, accessible nuggets.

I'm inspired by #CrisisCamp, Code for America and your own work. I am hopeful about geeks motivating to work on political and policy issues and I certainly hope more will want to help with achieving marriage and full civic LGBT equality (feel free to get in touch with me if you'd like to help at EqualityCamp.com).

You are right but bear in mind that technology and a (somewhat) free internet are part of what got Obama elected. If there has been a shortening of attention spans it is because a lot of us have returned to listening to the deluded people in the old-line media. Apple, while not championing health care or trying to save civic society, is still part of the movement towards democratization of media. In my lifetime I have seen public opinion go from being determined by the big three broadcast networks to becoming diverse and more representative of what people actually are thinking. But every time you let the big corporate media pundits do thinking for you, you give back any gains that have been made. In that regard Apple like any corporation wants to bend the media to serve their own message, but for the most part their message has been one of empowering the individual, albeit an elitist and wealthy individual for the most part, but also creative individuals and educators. The problem with defining Obama's success only on major issues misses the point that any lasting change needs to come from a change of attitudes. The reason we don't have universal healthcare is not because of Obama's failure. It is a failure of our culture. Tools that foster education and help change those attitudes are perhaps just as important as writing your senator. The reason most of europe has universal healthcare is because people there understand culturally that helping and educating their fellow citizens helps themselves. So kudos to you for seeing that things are back sliding and wanting to continue and accelerate the pace of change. But I don't think you need to beat yourself up too much about caring about technology and Apple's latest product.

I've been a reader of your blog for years and I've followed you on twitter for about a year now and wow... Talk about misleading premises! You start the post with "I'm not a Democrat" but half of your tweets in the last year have been about how awesome Obama is. On top of that, you're a tech pundit who now spends most of his time talking about politics nowdays and trying to advance a partisan agenda. And as a cherry on the cake, you are the director of an organization that is supposedly independent and non partisan. Well, keep advocating the Democratic agenda under the false pretense of independence. I'll just stop reading anything your write because I really didn't start following you for your political opinions or to hear about how much you adore 44.

@teebes, perhaps not all political discussions are firmly based on "Dem vs Rep". Perhaps there is not actually any such thing as a singular monolithic "Democratic agenda". Perhaps the whole government is just a bunch of lawyers, yes-men, clerks, and assholes, all running around pushing their own agendas, and perhaps you, by your clear disdain for anyone who doesn't clearly exculpate their allegiance to the particularly labeled master agenda, are just contributing to perpetuating this chaos. Good luck fixing your broken society! (as a non-American, I genuinely mean that)

I don't really have any interest in technology so I don't generally read your blog, but somebody sent me this and I just wanted to thank you very much for writing it and say that I hope people read it.

I hope a lot of people are persuaded by your post, Anil. We can't all focus all of our efforts on civic engagement all the time. But I do think we should all step back from time to time, and take a hard look at what we're devoting our time and effort to achieving.

And for those of you turned off (from either side) by the highlighting of Obama here - it's not really about Obama. It's about civic engagement. Our culture - political and otherwise - is shaped by those who participate. Get involved.

Damn good post.

I've always wondered why Obama doesn't take a page from Steve Jobs and others and use more visual aids in his important addresses. Lists and charts would be particularly effective during the State of the Union address, where he's listing policy accomplishments. And he could use charts when talking about economic progress or a health care bill (such as the potential effects of the bill on costs and spending). It worked for Ross Perot, kind of, and I'm sure Obama could put together a top-notch design team.

P.S. Teebee sounds a wee bit bitter... and he/she has evidently missed the point of this post. Regardless, keep up the good work ... it takes courage to create thoughtful, evocative posts like this. Thank you!!

Anil,
I like this post - I like the message and I appreciate the food for thought. The only thing that is giving me pause is the idea: "But Apple will invest a lot more in saving any given book publisher than they ever will in saving civic society"

We need Apple to succeed (er, um "continue to suceed" I suppose :) ), and we need book publishers (or their next iteration) to succeed because the thing our society needs right now is a stable economy. I care about Apple's success because I care about our success.

