When technology became cool again

Google, Firefox and digital cameras gave us reason to cheer in 2004. Then again, outsourcing, global warming and the politics of stem cells proved there is a dark side.

By Andrew Leonard, Farhad Manjoo and Katharine Mieszkowski

Dec 27, 2004 | The blogging of the president

It seems strange to contemplate now, but around this time last year just about everyone in the political establishment believed that Howard Dean would handily win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, thanks mainly to his deft use of what experts were calling a powerful new political tool -- blogs. That, of course, didn't happen; though Dean used his formidable online operation to raise more money and to put together a more robust organization than any other candidate, his blog savvy mattered little in Iowa, New Hampshire and other primary contests.

In retrospect, Dean's loss should probably have been a sign to proponents of Web-based political activism that they needed to spend some time thinking of creative ways to convert a vibrant online movement into an effective offline tool. But in the heat of the campaign there was no time for such introspection, and instead bloggers -- the most powerful of whom seemed to be liberals, epitomized by the denizens of Daily Kos -- raced forward with their crusades.

And for a while, things looked peachy. With the advent of blog-based ads, money poured in to political campaigns (not to mention to the bloggers themselves). Bloggers also managed to affect the political news cycle (remember "Rathergate"?) and they got themselves invited to both parties' conventions. But it was hard not to think of the Democratic defeat of Nov. 2 as a Dean-in-Iowa redux for the bloggers. John Kerry raised a lot of money online, but he didn't win. And neither did many of the congressional candidates who'd financed their campaigns with blog money. Readers of Daily Kos funneled half a million dollars to a "Kos dozen" of congressional candidates, and every single one of those lost at the polls.

So what happened? Was the entire online political effort something of an illusion -- a mere echo chamber of blue-state optimism, all sound and fury, signifying nothing? Alas, it sure seems that way now. But here's hoping that by 2006, smart bloggers find ways to break through the echo chamber, and people-powered online movements begin to matter in the real world.

-- Farhad Manjoo

The unwired Net

Sitting at a departure gate at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, I received an e-mail from the Orbitz travel agency informing me that the flight I was waiting for had been delayed -- before any such announcement had been made over the public address system. It was a wireless moment, one of many this past year.

In the same airport, there was the anxious man who walked up to where a woman and I were seated hunched over our laptops, and asked, "Are you getting Wi-Fi here?" in a voice that was equal parts hope and desperation. Or there was the time in New York City over Thanksgiving, when I turned on my laptop and discovered that were seven wireless networks in range of my father's house. Or just simply, the happy day when I brought my new wireless-enabled laptop home and realized that I was no longer chained to my network, that the Internet was where I wanted it to be, when I wanted it to be.

In 2004, the wireless Internet hit critical mass. Long a marker of the particularly fevered geek (remember him trying to adjust his little antenna to pick up that feeble Metricom signal?) the ability to log on, from anywhere, at any time, without encumbrance, is now rightly seen by the computer-using masses as a basic human entitlement.

Advances in technology often, rightly or wrongly, are seen to subtract as much from the quality of human life as they add. E-mail eviscerates the handwritten letter; computers isolate humans from real-world interactions; cellphones intrude upon public space. But wireless Internet connectivity is hard to fit into that zero-sum model. It really does free one from constraints, and it's hard to think of the downside. It embodies an implicit promise in the whole digital revolution -- that all this is happening to make our lives richer and better, that the Internet is here to serve us, not to overload and oppress us. Technology should not be hard, and finding out what you need to know should not be a chore. Things should just work. The Internet should just be there.

Information doesn't necessarily want to be free, but we definitely all want it to be easy. In 2004, thanks to wireless, the Internet became easy.

-- Andrew Leonard

It's getting hot out there

The Kyoto Protocol is finally a global reality, but the world's biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, the United States, is nowhere to be found.

Among the loads of depressing global-warming news this year: A four-year scientific study commissioned by eight nations with Arctic territory, including the United States, found that polar bears will be some of the first victims of the world's failure to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.

But not even the apocalyptic hurricanes in Florida could turn global warming into a real issue in the November election. California tried to do something about it -- setting its own carbon dioxide pollution standards for cars -- but promptly got sued by automakers. Carbon sequestration and other technological fixes that could help mitigate the impacts of the world's voraciously growing need for cheap energy showed promise. But there was little evidence that they'll be widely implemented in the U.S. in the near term, since it's simply cheaper not to.

The news about global warming -- and the United States' failure to do anything about it -- became so feverish this year that even the queen of England felt obligated to descend from her throne and sound the alarm. She wasn't the only one. After the reelection of George W. Bush all but ensured the continuation of the United States' do-nothing policies on the issue, former President Clinton told his fellow Democrats to quit whining in defeat and create some viable legislation around the issue.

God save the queen, Clinton and the world from global warming.

-- Katharine Mieszkowski

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