Centrifugal v/s Centripetal Vision - How Obama Views Technology And The World

If you have been working down in the coal mines lately and haven't heard President Obama's humorous quotes about technology, there are a few interesting points to understand from them. First the quotes, courtesy of Mark Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation and National Review Online:


President Obama repeated this criticism Sunday in his commencement address at Hampton University:
You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter. And with iPods and iPads, and Xboxes and PlayStations . . . information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.

This echoed what he told CBS News’s Bob Schieffer in an interviewon September 20:
There’s one last point I gotta make, Bob, and that is that I do think part of what’s different today is the 24-hour news cycle and cable TV and blogs and all this. They focus on the most extreme elements in both sides. They can’t get enough of conflict. It’s catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment, I think it makes it more difficult to solve the problems the American people sent us here to solve.

In the article that these quotes came from, entitled "Obama vs. The iPad,"  a very good picture was painted of the real dilemma Obama is in with regards to his central vision. It seems that when it was beneficial for him, then he was all for the new kinds of media and tech, such as blogs, podcasts, Facebook and Twitter. As long as Slate.com and The Daily Kos were trumpeting his vision. But now that the preponderance of internet traffic flow is in the opposite direction of Obama's stated goals, he has now come out as the true "old fogie" that he is. Truth be told, he never really liked those confounded contraptions and is very concerned that all of us are quite confused by all the choices of internet media. Apparently we can't really tell the difference between truth and error because, despite the record breaking number of interviews and news conferences, we fail to get in lock step with his progressive agenda. We obviously are deceived by all of those loud mouth radio people and Fox News.

The real dangerous thing here is Obama's veiled threat to regulate internet access. His vision is one that is based on centralizing power in Washngton D.C., that is it is centripetal. But the nature of the internet is generally centrifugal, that is, it disperses power outward. So now that there is a clash of visions with the Obama centripetal power swirling in direct opposition to the prevailing technological and sociological  tide. When this happens, expect the ones trying to keep the flow going toward them to artificially control the flow of information, and by extension freedom, to try to regulate or stop...4359fgbejt0478*%(*#BV*&**  
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