Apple's mission is not influence politics; Apple's mission is to make money for it's shareholders. And that's ok -- that is what they should be doing. What Steve Jobs does personally and what he does professionally are really two different things, right?

Anil your response to @teebes is beautiful. Please run for office. Oh right, what you're doing is probably more likely to be effective. I'm with you and so many others: why focus on a party (let alone a limited two-party system) when you can focus on solving real problems and people. I thank you for your support on marriage equality and would love to work with you at Expert Labs to make some progress on the problem of needing to achieve full civic equality and safety for all LGBT people in all states.

I'm conflicted on this one, because anything that could possibly help e-books gain popularity and sell well = a direct economic benefit to me (as an author who has turned away from the established system after writing 10+ books for it).

My own personal stimulus plan, you might say.

A 'stimulus plan' that will directly affect me and all the other things that ripple out from me, whether it's giving money to causes I support, or spending it in my local economy, or...

So while I agree with your basic premise, I don't mind seeing the hype on this (though I'm a Kindle person, myself). If it helps e-book adoption, more authors will be able to break away from the existing system and we'll have a more robust publishing industry, if you ask me.

Anil the policy wonk takes some getting used to for sure. Just a while ago it was a treatise on "blog publishing" and now a scolding for us not loving Obama as much as we once did. That's not on us, that's on Obama and Apple is a business not the government you work for now. As @zeldman tweeted, the issue is with your peers, not us, or Apple. Take it up directly with them. I will with mine. As you know, I think they would be a better place with more bikes.

Thanks for the post Anil. I'm just as guilty as everyone else, and really have no excuse.

I would like to point out two things about Apple v. Political Advocacy. 1) Apple gives a shit about its employees, to the point that, during the Prop 8 battle, they donated non-recoupable amount to the No on Prop 8 cause. 2) Since the US Supreme Court struck down restrictions on corporate political giving, this has the potential to happen again if someone crosses Apple's employees again.

Stepping off my Fanboy soapbox for a moment, I do agree with you, though, that Apple probably doesn't care about its customers in the same way it does its employees. Back on the soapbox, I'd like to agree with "heathergold's" comment above: Apple has consumer messaging down pat. Short, sweet, to the point, and concrete as hell. "1,000 songs in your pocket"; I know what this means, and I know the benefit.

It's the role of the Executive Branch to set the tone for its priorities, and its messaging. I had no clue what was happening during the Health Care debate, what the positions were, and what the WH's stance was. What was the benefit of any of the plans to me? How can I share that with my friends to get them on the Public Option, or Single Payer, (or neither) band wagon? The clearest summation on any of this discussion came from outside the political ring, from Dan Roam (author of "The Back of the Napkin").

Quickly wrapping up, I also am glad you gave a list of the Administration's accomplishments in 2009. This is the clearest, most positive thing I've seen in the last month explaining some of the victories (albeit small, but still victories). I was proud of the Hate Crimes legislation, I'm proud of the Admin's transparency, and I'm proud of the move to infrastructure recovery (esp. when it comes to High Speed Rail).

Thanks for putting today's media frenzy into some kind of congruous perspective. I'm better off having read this post than I was 3 hours ago.

"Those of us who are digitally savvy are probably having a chuckle at their expense, snickering at their wishful thinking."

Wonder if you'd elaborate on this. As a (former) magazine designer I'd really like to know what's so funny.

There are fundamental and irreconcilable differences between your view of government and the libertarian view of government, and I think they explain why someone might be more excited about what Steve Jobs has to say than what Barack Obama has to say.

