With a “chief scientist” specializing in consumer behavior, an “analytics department” monitoring voter trends, and a squad of dozens huddled at computer screens editing video or writing code, the sprawling office complex inside One Prudential Plaza looks like a corporate research and development lab — Ping-Pong table and all. But it is home to the largely secret engine of President Obama’s re-election campaign, where scores of political strategists, data analysts, corporate marketers and Web producers are sifting through information gleaned from Facebook, voter logs and hundreds of thousands of telephone or in-person conversations to reassemble and re-energize the scattered coalition of supporters who swept Mr. Obama into the White House four years ago.
posted by Trurl
on Mar 9, 2012 -
59 comments
U.S. Presidents have had
an uneven relationship with technology. The
Clinton Presidential Library has more than 40 million White House emails on record (but
only two are from the man himself). The Bush Administration, on the other hand, junked the Clinton archival process and replaced it with
a comically inept alternative that has lost more than five million messages,
many concerning official government business. (President Bush, for his part, gave up his longtime address --
G94b@aol.com -- just before his inauguration). Even the Reagan White House had
its share of problems with the digital age. Now, as
tech-savvy Barack Obama prepares to implement
his technology plans, does he have a shot at
dragging the Oval Office into the 21st century? Or will he have to surrender
his laptop, his email account, and
his beloved Blackberry?
posted by Rhaomi
on Nov 15, 2008 -
38 comments
Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin. This Saturday will mark this article's four year anniversary. Frankly, I was mildly surprised not to have found it mentioned before in MeFi. It's a good read about a sad state of affairs; how our government is turning its own people into outlaws, because freedom has been traded in for an illusion of security.
...but then we already knew that. Don't we?
posted by ZachsMind
on Aug 29, 2007 -
110 comments
GeekPAC Jeff Gerhardt and Doc Searls are forming a PAC to fight the anti-copy technology that Eisner and Valenti are trying to buy. My question is: why hasn't someone done this earlier? What other geek-oriented lobbying groups are there?
posted by RakDaddy
on Apr 12, 2002 -
9 comments
Desperate, clueless people scrambling to keep us safe? Or cynical manipulation of public fear and superstition, keeping the pea hopping from shell to shell while the real machinations go on behind the scenes? Either way, the government seems to be doing their part to see that we don't forget that we're supposed to be terrorized.
posted by rushmc
on Nov 10, 2001 -
16 comments
