Politics, Twenty Minutes into the Future

In the Max Headroom movies & shows (one each, on each side of the Atlantic) almost exactly twenty years ago, a number of prescient futuristic predictions, one by one, have proven accurate to the point of making them seem like hindsight.

On this primary season one more fulfilled prediction that might have flown under TV viewers' radars was realized when people who watched the debate via the Web instead of the broadcast/cable channels were treated (if so they chose) to superimposed graphics of real-time feedback from focus groups (delivered via dimmer switches, where each of the 100-odd individuals expressed their approval as a matter of degree by rotating the wheel, or somesuch device, in their hand) as they themselves watched the debate. (post link goes to web page with many atomic examples of this).

This is the same opinion/emotion gathering technique used by marketers and TV programming experts (and political strategists, which is the same as the previous two groups) for decades to save them the trouble of actually having to know anything in order to do their job.

What I'm keen on is that, through the Web, the political process now saves EVERYBODY the trouble of having to know anything. It neatly closes the feedback loop circuit of people basing what they think on what other people think.



(I admit I happened to find out about this Monday night out of necessity because the Demo debate was shown on CNN and I don't have cable, not because I watch the debates on the Web just so I don't have to get up from my desk chair, which is somehow less shameful to me; guess which one I'll be using from now on?)