Obama's job�the one he solemnly swore to do�is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." By this metric he has so far been an utter failure. Even left-leaning Constitutional advocates like Glenn Greenwald have acknowledged this. Obama has upheld the previous administration's fantastic abuses of executive power, in direct contradiction to his campaign promises. War, torture, rendition, spying, coverups. They're all still here, with no sign of impending expiration. This isn't just a failure of inaction against these abuses�it is a hypocritical affirmation of them. I don't blame an Obama voter for succumbing to political ennui.

America is not a company. Obama is not tasked with product creation, GDP growth, or asset allocation. He's tasked with preservation of our Constitutional framework. It is the Steven P. Jobses of the world, the investors, the creative capitalists who are left to pursue these exciting, creative, wealth-producing activities. There has been no idea in all of history more uplifting than capitalism. No other force has so raised the standard of living of the entire world and created such massive potential for living a fulfilling life. Therefore it is to the market-tested innovators that I look for my excitement about the future. That is why the announcement of a silly shiny widget is more interesting to me than the flowery promises of a public servant who is convinced that government cronies are better equipped to spend money than are the people who actually earned it and who stand to benefit or be disadvantaged by the appropriateness of its application.

So the ultimate answer is that I don't look to the government for the sorts of things for which I look to creative capitalists, nor do I judge them by the same standards. I will continue to advocate for political change, but because of my view of the role of government, these changes are never going to be as objectively sexy as technological innovation in the private sector. I see that as a feature. Government is a poor agent of societal change, mostly because all government actions are necessarily coercive, and change through coercion is unnatural and unlikely to last.

Frankly, I don't want to be excited about my government, I was to stop being depressed by it (in all senses of the word). I'll "help" both political causes and successes of the marketplace, but I can't promise that I'll be more excited about political restoration than I am about the creative genius of the marketplace.

As a case in point, I think I've had more positive influence on the world by my involvement with WordPress and promoting free, easy web publishing, than by any donation, vote, petition signature, or political commentary.

� Mark Jaquith

Please find a cause you care about, and beat the drum to stir up public sentiment to support it.

I'm on it. It's a little dull for BoingBoing but it's working for me.

We're lucky here in the Northeast in that we can directly interact with our government and even work on it ourselves. Politics doesn't have to be about national level offices [though it's great if that's what you want] but there's a whole lot of grassrootsy stuff that is useful too - helping people from being lonely, making sure people have the access to technology (including transportation, labor-saving devices, tools), keeping people from getting stressed and angry and hopeless - that isn't super painful to do.

My question to me has always been whether any particular day has been a giving (to others) day or a getting (for me and mine) day. I think most people need to strike a balance to stay sane, but one of the things you notice os how so many actions can be both giving and getting, and trying to do more of that sort of thing, and maybe a little less typa typa. Thanks for the thoughtful words, Anil.

Anil:

Does Apple's support for the Hope for Haiti Now telethon represent a serious commitment of resources to you? To me it seems like Apple made iTunes available as a distribution channel for content that raises both consciousness and money on behalf of the earthquake victims.

Nice.

How is it that a post challenging us to step up to the real needs/challenges around us continues to solicit additional discussion of IPad and Apple? File in: Missing the point.

I've taken a few things from your list and tweeted them (easier than coming up w my own and yours are good), linking back here and w the hashtag #yeswecan

Maybe we can get it trending?

I saw an Economist article last week where the hardware cost of iphone came to half its sales price. The other half was rationalised as 'r&d' costs.
Yeah, r&d is difficult, but you need to do it only once. Then it's all copy and paste. So while you drool over the Apple, Jobs is loading his coffers with the money you pay for long-paid out 'r&d' costs.
Truly, software making is the best way to make money. Other than speculation.

I loved this article and I scrolled through the comments knowing you'd receive some harsh backlash from it.

You responded to them with class, intellect and optimism. Hopefully people will put half the passion they use in commenting on your post in pursuing some sort of worthwhile cause.

"like Apple that, despite its elegant designs and generally excellent products (I use many of them), certainly doesn't need free PR from some of the most talented people on the web."

