Meet the perfect candidate
p2pnet news view | P2P | Politics:- We’ve used the late Walt Kelly’s Pogo Possum a couple of times to illustrate the idea that bottom line, whatever the entertainment and software cartels get up to, it’s no one’s fault but our own.
They wouldn’t be around if we didn’t guarantee their survival by pouring endless streams of our hard earned cash into their insatiable maws.
Pogo got it right, but his words of wisdom take on a new relevance as we decide on both sides of the border who’s going to represent the corporations for the next little while.
But in the US, they’ve taken on special meaning.
“Meet Sen. Julian Polonius Foley Marcos DeWiki III, a true man of the people. DeWiki – in Internet fashion – is making an unprecedented run for president of the United States.”
Man of the people? Yes. And it’s the literal truth
Step aside, John McCain and Barack Obama, says Cornell University. Click DeWiki’s website, “and learn all about his sordid past and political acumen,” suggests Cornell. Or, if you wish, change history.Or add to it.
Come again?
Yup. Because DeWiki III is nought but a figment of the imaginations of Cornell communication graduate students Josh Braun and Dmitry Epstein, Tarleton Gillespie, Cornell assistant professor of communication, and a team of undergraduates.
They’ve developed a Wiki Web site to assemble the perfect candidate.
“The students are studying online civic participation, researching how people work together online, and learning how groups in the Web world decide what topics are worth discussing,” says the university.
“The mass media has a major impact on what people say during an election, but we know there are likely to be users with less-mainstream interests who may have a big impact on the discourse on the site,” says Braun.
“We want to know if they mimic the forms of discourse you’d find in the news media or a political campaign. Do they take a more argumentative or persuasive tack? Or might they invent a genre that’s unique to the site?”
Currently, candidate DeWiki leads a colorful life, says the site.
His father Julian II grew up on a farm in Texas and his mother, Kandy Caine, was a stripper. In fact, DeWiki has 10 sisters and an adopted brother from Mexico.
Cornell University – We have met the WikiCandidate and he is us, October 7, 2008
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