#Wikileaks in real time @twitter and on Ustream.

Nov 29

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's The Mikedelic Breakdown

okay so yesterday wikileaks dropped it's latest info bomb. some of it was classified some of it wasnt. and wikileaks didnt really drop it the news agencies did. wikileaks gave stuff to five outlets -- the new york times (u.s.), the guardian (uk), der spiegel (germany), el pais (spain) and le monde (france). there was a team of 120 people i think who went over everything and removed names of people and vetted everything and tried to find out what was relevant. we are in the age of information overload and we need people to sift through information to get the real knowledge. we also need people to sift through the knowledge to get the real wisdom, but that takes longer. anyway the papers released stuff yesterday. the internet got hot. news junkies got excited. there's already a lot happening what with korea and the european financial crap and everything else. so it was a fast news day. i was dealing with it in real time it was nuts. there is a lot of stuff in the wikileaks documents involving the behavior of the u.s. state department and what we are talking about with other countries. stories will develop involving why people will say we should attack iran. the saudis are really pushing for this apparently. also we spy on everyone in the u.n. and did some crazy hacking in china. maybe google was in on it lol. but i'm not really looking to write about that. that stuff will all come out in the papers. i recommend the guradian and der spiegel. check the foreign press to get perspective people, even so called liberal papers like the new york times and the washington post are very often part of the u.s. state-corporate propaganda machine.

anyway though that's not what i want to write about. the tntml angle involves the social media aspect and the internet and stuff. for me this mainly involved two things, twitter and ustream. when the stories started breaking i was on twitter and at ustream. on twitter i follow a lot of news junkies and political people. @digby56, @emptywheel, @timothys, @ggreenwald and @barryeisler are all great. tim and barry are my favorite they are both hip and know about the cia and stuff. i also follow some news feeds. so the links were flowing and there was good commentary. those guys are not big mainstream people but they are fairly conventional. i consider them respectable. so i was keeping track of what they were doing. they were tweeting a lot and shit was happening fast. twitter was really a-twitter for me lol. i bet i'm the first person ever to say that in the history of the internet. anyway it was happening in real time like i say. meanwhile newspapers wouldnt be out for another day and the t.v. stations were taking their sweetass time because they're a bunch of freaking dinosaurs. so twitter was feedin me. i was getting perspective from these smart people and trying to skim through articles there. this already wouldve kept me busy enough

but i had other things going on over at ustream. ustream is really fun. sometimes i go there when @jenfriel broadcasts though i dont chat or anything. anyway you have a person streaming on video while there is also a chatroom going. very fun. forget t.v. man this is so much more democratic and interactive. you're not just sitting there watching someone you'll never talk to in your life you are interacting with the people broadcasting and the other people watching. this makes it such a more interesting medium. the ustream show i was at was called deadtv. it's usually music but there are news and interviews too. it's hosted by anton newcombe of the brian jonestown massacre, one of my favorite bands of all time, and it's his friends and fans hanging out there. anton is a madman. he plays lots of really cool music, he is a total audiophile, but he's also a news junkie. very well informed and interesting. i dont agree with some of the stuff he says, he is a little too far into the shadows of fringe conspiracy stuff but he's well informed too. a little paranoid lol. i mean he's very crazy in general. but it was really fun experiencing the news with him. we were listening to music with people and chatting about stuff and the mod of the chat is a news junkie so we were talking about wikileaks and like when is the story gonna drop. for me this was sunday. lol fuck church and football and all that i wanted me some world theater drama and some information age revolution dig it. we are in an actual age of revolution in a lot of ways. i have talked about that with @jenfriel a bit. she sees how much stuff is changing. this sunday was a great example.

so while t.v. was dragging it's dinosaur ass and probably talking about lindsay lohans tits in rehab or whatever i was in a chatroom with one of my favorite rocknroll musicians who stopped music to surf news stuff on his show and talk about it while we chatted. me and the mod of the chat were getting links and telling the other people tons of stuff. i was kind of new but i can be very loquacious in a chat so i just talked a lot and since i knew a lot and can do web stuff fast in real time it was all good and i wasnt seen as spamming or flooding the chat or anything which was good. so i'm getting links from my feed and astrodaise the mod is getting links and we are breaking it down for people in the chatbox as anton is talking about it and stuff. anton lives in germany and is very critical of the u.s. he's an angry expatriot which i enjoy. i think my conservative friends back in jersey think i am a freedom hating evil doer but i love freedom and rock n roll so i consider myself a real american lol. in a democracy dissent and critical thought are way more important than jingoism and blind loyalty because we the people are supposed to govern ourselves. in order to do this we need to know what is going on that's why media transparency and free information are important, and we need to talk about it all to decide as a group what's right and that's why free expression, open dialogue and new media are important.

so in this chatroom at ustream there were people from america and europe mostly. one guy from mexico i think. some folks from germany and britain. some new york city people. i like having non americans in the mix for a more mixed perspective. and not only is this going on but anton newcombe is actually participating in the discussion a bunch, which was totally far out. this guy is one of my faves! ever! his music changed my life. and we were talking about the news as it comes in. people there are all like anarchists on acid though lol so a lot of them think julian assange is working for the mossad and the cia because he wouldnt still be alive otherwise. i'm not inclined to believe that. it doesnt add up based on what i've read. i think he really is an information cowboy on the new frontier. a lot of people think he should be dead because he puts lives in danger. i can understand that but i disagree. it's complex however and i enjoy talking to smart people who disagree with me about it as long as they arent jerks. as it developed though it was interesting. because we were interpreting it all in real time during the information overload. all this news is coming out and we have different people doing research and giving bits of commentary while others watch and learn. what's cool is that i am pretty good at research and can be fast in a chatroom so i made a good first impression on this new crowd and made friends with the mod of the chat who was doing a lot of great fast research too. so we're posting links and speedreading articles and cutting and pasting relevant text and all that. it was so freaking nerdy but so cool at the same time. it was new media nerdiness and real rocknroll. it damn near broke the needle on the nerdometer in my brain and blew a tube in the amp of my of my rocknroll heart. it was one of those days where i am hanging out on the internet and realize that we are witnessing the dawning of a new light and lo it is totally groovy yea verily brothers and sisters. and none of it was really planned or anything.

it helped having my twitter feed tailored to get me smart commentary and great links. twitter is the kind of thing where it can be a bunch of trivial b.s. but in terms of current events twitter is supercool because it becomes this giant virtual newsroom where regular people get to mix it up with reporters and interact and see how other people are talking and what links and opinions are going around. and because i'd gotten in the habit of doing this i came in really handy in the chat and made some cool new rock n roll friends. it was great. well i guess i better shut up because i am running on. but before i go i'll say this -- when guys like the pope and president obama speak out against the new technologies and say that people are getting too distracted, which both of those guys have said, just remember, they are not who it's for. all of this stuff is for us. we can let it make us into an attention deficit nation, we already have to some extent, but we can also let it facilitate a massive change in consciousness and politics. there are tons of options. and it can be real fun. most of the t.v. news comes from rich corporations whose interests are not the same as those of the general public and who pursue certain goals that are pretty damn shady. but right now there is a lot of interesting information out there and there are a lot of really interesting people talking about it. for nerds like me it does not get any better than days like this. well, except for the part about finding out what scumbags politicians and diplomats are. not that i didnt know that already but you know what i mean. rock on borhters and sisters. over and out.