American idiot: Politics for interactivity

(or, How I learned to stop worrying and love democracy)

Today at lunch, Bruce Block brought up the limited interactivity of Heroes TV show, in which a viewer's response to a television show could alter the outcome of that show (or some future show?) I was reminded of American Idol which employs the gimmick of user votes (in the form of cellphone calls according to Robot Chicken), to affect the selection of the winner. All at the table who were listening agreed that it wasn't interactive. It was a weak illusion only capable of sustaining the belief of the feeble-minded.

"Like politics," I muttered. Modern voting at the Federal level in the United States is less interactive than a banal television show. The cycle of interactivity for a TV show might be once per week, but for the president or members of congress, it is once every four years, about 200 times less frequent than a week. And the amount of interactive impact (or influence) that any single citizen has is less than one in a million. Generally it is closer to one in 40 million. One in 40,000,000 over the span of about 1300 days. That's terribly noninteractive as far as any system is concerned.

Suppose your typewriter only responded once every four years, and not if just you had a request, but 20,000,000 others did as well, for say, a different computer. (Nevermind the enlightened realization that typerwriters are obsolete technology.) You wouldn't consider it responsive or interactive. Yet millions of simpleton sheep vote with conviction that they are participating in the machinery of democracy. Their participation amounts to less of an impact than a cellphone call to American Idol. And I would suspect, their entertainment value was not nearly as good as that banal broadcast. Why is that some of us insist on upholding the illusion that once a few years ritual participated in by millions, is an interactive, choice-centric ritual? If the votes are indicative of anything, it is a bellweather for the American Idiot.

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