We are living in the midst of a digital revolution — one that will have a greater impact on society than the invention of movable type. Revolutions are periods of intense turmoil charged with unpredictable outcomes.  The old system is destroyed before the new system is consolidated and we don’t know what the new will [...]

It’s been one helluva day trying to keep afloat in the torrent of Wikileaks documents.  And this is just the beginning. I once again recommend Greg Mitchell’s live blog at The Nation as the easiest way to wade into the stream. I did some interviews on the subject, including one in Spanish for the national [...]

The latest Wikileak dump is now underway. with a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables being dripped into public view over the next nine days.  The biggest revelation so far seems to be the behind-the-scenes urging by Arab Mulism countries for the U.S. to militarily attack Iran. That, plus tons of other of the [...]

I’ve had the great displeasure of boarding a plane about eight times in the last three weeks — just in time to experience the new, more invasive TSA scan and search techniques. I think they suck. They suck and they are pointless. They suck, they are pointless and they are an intolerable invasion of privacy. [...]

H/T TechPresident.com

Santiago, Chile Nancy Scola from Techpresident.com and the Personal Democracy Forum has put up a teaser post about one quite controversial moment that came toward the end of PDF’s Latin American conference Friday afternoon. State Dept rep Alec Ross, speaking about the importance of the Web and social media, said that the Che Guevara of [...]

Santiago I’m spending a few more days here in Chile, decompressing after a very successful Personal Democracy Forum that focused on the Web and politics. On a continent where the mainstream media is either notoriously biased, closed and monpolistic, it was refreshing to wander among the grass roots of emerging citizen empowerment via New Media.  [...]

Spending the week here in Chile, I can’t help but comment on this whopper of a story.  Defeated Senatorial candidate Sharron Angle is reported to have praised Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet late in her campaign during a closed door meet and greet. “Sometimes dictators have some good ideas,” she is quoted as saying as she [...]

I’m completing my first day at the Personal Democracy Forum in Chile, looking at the juncture of technology and politics.  Several hundred are attending, mostly from Latin America with a sprinkling of gringos and I have to say it’s been a pretty good day of panels and discussions.  I’m on a panel tomorrow about the [...]

Will be in Chile for a week for the first-ever Latin American version of the Personal Democracy Forum speaking on the impact of the Web on hemispheric politics. Will certainly be tweeting (follow me @marc_cooper ) and probably some blogging too. ‘ Hasta entonces.

Not many people pay attention to the anniversary that falls this week. But it was the week of November 12-20 in 1989 that the FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador launched their final offensive.  Though the Bush-Quayle admin had said they were already a defeated force, the guerrillas came close to knocking over the regime. As [...]

We are currently living through one of the most cynical and nauseating of political moments.  Just as the Republicans won a massive electoral victory on the program of cutting government spending, they are now holding the financial status of 98% of Americans hostage to a trillion dollar, or is it $4 trillion dollar tax giveaway [...]

Ok, so let’s see. The punishment meted out by the suits at NBC for a news anchor that allegedly violated the ethics code is, apparently, being taken off the air for two whole days. Without pay. Keith Olbermann will be allowed to return to his position hosting “Countdown” on Tuesday. And his salary will be [...]

I have my own little story to tell about Keith Olbermann and media ethics. Thursday night, around 9 p.m. Eastern I got a message from the Politico reporter who eventually broke the donations story asking me to call her. Ms. Aujla said, in my position as a journalism prof, she wanted my view on what [...]

I spent all of election day and night overlooking the staff of our USC-based Neon Tommy website. We had a great nite, producing dozens of stories and getting so much traffic that it crashed our servers several times.  Speaking of crashes… this was the prediction I made the day before the election: “The Republicans will [...]