I don’t think Senator Obama’s determination to text message his VP decision to all who sign up can be tossed off as just a gimmick in the normal sense. It is a gimmick, but it has cache, white lighter mysticism and techno-nerd groove all rolled into one.
As for cache, well, what could be better than what used to be called the “Secret Squirrel Handshake”, now reinvented as the “Fist Bump”? That the fist bump will go digital this week is all the better.
As for being a “White Lighter”; well, if we have been privy to the inner workings of Marin/Napa County we recognize this sort of new age thing and are more than a little amused by it’s incoherent attachment to a man who has supped the wine of Black Liberation Theology, and where the Anti-Christ is probably white. Sorry, Nostradamus.
To those of us who still read newspapers for information or search for clues on MSM (mainstream media), we might dismiss or not even pay attention to this event. We will wait for our news station to tell us. However, techno-nerd groove demands more.
Texting the event resonates with our secret sci-fi hero nerds. One only has to watch the old movies to see why. One movie in particular stands out: “Johnny Mnemonic”. Although this movie was produced in 1995, it was put into DVD production in 2004. (Interesting date, huh?) In case you don’t think movie this is in our mainstream psyche, a web search today found 1,200,000 hits. In fact, I just recently watched it myself on regular TV myself. The Plot of the story is HERE, where it’s ratings have gone up 36% in the last week, and Wikipedia’ s information on it is HERE.
In the climax of the movie, Johnny, with the help of his associates gets hooked up to a dolphin, downloads the data with a medical cure stored in his head, and beams it around the world. This of course saves the day for the world, bypasses all those who would control or stop him and his friends, and becomes one of the great techno-nerd heroes of this generation.
What do you suppose happened when Johnny’s world got this information all at once? Yep, the attack of the megapolies! What will happen now? Now that the information stored in Obama’s head gets flung into the blogosphere? I know! I know! Techno-nerds get their revenge and change the world!
One must expect that this is a fist bump in the great tech wars, where the NetRoots nation is waiting, waiting, to launch their next attack! It doesn’t hurt to fan the flames of mysticism and juxtapose the flogging of William Gibson’s “Pattern Recognition” , published in 2003, and awareness peaking in 2004. (Again, that date.)
Let me direct you to a fine example of a recent blog, where the often used ritual of name chanting prior to the fight, is engaged. Recounting of stories is also employed as we all know it keeps our memories firm and our community together. This blogger, Thomas Levenson, refers to a review of “Pattern Recognitions”, just done July 29th of this year. He is stimulated by Matthew Yglesias, (Over at Daily Kos) and loves Gibson. As Levenson refers, “Text is grass”. We don’t need Gibson to know that recognizing the patterns and knowing when to dip our toe is the essence of today’s knowledge management.
Yep, there you have it. That’s why the rest of us didn’t know the DNC Civil War had started, or even the skirmishes before. The Tower of Babel is what we have made, the buzzing locusts have arrived, and quietly, peacefully, unaware, we hadn’t learned how to text. Now though, we”ll have to meet, and it’s to our advantange if we do it before they are ready. Even though I’ve got dial up, I think I’m going to need that supply of rocks! On second thought, maybe all I need is a shovel and crab grass spray.
You probably think I’m being silly. Ok, for a more adult meditation on the subject of who is silly, check out Heidi Li’s Blog.
http://heidilipotpourri.blogspot.com/2008/08/just-plain-silly-except-of-course-that.html
Grab and Keel 
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