Howard revisited
I wanted to offer a quick post to clarify one of my criticisms of Howard's book New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen. Christan pointed out that it was not a fair criticsm to ask for the "feel good" ending that I expressed - namely that Howard provide some form of identification of strategies that would help the "managed citizen" thwart the involuntary collection, manipulation and parsing of credit data shadows, browsing histories, or geographic assumptions via zip code. While I fully acknowledge that this may well be another book that begs to be written, I believe that this is still an oversight for Howard not to include it in his work. Given the assumption that he is not writing for the hypermedia campaign manager, the only other entity in his title is "The managed citizen". Other than being directed and "narrowcasted" surely "citizens" play some kind of role in this thing called democracy don't they? The other audience for this book is of course political scientists- surely they would have some concerns and ideas about the effects of these new campaigns have on democracy? If this book is offered as a warning about what goes on within these firms, as I believe the project was intended to be, Howard has to be more than just a canary in a coal mine.
As we saw through www.mybestsegments.com no one, including Howard fit the data profile based on zip code. He does not drive a mercedes, and no one in class fessed up to reading the WWE Magazine. While one of the data mining politico guru's could argue that those studies used on the website are the bluntest of instruments, specifically those that are free- it does not sit well with any of us that believe that we are more complicated than the websites that we visit, the things that we buy, or the geographic area where we live. Don't think that these firms really matter? Check out this link and pay particular attention to the line "pushing democracy forward."
Lastly, did anyone else find it ironic the number of Canadians involved in the dicussion about American democracy? I guess this is what happens when your national motto is "Peace, Order, and Good Government."