Sunday, January 28, 2007

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.

Comments (1):

Cangrejero wrote


"but for the president or members of congress, it is once every four years, about 200 times less frequent than a week" For members of congress it is every 2 years (house) or every 6 years (senate.) Also, members of congress are not voted on by the entire nation, but by their districts (house, which tend to number in the thousands of residents) or state (senate). The value of an individual's vote is diminished because this is a nation of 300 million people. Any more interactivity would grind this system to a complete halt. Why should your vote be worth more than one-in-40 million if that is the case? In many ways, national elections have become farcical, of course that is true. Local elections, however, are often much more important and germain to your everyday life. Also, they happen much more often than every four years, and they have waaaaay less than millions of people voting. Usually just in the thousands. Also, fuck you if you want to tell me that things would be no different if Kerry won, if Gore won? Voter turnout in every South American country is damn near 90-100% every single fucking time. They get the governments they want down there. Do you know why? Because they've experienced dictatorships and suspended voting rights, and they won't let anyone take it away from them again. If we had turnout here, maybe things would be different. Instead, we have assholes who didn't get the president they wanted in the richest fucking country in the world sitting on the sidelines, decrying us voters as "the american idiot". Cynicism is a fucking luxury. The system isn't perfect, but we can work towards a better system by electing the better candidate when we have the chance. In Argentina, Pinochet suspended voting rights for years. As soon as the people got that right back, they kicked his ass out of office. In South Africa, apartheid continued for decades because black people couldn't fucking vote. As soon as they got that right, they elected Nelson Mandela president and ended apartheid. All the while, plenty of rich, white, South Africans wrote shit like this blog post, decrying a system where your vote doesn't mean anything unless millions of others agree. In the US, we had to fight for the right to vote, and it has and continues to make a difference. If your argument is stating that elections are worthless and are an exercise for "simpleton sheep", then you are effectively stating that the people of the US have no more say in their government than did people in Pinochet's Chile, or Castro's Cuba, or modern day Uzbekistan.