Dana Blankenhorn

This Is Not A Medium: It's An Extra Large

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 47 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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The Internet is not a medium, in the way that newspapers, magazines, or even TV are media.

The Internet is, and always has been, something else entirely. It is so vast, so complete, and so easy to use that the vast majority of us can't conceive of all its capability, let alone use it.

What schools should be teaching right now isn't so much writing, or math, or even science, but the proper use of the Internet, and how to get what you want from it. That's not just a question of teaching people to find stuff. It's a question of teaching people how to ask better questions, and frame what they get into something meaningful. The reason it's not taught is because no one knows exactly how to do that, even now, so educators are baffled as anyone else.

Thus Wall Street has always treated the Internet as just-another medium. And it has misled no company so much as Yahoo.

Impeaching Your Own President

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 46 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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During America's last political crisis, which began with Richard Nixon's election and ended with the validation of his political coalition through Ronald Reagan, a huge strategic mistake was made.

Watergate delayed the conservative movement's march to power by nearly a decade. They'd had a 60-40 win over McGovern, they were well on their way to taking over the South, but because Nixon over-reached, because he was inherently distrustful of democracy – as other conservatives remain – we had six years of what was, in hindsight, an apotheosis of liberalism.

Democrats are, en masse, threatening to make the same mistake, turning away from Barack Obama.