You repeat this endlessly. Is 'I use many of them' the new 'I have black friends'? Your words would carry more weight if you'd just admit that you don't like apple.

Also, it's ironic that you've spent years showing up ANYWHERE sixapart/typepad has been discussed and pushing PR down our throats. And yes, I know that was your job. That was a job you chose to take. And now that you're obviously financially comfortable and have a name for yourself you're trying to decide what should be important for other people.

And with the 'snickering' comment, I see you're as condescending as ever.

Know really needs your support? New interdisciplinary projects looking to solve big problems. I think we will see this WH administration do great things. However, it has problems distributing money to make changes now because it is muddling thru an inherited bureaucracy that is not designed for innovative approaches. Great approaches and organizations are popping up right now to meet a bunch of emerging needs but are completely underfunded because they do not fit into traditional funding categories. Not to toot my own horn but my project, The Windowfarms Project (www.windowfarms.org) is leveraging best practices from web culture in one critical non-web niche: the problem of feeding cities sustainably. We are trying to simultaneously tackle open culture, environmental, systemic food and nutrition issues. However, we fall outside of the highly specific guidelines for almost every grant we apply for. We had to raise the tiny amount to carry ourselves through the first quarter of our second year (we won't break even until early 2011) by fundraising with the public on kickstarter. The public gets it better than the gov and foundations do. So find some innovative little guys that you think deserve a chance and help them out.

Yeah! That mean ole' Apple company! Deliberately preventing poor people from buying their publicly traded stock, and then sharing in their profits, and all that... makes me so T.O.d!

So where is your disclaimer about being the recipient of government largess in the form of a cush gig for the Federal Government? Sorry, the whoel speech rings hollow.

Tech Guru will Head Govt Incubator

BTW - My 401k went up when the market realized that they had unfairly lumped eveyone with AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman. And if you give the current POTUS credit for the USMC departing Iraq, you've misplaced your understanding of MOOTW.

Since reading your post a few times I have engaged to Facebook friend-of-a-friend who's disgruntled with the administration, and tweeted (@noahvail) heavily about Obama's speech to House Republicans. This was a 180-degree change from previous topics (me, me, iPad, me) and I think I'm a better person for it. So, thanks.

Funny how you mention disdain for propping up a company/corporation like Apple, when in the same post you mention that your 401K is up 30% since Obama became president. What do you think makes up your 401K? While it may not specifically be Apple, it is investments in corporations like Apple. You should be cheering for Apple and other corps that are helping the country get out of this recession. It is obviously benefiting you, and you are bragging about it (though you are attributing it to Obama). I can tell you right now, Obama and his administration are sure pulling for them to help get this country back on its economic feet, and they are doing what they can to help them do so. So, yes, go ahead and cheer and support and give free advertising to these companies. You never know, you could help to make your 401K go up even more... Think about it. Oh, and you can still champion whatever cause you want to at the same time...

Agreed with teebes above. I like how you believe that the administration's priorities are steps in the right direction. Previous admins did many of the same types of things, there is little different here. The money is still being thrown around uselessly, much like what VCs do with idiotic, unproven ventures - so many of them throwing more manure on a stinking social network ideal.

The high speed trains - what a barrel of nonsense. Spend billions to link Tampa to Orlando (or LA to anywhere for that matter) to save about 15-20 minutes on the trip, but notably without any transport systems on either end to effectively get people to and from the hub stations. Stupidity and waste in its purest form. Until we have robust LOCAL transit system like that of France, it is folly to build such rail networks. These sorts of decisions are endemic of how bad this admin and congress are blind.

I thought I would let you in on a little secret, your a democrat and yes you don't technically work for the federal government but you do very much benefit from government largesse.

Thanks for posting this, Anil. You and your readers might be interested in this related (albeit developing) news about the emergence of a new "on ramp" for public participation in tech policy deliberations. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/04/29/a-little-respect-involving-citizens-in-technology-assessment/